The average asking price for a home rose by 6.1% during 2022, a slowdown from the 8.1% recorded in 2021, according to figures from property website Daft.ie.

The report’s author warned, however, that the market during last year was “not one where supply was adequate to meet demand”.

Ronan Lyons, Associate Professor of Economics at Trinity College Dublin, pointed out that the market, before COVID-19, had “effectively been in balance”, with a slight fall of 1.2% in prices during 2019.

The Daft.ie report shows that prices outside Dublin rose by nearly 7% during 2022, compared with 5% in the capital.

This, however, represents a narrowing of the difference compared with 2021, when prices outside Dublin rose by 11.2%, and those in the city by 3.4%.

Prices fell in Q4

Lyons said that prices nationally had shown strong rates of growth in both the first and second quarters of 2022 – 2.9% and 3.6%, respectively. In the third quarter, however, prices were effectively static, and in the final quarter they declined by 0.4%.

He said that, although supply had slowly recovered from its pandemic lows, availability remained low, with just 15,000 homes being advertised on the website on 1 December.

This was more than 30% higher compared with a year earlier, but still well below the 2019 average of 24,000.

On the outlook for 2023, the economist said that higher interest rates and broader economic uncertainty could bring the market the closest to balance that Ireland had seen for some time.