Irish residential property prices for April are due to be released later this morning. There was a 0.9% gain in March but sharp 1.4% and 0.4% falls through January and February. Overall, Irish residential property prices fell by 0.9% in Q1 2015 – led by a 1.6% decline in Dublin.
 
According to Davy Stockbrokers, "We expect that prices will be broadly flat through H1 2015 before picking up slightly in the second half of the year. Our analysis of MyHome asking prices points to a small rebound in Q2 – paring back some of the declines in Q1. However, this still represents a sharp slowdown in double-digit rates of annual house price inflation and down from 25% in Dublin. We expect annual inflation will slow to 5% by the end of 2015.

Also, it remains to be seen what impact the Central Bank of Ireland’s new mortgage lending rules will have – limiting banks’ new lending over 80% LTV to 15% of new loans. This could have a larger negative impact on prices than we expect, posing a downside risk to our forecasts."

Source: www.businessworld.ie