Residential property sales have slowed by 23% as a result of lockdown, data on the Residential Property Price Register shows.

Q1 and Q2 saw 5,800 fewer transactions in the first six months of 2020 with19,662 transactions compared to 25,509 in 2019.

Q2 sales of 4,600 in 2019 decreased to 2,700 in 2020.

The Property Services Regulatory Authority was established in April 2012 pursuant to the Property Services (Regulation) Act 2011 and is the statutory body with responsibility for licensing and regulating the property services sector in Ireland

Auctioneers

It licences auctioneers, estate agents, letting agents and management agents.

In 2019, 604 new licence applications were submitted to the Authority for consideration of which:

• 470 licences issued,
• 79 applications were under assessment,
• 25 were withdrawn,
• 15 were rejected,
• 15 were refused.

Recent CSO figures show that the value of transactions in the housing market has almost halved since the pandemic restrictions began.

Deals

Residential property deals were worth just over €1 billion in March, before dropping to €658.7m in April and falling further to €535.2m in May.

The volume of home-buying also dropped sharply, with just 1,937 purchases recorded in May, compared with 2,351 in April and 3,598 in March.