House Prices and Inflation

34 comments
  1. Are you working out the inflation yourself? Or are these figures coming from an inflation calculator?

    Are the figures on the right based on average house prices, or just representative numbers you’ve picked yourself?

  2. Very few people pay the full price of house when they buy. What they pay is the mortgage. This graph doesn’t show what percentage of family income was used up in paying mortgage. A single comparison between the current prices and previous prices cannot be done.

  3. My father bought a brand new detached house in a housing estate for £23,000 in 1984. It’d sell probably for €380,000 today.

  4. It needs to be noted that this is nowhere near the real costs of property at the time. At interest peaks in the early 80s a thirty year with 10% down mortgage’s real costs would be 70-80%. These days (even with the recently increased interest rates) it’s 30-35%.

    Where people from that generation lucked out was refinancing with cheap debt and rapidly increasing wages in the mid to late 90s.

  5. So current prices are around 2000 level (between 98 and 03). Not ridiculous at all. Any time before that, Ireland was an impoverished high tax hellhole, so not a great comparison.

  6. That chart is kind of meaningless without more context and the methodology behind it.

    What I will add, at 26 years old my parents bought their house for 2x their combined annual salary.

    A new house nowadays in the same town with much smaller space and worse location (but better energy rating) is now 4x myself and my partners combined annual salary.

    We have higher education levels and are 5-7 years further into our careers occupying much more senior position than my parents were when they bought.

    If you wanted a like for like house wise (size of gardens, house size etc) it is probably 5x or 6x annual income versus the 2x income they paid back in the mid 80’s.

  7. 4 bed semi d in sandyford. 60,000 pounds in 1993.

    They sold up in 2003 and moved to the sticks, think they got 425k.

    According to the price register one sold there in February for 620k.

    Jesus wept.

  8. When my father bought a 3 bed house it was 3 times his salary to buy it and just asked the bank for a mortgage and got it . 3 times my salary is enough for the site

  9. Don’t forget that a lot of those houses were bought with just one income coming in. Wages have been eroded to nothing.

  10. My folks bought their house for 60k in 1990. Three bedroom, two bathroom, 20 mins from city centre on Dublin. I’ve no doubt that house is easily worth 600k now.

  11. 1996 36k north Dublin . 800 pound deposit . Mortgage 212 per month

    Makes me fuckn sick my rent is more per month than his whole year combined

  12. My Dad bought our house for about 90k punt in 1997.

    He earned about 25k a year at the time. He was able to support a wife and three kids and pay a mortgage. In time my mother worked part time.

    Different times.

  13. How come rent was still significantly cheaper in 2007 even though house prices were much higher? I also recall much more availability to rent. Anyone that doubts this can look up waybackmachine and compare it to the shit show today

  14. Looking at simple inflation misses many factors which impact house prices.

    In the 1970s you would have had significantly more households that were single income I.e. the father worked and mother minded the kids. Society has progressed where now most young families (I.e. those buying houses) are double income.

    In addition you have population growth and changes in demographics.

    Also add in the increase in wealth in the country in general, I don’t think anyone would argue ireland in the 70s was the most affluent country in Europe.

    We’ve advanced hugely as a society over the past 50 years and while that’s brought massive benefits, it also brings challenges like housing, which is not unique to ireland. Simply looking at inflation misses this.

  15. Need to take historical interest rates into account to get the full picture.

    Interest rates were crazy high back in the day.

  16. Buying a new house in 1978, Central heating was an optional extra!. Single glazed windows, zero insulation.

    A rated houses are very expensive to build, construction labour is expensive, H&S on a site is expensive. Building regulations are very high in Ireland.

    That’s why Ireland is one of the most expensive places to build pm2 in Europe, excluding land, connections, tax etc

  17. Dads mate bought a small terraced house on Hamilton street for 5,000 punt in 90s. Sold it for 400,000 in the 2000’s

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