House prices in Northern Ireland are continuing to head higher but the cost-of-living crisis has meant even estate agents expect the uptrend to soften in the coming year.
That is the message from two influential housing market reports released this week which both reported another steady rise in residential prices in the last month.
However, the market’s ardour is being dampened by waning consumer sentiment as would-be and current home owners try to cope with the rising cost of living against a backdrop of relatively weak wage growth.
Halifax’s House Price Index said the average price of a house in Northern Ireland rose more than any other region of the UK last month, up 15.2% on the year to £185,386.
Another report from estate agent’s body the RICS agreed that prices were continuing to head higher, largely due to a lack of new supply coming on to the market.
“Demand is still outstripping supply, a pattern that we’ve seen for many months now,” Samuel Dickey, RICS Northern Ireland Residential Property Spokesman, said.
While the market remains tight, the RICS report, which surveys estate agents, said there had been some softening in the expectations for future price rises with a lower precentage of respondents expecting both prices and sales to be higher in a year’s time.
That is something which was also reported in the Halifax report for the UK as a whole.
“The housing market has begun to show signs of cooling,” Russell Galley, Managing Director, Halifax, said. “Mortgage activity has started to come down and, coupled with the inflationary pressures currently exerted on household budgets, it’s likely activity will start to slow.”
Despite the increase in prices in Northern Ireland, the average price of a house remains well below the UK average of £289,099
