Buyers less fearful of price crash

CONSUMERS are less fearful of a crash in the property market and are expecting house prices to grow modestly this year.

According to a new survey from IIB Bank and the ESRI, the majority of Irish consumers are expecting house prices to grow by about 5.5% this year compared to the actual growth rate of 13.4%.

A previous survey IIB/ESRI last autumn found that most people expected prices to rise by 4.5% and a good number of them were expecting prices to fall. The number of consumers expecting prices to "decline a lot" fell from 2% of those surveyed to just 0.6%, while those expecting modest rises increased from 41.4% to 48.6%.