A new report has found that one in seven Irish housing transactions settle for at least 20% over asking price – concluding that “Ireland’s opaque process of buying and selling homes is contributing to current poor levels of housing liquidity”.
The report, produced by property website MyHome.ie in association with Bank of Ireland, said the issue is a factor in what is “an unclear picture for both would-be buyers and vendors”.
Bank of Ireland’s Conall Mac Coille, who authored the report, said that “perhaps less appreciated is the process of buying and selling existing homes is also impeded by an opaque bidding process and the emerging discrepancy between asking prices and final sold prices”.
The data examined for the report showed that one in seven of all housing transactions settled for at least 20% over the original asking price, while two in five settled at 10% or more above the asking price.
The report said that “asking prices are not an optimal guide for homebuyers, adding to the time and effort required to buy or sell a home” in too many of the transactions.
It also posited that this is a factor for poor liquidity in the housing market, “with the average property being sold once every 50 years”.
It states that “a lack of transparency in bidding, along with an emerging divergence between the asking price and final sold price of properties, are amongst a range of inter-related issues that have led to the liquidity in the Irish housing market falling behind European countries, the UK and US”.
Online transparent bidding platforms “can provide greater trust and confidence in the housing market”, the report said, recommending that estate agents continue to adopt and encourage the use of such platforms.
The Managing Director of MyHome, Joanne Geary, said a fully transparent bidding process “may improve market functionality and, by extension, help to improve housing liquidity.”
She said that close to half of residential transactions are now visible on platforms that feature online bidding or auctions, including MyHome.
“A key advantage of these platforms is that they provide buyers with transparent information about the bidding history of the properties they are interested in, as well as giving the buyer the digital means to view and place an offer at any time,” she said.
A recent survey from the Competition and Consumer Protection Commission noted that just 16% of buyers felt the housing market is transparent, the report said.
The report found that there were 61,000 residential property market transactions in Ireland in 2024, equivalent to 2.8% of the housing stock. “This turnover rate was well below the UK’s turnover rate of 3.6%, itself depressed by rising interest rates and well down from the 4.2% rate on average it experienced through 2013-2022”, the report noted.
Liquidity in the Irish housing market has “lagged behind the UK in every year since the global financial crisis, seeing turnover rates even below those of Northern Ireland, which saw a similar house price collapse to ours”, it also said.
It also pointed to the low number of existing homeowners with mortgage debt looking to move home: “Just 9,000 mortgages were drawn down by movers in 2024; this represents just 0.4% of our housing stock, which is less than half the UK rate of 0.9%.”
Conall Mac Coille, who is Chief Economist of Bank of Ireland, said Irish housing supply has failed to keep pace with buoyant demand.
He said that while many of the challenges to the market were well understood, “perhaps less appreciated is the process of buying and selling existing homes is also impeded by an opaque bidding process and the emerging discrepancy between asking prices and final sold prices”.
“These combined factors have led to poor rates of liquidity, consistently below other European countries, the United Kingdom and the United States.”
He said the introduction of the Property Price Register has “brought welcome transparency to the Irish housing market but there is scope to go further”.
“Estate agents are already required to disclose legitimate bids to the PRSA. Allowing prospective buyers to see these bids, via new technology platforms, can only help the functioning of the Irish housing market,” he added.