Economist questions house price statistics

A senior economist has questioned the credibility of the Central Statistics Office’s house price statistics, and said the decline in house values is much higher than the CSO estimates.

Conall MacCoille, chief economist with Davy, said the launch of the national property price register “has added to the evidence that the CSO index is increasingly unrepresentative of true market conditions”.

The latest CSO house price index shows that, after an increase of 1.1% in November, residential prices fell 0.5% in December.