Will Irish Property Price Fall in 2024?

The European Central Bank (ECB) has maintained a high interest rate for the past couple of months. The following figure shows the current rates effective since September, 2023, sourced from the centralbank.ie. Consequently, this has also kept mortgage rates elevated. Given this situation, will we witness a decline in prices in 2024? To explore this question, we will analyze various data points, including mortgage drawdowns and the availability of properties for sale on Daft.

Mortgage Approvals

The record-high mortgage rates indeed have some impacts on the number of mortgage drawdowns. The figure below shows the number of mortgage approvals from BPFI (Banking and Payment Federation Ireland). As evident from the figure, the number of mortgage approvals has been decreasing over the last couple of months. Therefore, fewer people are seeking mortgages to buy properties due to the high rates, which should exert downward pressure on property prices.

Property Price Trends

So... How about the property price in the last few months actually? 

The figure below is the Irish property price index from CSO (Central Statistics Office) up untill the last November. The price index is based on the price of 2015 as 100, and we can observe that the index has increased to almost 180 nationwide, around 155 for Dublin, and 200 for the rest of Ireland. The prices in the last few months have been increasing after slowing down a bit, as evident from the figure. Why is this happening? Let's delve into other data a bit more in the following...

Population

First of all, the population has been increasing in the past years and has now surpassed 5 million. This includes the last 2-3 years as well. Obviously, to accommodate this population growth, we need more housing in Ireland. Additionally, this increasing population will exert upward pressure on property prices if demand exceeds supply. How about our supply?

Supply is a big issue

If we examine the supply—the number of available properties to buy on Daft—we notice something concerning. 

The figure below illustrates the number of properties for each month over the last two years. Following the pandemic, there was an increase in the number of properties for sale from 2022, peaking at 20,000 nationwide. However, this trend did not continue last year, and we can observe a decrease in supply over the past year instead. Currently, the number of available properties is more or less similar to that of two years ago, despite the increasing population over this period. Therefore, we can see that there is a significant supply issue to meet the current demand, which is leading to upward pressure on property prices.

A similar trend can be noticed for the number of available properties in Dublin, with only around 2,500 properties available in the main city.

One good news here is that the number of available properties for rent in Ireland and Dublin appears to have been increasing. This might be a positive factor, as it provides more choices for renting over buying a property, especially if the available rental properties have reasonable rent prices.

One major change in mortgages this year is the increase in the amount to four times your income, which I personally believe will exert upward pressure on prices as well. 

To sum up, with an expected decrease in ECB's rates this year, and considering all these above-mentioned factors, it is hard to anticipate a price fall in 2024; instead, I personally expect a steady increase.

Huawei Data Science Interview Questions

This post is about the interview experience for a data scientist position at Huawei IRC (Irish Research Centre). As part of Huawei Europe, IRC mainly focuses on other markets except Asian ones such as China, South Korea, and Japan, and is trying to solve business problems such as Ad optimization on those markets.

Regarding the job post, an agency contacted me regarding the position and I only went through one hiring manager round and stopped. So this post is mainly about the interview questions with the hiring manager (HM). 

The HM round is a 1 HR interview consists of the following structure.

• 5 min: introduction of each
• 10 min: presentation about your previous experience
• 15 min: Q&A regarding the specifications about the job post
• 25 min: code pairing (Leetcode-like, messed up this)
• 5 min: ask any questions regarding the role

Some questions mentioned during the interview are:

• Some questions related to the presentation.
• What is your contribution/role in a specific project? I think it is mainly trying to figure out your part exactly if there are many team members or authors in a paper.
• What is the current state-of-the-art for the problem?
• What are some impressive papers you have read recently regarding the specific area of the job post?
• Regarding the project of job post related questions, e.g., if you do xxx., how will you approach or provide solutions

Overall, the interview process is well organized, and the interviewer is kind despite of the messing up for the code paring section. 

Optum Data Scientist Interview Questions

This post is about an interview experience for a data scientist position at Optum. It could be useful if you are going through or having one upcoming for a similar position at Optum or UnitedHealth Group. 

Optum, Inc. is an American healthcare services provider with business interests encompassing technology and related services, pharmacy care services and various direct healthcare services. It has been a subsidiary of UnitedHealth Group since 2011. And Optum seems to contribute the biggest portion of the UnitedHealth's profits, and has been growing very fast in the past years.

After submitting the CV for the position, I got a call from HR to arrange the interview, and there are two rounds of interview in total:

• technical interview
• behavior interview

Technical interview

The interview consists of two data scientists - one principle and one senior. 

Followed by a brief introduction about each, there was a project description section to describe a data science project has been done in your previous work experience. And there will be some questions delving into the details based on the project description you gave. 

The second part was about a mock project simulation, which has no right or wrong answer, but rather to understand how your thinking process works when you starting a new data science project. And there can be some questions based on your answers as well.

Finally, there can be a couple of technical questions related to data science and machine learning. It seems the interviewers have prepared a set of questions need to be covered. 

At the end, there can be some time for you to ask a couple of questions regarding the position and the company. Overall, the people look nice and friendly during the interview, and the interview difficulty is reasonable.

The interviewers were gentle and kind. However, the feedback process seems not satisfactory. After  more than 10 days, there was no feedback and no update on the job dashboard and I inquired about the feedback of the interview. An HR person said there will be updates and they will get back to me, but it turns out there is no update at the end and after a while I found the job board status is also silently changed to "No longer under consideration" without sending a rejection email.

Ireland's Property Price Trends

The property/house price growth starts slowing down in Ireland from recent figures and news. Marian Finnegan, the managing director of Sherry FitzGerald says:

"Although demand remains robust, the frenzied bidding activity that was a feature of the post pandemic period has eased"

A recent report by the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI), also has suggested that house prices were now overvalued by at least 7 per cent. And the Irish property market is headed for "a perfect storm" of rising construction costs and flattening or falling house prices, an industry expert has warned. There are many aspects contributing to the ease of the rising property price such as:

• increasing interest rates for mortgages
• increasing stock of second-hand properties

which are two important factors in the demand and supply game of the property market.

In this post, we go through recent data regarding properties in Ireland from several perspectives to give an overview of the current market:

• Sold properties statistics from Property Register
• Daft trends
• Recent CSO report

Sold properties statistics from Property Register

4,473 sold properties have been registered for 2022-9

This is 7.99% change from last month

This is -15.81% change from the same month of last year

The mean price of sold properties is 400,354.55 EURO for 2022-9

This is 6.8% change from last month

This is 8.56% change from the same month of last year

The median price of sold properties is 295,000.0 EURO for 2022-9

This is 0.0% change from last month

This is 7.27% change from the same month of last year

The top-5 most expensive sold properties are 

• Davitt PRS Development, Davitt Road, Drimnagh (111,280,172 EURO)
• 1 HAMPTON WOOD SQUARE, HAMPTON WOOD, FINGLAS (54,500,000 EURO)
• 16 Amber Way, The Miles, Clonakilty (25,338,384 EURO)
• 3/4 Poplar Row, Annesley Bridge, Ballybough (15,423,665 EURO)
• 9 - 40 Walker's Grove, Parkside, Balgriffin (14,080,000 EURO)

Daft trends

We can see the number of available properties in Ireland on Daft.ie has been steadily increasing over the last months, including a relatively sharp increase starting from September. It is actually over 20000 multiple times during the last month, which is a good sign of increasing stock of properties in Ireland.

Recent CSO Report on Residential Property Price Index August 2022

• The national Residential Property Price Index (RPPI) increased by 12.2% in the 12 months to August 2022, with prices in Dublin rising by 9.7% and prices outside Dublin up by 14.2%.

• In August 2022, 4,295 dwelling purchases by households at market prices were filed with the Revenue Commissioners, an increase of 14.1% compared with the 3,764 purchases in August 2021.

• The median price of a dwelling purchased in the 12 months to August 2022 was €295,100.

• The lowest median price for a house in the 12 months to August 2022 was €149,500 in Longford, while the highest median price was €615,000 in Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown.

Ireland Property Price Trends - August 2022

Irish house prices have almost reached to the point during their Celtic Tiger peak [1], which is not a good news for people searching for family homes. The good news is that the market starts to slow down with recent trends [2] or returning to normal with an improved volume of both second-hand homes and new ones are available in the market [3, 4].

"As prices are slowing, more properties are coming onto the market, as tends to happen in this kind of environment" [2]

"Early indications are that stock levels will be replenished in the coming weeks, with an improved volume of both second-hand homes and new homes coming to the market. And although the frenzied bidding evident in the opening weeks of the year has diminished, demand remains strong, with a notable urgency from purchasers to transact more quickly in the face of rising interest rates. As always, the market performance will not be homogenous, but at this juncture we are expecting a busy season" [3]

In this post, we go through recent data regarding properties in Ireland from several perspectives to give an overview of the current market:

• Sold properties statistics from Property Register
• Daft trends
• Recent CSO report
• Recent news about housing crisis

 

Sold properties statistics from Property Register

4,142 sold properties have been registered for 2022-8
This is -9.88% change from last month
This is -12.41% change from the same month of last year

The mean price of sold properties is 374,879.19 EURO for 2022-8
This is -6.23% change from last month
This is 11.59% change from the same month of last year

The median price of sold properties is 295,000.0 EURO for 2022-8
This is 1.46% change from last month
This is 10.9% change from the same month of last year

The top-5 most expensive sold properties are

• Block E7 and Block G Clay Farm, Part of Folio DN79535F, Leopardstown (64,471,885 EURO)
• SORRENTO, NERANO RD, DALKEY (6,250,000 EURO)
• STELLA MARIS, BAILY, HOWTH (5,700,000 EURO)
• 36 LEESON PARK, RANELAGH, DUBLIN 6 (4,724,500 EURO)
• 26 PALMERSTON PARK, RATHGAR, DUBLIN 6 (4,500,000 EURO)

 

 

Daft trends

We can see the number of available properties in Ireland on Daft.ie has been steadily increasing over the last months, including a relatively sharp increase starting from September. 

Recent CSO Report on Residential Property Price Index July 2022

• The national Residential Property Price Index (RPPI) has reached the value of 164.9 points for July 2022, which is 0.8% above its highest level recorded at the peak of the economic boom in April 2007.
• The national RPPI increased by 13.0% in the 12 months to July 2022, with prices in Dublin rising by 10.4% and prices outside Dublin up by 15.2%.
• In July 2022, 4,443 dwelling purchases by households at market prices were filed with the Revenue Commissioners, an increase of 16.2% compared with the 3,822 purchases in July 2021.
• The median price of a dwelling purchased in the 12 months to July 2022 was €295,000.
• The lowest median price for a house in the 12 months to July 2022 was €145,000 in Longford, while the highest median price was €610,000 in Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown.

Recent news 

[1]. House Prices Reach 2007 Peak For First Time Since Financial Crash

[2]. Residential property prices up 6% this year but auctioneers forecast market to slow

[3]. What will happen to the property market this year? Sherry FitzGerald MD Marian Finnegan explains

[4]. Housing market ‘returning to normal’ following pandemic, Davy says

[5]. House prices almost 1% higher than previous Celtic Tiger peak but inflation cools rising costs

Ireland Property Price Trends - July 2022

Introduction 

Housing market in Ireland is still challenging due to the shortage of properties due to Covid-19 period, and increasing constuction costs [1-4] compared to high demand [5]. With ECB increasing interest rates and with new homes keep coming to the pipeline, we hope the situation might be changing in the future. 

There has also been a trend of smaller landlords leaving the rent market to sell properties as observed recently, which might be good for whom would like to buy a property but might be bad news for tenants with a record high rents in Ireland.

Despite record rents, smaller landlords seem to be leaving in droves, creating a gap in the availability of more affordable accommodation. [1]

Here, we go through recent data regarding properties in Ireland from several perspectives to give an overiew of the current market:

• Sold properties statistics from Property Register 
• Daft trends
• Recent CSO report
• Recent mortgage data
• Recent news about housing crisis

Sold properties statistics from Property Register

4596 sold properties have been registered for 2022-07
This is -11.56% change from last month
This is -11.0% change from the same month of last year 

The mean price of sold properties is 399,764.82 EURO for 2022-07
This is 10.41% change from last month
This is 24.47% change from the same month of last year

The median price of sold properties is 290,748 EURO for 2022-07
This is 0.26% change from last month
This is 12.04% change from the same month of last year

The top-5 most expensive sold properties are

• Apartments 1 - 297, Blackwood Square, Northwood (109,055,078 EURO)
• APARTMENT BG.1, MELBOURN POINT, BISHOPSTOWN (35,178,712 EURO)
• 6 PORTSIDE COURT, WEST RD EAST WALL, D3   & other properties (17,099,496 EURO)
• CEDAR LODGE, 98 MERRION RD, BALLSBRIDGE DUBLIN 4 (9,400,000 EURO)
• 1-37 Northgate Hall, Kilcarbery Grange, Clondalkin (929,0748 EURO)

 

 

Daft trends

The number of properties on Daft tends to be increasing, while still quite far behind the number of pre-pandemic level (approximately 25000 in 2019)

Recent CSO report on New Dwelling Completions Q2 2022

There were 7,654 new dwelling completions in Q2 2022, up 53.4% from Q2 2021, and up 58.8% from Q2 2019 (pre-pandemic). 

Apartment completions rose 88.1% in the last year to 2,415 with scheme dwellings up 53.3% to 3,905 and single dwellings rising 15.1% to 1,334.

Just over half (51.0%) of all completions in Q2 2022 were scheme dwellings, 31.6% were apartments. while 17.4% were single dwellings.

Completions increased by more than 50% in Dublin, South-West, Mid-East, Mid-West, and the Midlands.

More than a third (34.3%) of scheme completions were in the Mid-East (Louth, Kildare, Meath, Wicklow).

Nine of the ten Local Electoral Areas with the most completions in the quarter were in Dublin, with the most completions in Ballyfermot-Drimnagh.

Recent mortgage data

Banking & Payments Federation Ireland (BPFI) has published the latest figures from the BPFI Mortgage Approvals Report for June 2022 [8]. The following are the key elements:

• There were 5,960 mortgage approvals, valued at €1,666 million in June 2022.
• Mortgage approval activity increased in volume terms by 14.5% year-on-year and increased in value terms by 30.6% over the same period.
• There were 3,947 purchase mortgage approvals, valued at €1,153 million in June 2022.
• Purchase mortgage approval activity fell in volume terms by 5.3% year-on- year and increased in value terms by 8.0% over the same period.

Recent news about the housing market of Ireland

[1]. The Irish Times view on the dysfunctional housing market

[2]. Buying a home is now out of reach for the average worker, new figures show

[3]. Soaring costs and construction skills shortages threaten housing targets

[4]. Construction costs rise faster than during the Celtic Tiger era

[5]. Average mortgage drawdown for first-time buyers breaks 2008 record

[6]. House hunters' spending power drops by 9% as average house price continues to rise

[7]. AIB to increase tracker mortgage rates by 0.5pc from August

[8]. https://bpfi.ie/publications/bpfi-mortgage-approvals-june-2022/

[9]. Housing Market Faces Growing Risk Of Multi-Year Collapse As New Home Construction Craters

[10]. More than 50% increase in new housing completions - CSO

Ireland Property Price Trends - June 2022

Regarding sold properties from Property Price Register

 

5197 sold properties have been registered for 2022-6
This is 25.56% change from last month
This is 10.88% change from the same month of last year

The mean price of sold properties is 362069.33 EURO for 2022-6
This is 0.53% change from last month
This is 8.48% change from the same month of last year

The most expensive sold property is 
Block 6 Griffith Wood, Griffith Avenue  Dublin 9 (35,466,419 EURO)

* The data is retrieved from Property Price Register Ireland

Daft trends on the number of properties

The number of properties on Daft tends to be increasing, while still quite far behind the number of pre-pandemic level (approximately 25000 in 2019)

 

 

 

 

The recent Property Price Index form CSO (Central Statistics Office)

In Dublin, house prices increased by 11.9% and apartment prices were up by 11.3%. The highest house price growth in Dublin was in Dublin City at 14.1%, while Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown saw a rise of 9.2%.

Outside Dublin, house prices were up by 16.8% and apartment prices rose by 14%. The region outside of Dublin that saw the largest rise in house prices was the South-East at 21.5%, while at the other end of the scale, the Mid-West saw a 11.4% rise. 

Table 1.1: Residential Property Price Index
Month	Price Index (2015=100)	Monthly % change	Annual % change
February 2022	159.1	0.7	15.1
March 2022	159.9	0.5	15.1
April 2022	160.5	0.4	14.5
May 2022	161.8	0.8	14.4
The latest three month's RPPI results are provisional and subject to revision.

Ireland Property Price Trends - May 2022

 

Regarding sold properties from Property Price Register

4139 sold properties have been registered for 2022-5
This is 45.28% change from last month
This is -0.93% change from the same month of last year

 

The mean price of saled properties is 360,150.76 EURO for 2022-5
This is -3.2% change from last month
This is 16.8% change from the same month of last year

The most expensive saled property is
1-12 and 14-59 Elmwood, Johnstown Road, Dun Laoghaire (21,682,649 EURO)

* The data is retrieved from Property Price Register Ireland

Daft trends on the number of properties

The number of properties on Daft tends to be increasing, while still quite far behind the number of pre-pandemic level (approximately 25000 in 2019)

 

The recent Property Price Index form CSO (Central Statistics Office)

 

 

Table 1.1: Residential Property Price Index
Month	Price Index (2015=100)	Monthly % change	Annual % change
January 2022	158.1	0.9	14.8
February 2022	159.1	0.7	15.1
March 2022	159.9	0.5	15.1
April 2022	160.2	0.1	14.2

 

Ireland Property Price Trends - April 2022

Regarding sold properties from Property Price Register

2849 sold properties have been registered for 2022-4

This is -15.38% change from last month

This is -32.38% change from the same month of last year

The mean price of saled properties is 372,046 EURO for 2022-4

This is 6.1% change from last month

This is 5.95% change from the same month of last year

The most expensive saled property is 

APT A101, 35-38, CORK ST (80,685,721 EURO)

* The data is retrieved from Property Price Register Ireland

Daft trends on the number of properties

The number of properties on Daft tends to be increasing, while still quite far behind the number of pre-pandemic level (approximately 25000 in 2019)

The recent Property Price Index form CSO (Central Statistics Office)

Table 1.1: Residential Property Price Index
Month	Price Index (2015=100)	Monthly % change	Annual % change
November 2021	155.3	1.3	14.0
December 2021	156.7	0.9	14.2
January 2022	158.2	0.9	14.8
February 2022	159.4	0.8	15.3