My good friend Alan who lives in Sydney is planning a move back to Ireland next year. He sent me an email a couple of days ago with a question that many of you will be interested in. Before moving back to Ireland from Australia, he wants to get an idea of what to expect as regards house prices in Ireland.

Hey Liam,
As you know my move is steadily progressing to the point where we almost have a date set. We're shooting for May/June 2017 and have plenty of things to tie up here before we move.
Do you know where I can find average sales prices for houses in Dublin? I have found reports on MyHome.ie but they seem to only show the asking price. Is it possible that the asking price and the actual sale price would be significantly different?
Cheers,
Alan

Thanks for the question, Alan!

From personal experience I have found that the sales prices can be significantly higher than what was originally asked for. The whole shenanigans of playing people off each other, and creating a ridiculous bidding war for almost every sale, is what Irish estate agents seem to thrive on. I've heard extreme cases, where the house ends up selling for many tens of thousands over the asking price! However, my guess is that if somebody is eager to sell, and their property is on the market for an extended period of time, they'll settle for the best offer they can get, which may be lower than what they want.

The source of information that I have used for finding the actual sale price of homes in Ireland is the Residential Property Price Register https://www.propertypriceregister.ie/website/npsra/pprweb.nsf/page/ppr-home-en
If you have a compatible device, you also download the Property Price Register app from Amazon.com here.

This register is searchable so you can input a specific address if you like. In your case if you're looking for the price at which homes have sold for over a given time period, in Dublin, you can find that too. Just select from the 'County' drop-down menu, and enter the dates you wish to search. It's pretty useful for getting all sales within a given time frame.

The only real downside I can see with using this system is that not a lot of detail is shown about the properties. You can click through from the results page to view a bit more info, but from the ones I've looked at there isn't a lot of detail about the house. However, if you're looking for an overall price-picture of an area, it's very useful.

The screenshot below is a sample search I did for sales in house Dublin in January 2016. There are no filters to narrow down the search, but if you know the area you wish to move to, you can do a "Ctrl - F" search on the results.

Sales prices for houses in Dublin January 2016
Sales prices for houses in Dublin January 2016