By Debbie Lonsdale
I’ve just added a couple of new charts into the Property Prices Portal that I think will help you to make sense of what’s happening in the Irish Property Market. They are on the “Scatter and Heat Charts” page on the menu shown below.
They both work using the filters at the top of the page which allow you to go back in time and compare a whole YTD v the previous YTD. In this case, because we don’t have much data yet for January 2022, I’ve chosen to compare the full year of 2021 from 1st January up to the last sale date of 29th December, with the exact same period in 2020.
As the year progresses you can see how we’re doing year-to-date 2022 with the same period 2021 by changing the Current Date to cover the period you want to compare.
Scatter Plot
In the scatter plot below we can get an immediate feel for 3 key measures about how property prices were doing in 2021 v 2020.
Each county is represented by a circle on the chart. It’s position and size are determined by the 3 measures.
- The x-axis shows us the % change 2021 v 2020 in the average price by county
- The y-axis shows us the % change 2021 v 202 in the number sold by county
- The size of the circle increases the higher the average price.
When you hover over a circle as below a tool tip details the 3 measures for the county – in this case Tipperary.
Can you guess which county the big circle bottom left represents? To see if you’re correct go to the portal and hover over the circle.
The small circle top right represents Longford which has had a great year in terms of increased number of properties sold (42.53% up) and also in terms of average price change (21.86% up) – but still only has a fairly low average price in 2021 of €162,851, hence the small circle size.
Next let’s look at the heat chart further down and see the breakdown per county of VAT Excl. average sales prices (new properties are entered into the portal at VAT Excl price) and the VAT Incl. average sales prices (second hand properties are entered into the portal at VAT Incl. price).
Heat Chart
For the same year-to-date period selected , in this case the full year for 2021 sales, we can see at a glance the breakdown of average sales price by county and by VAT status. We can see by the gradient of colour, the lowest averages (lighter blue) and the highest averages (darker blue).
Dublin looks as you would expect, the darkest (highest), in both VAT Excl. and VAT Incl. sales.
Look at Longford – we already know from above that the overall Average Price for 2021 was €162,851. But what happens when we break down by New v Second Hand?
Longford has an unexpectedly high Vat Excl. Average Price for 2021 – €693,109 and a very low Vat Incl. Average Price of €145,338.
This could be for several reasons. Because we are working on a mean average we know from the overall average of €162,851 that there can’t be that many new houses otherwise this would be much higher.
It seems likely that there might be a small number of very expensive new houses sold in 2021.
Let’s look at the Search Addresses page to see more detail about what’s going on.
Search Addresses
When we filter down to Longford and VAT Excl. Sales for 2021, we can see clearly why the average price is so high for VAT Excl. sales in Longford.
There are only 18 VAT Excl. Sales out of 563 total sales.
There are several sales of single expensive properties, but there are also some sales of whole or partial housing estates which instead of being classified in the data as separate properties, have been sold as one property.
These could be brand new estates, or newly completed ghost estates left over from the property crash in 2008, and now sold on as one lot.
There is a genuine double-property sale on Campbell’s Drive which has been entered as such in the data, so the mean average is not affected.
We might add further reports to the portal on median averages which would help to give a different perspective to the average price.
So when you are investigating the averages and increases in your area, be sure to look into the detail before making selling or buying decisions based on the Property Prices Register data.
About Debbie Lonsdale
Debbie Lonsdale has been working with the Diver Solution as a BI Consultant at Dynamic Business Informatics since 2008. Her previous experience includes computer programming, analytical and technical roles, team management, account management, sales and marketing in a variety of market sectors, including the Travel Industry and Distribution.
She combines this experience as an all round ICT professional in the BI sector.
