Survey of 100 houses finds one in four move to sale agreed within a month

CLOSE to one in four properties monitored moved to sale agreed status within one month of going on the market.

The Property Week and MyHat.ie are tracking 100 randomly selected properties in Dublin that came on the market in January and although 23 moved to sale agreed, just one property was sold. The prices were cut on 12 houses and four were withdrawn from the market.

In Cork prices have been continuing to fall by between 1% and 2% each month, with a three-bed semi now marketing on average at €254,000 compared to €345,000 in March 2008 and €310,000 in March 2009.

MyHat.ie noted 24 sale agreeds in Cork city in January, 47 in February and 43 to date in March.

Managing director of MyHat.ie, Paul O’Connor said: “As in the other markets we monitor, the asking prices of the properties going sale agreed in Cork are averaging out less than the overall average. So as asking prices come down further we can expect a higher number of deals to be done.”

Of the 100 Dublin properties monitored those that went to sale agreed or sold were priced about 15% below the initial asking price.

“It will be surprising to some that more than one in every five has already officially found a buyer. There are probably even a few more of the 100 vendors that have accepted an offer, but whose agents have not yet made it official,” said Mr O’Connor.

The report said that some of those agreements on sale agreed will more than likely fall through over the coming weeks but the implication is that there are people out in numbers eager to purchase.

“We will see how they get on over the coming months — getting fully approved for finance, selling their own properties, maintaining the agreement with the vendors,” said Mr O’Connor.

With regard to the four houses withdrawn some of them were advertised at prices that the market could just not justify and the vendor had a change of heart, according to the report.

MyHat.ie plans to produce monthly price data on the Irish property market and also plans to extend its analysis of house sales to include Cork and Galway.