East, West, Boom & Bust: The Spread of House Prices & Rents in Ireland, 2007-2012

35 Pages Posted: 4 Mar 2012 Last revised: 3 Mar 2013

See all articles by Ronan C. Lyons

Ronan C. Lyons

Trinity College Dublin; Spatial Economics Research Centre, LSE

Date Written: March 2013

Abstract

Property prices in the Republic of Ireland fell by half between 2007 and 2012 on average, but little is known yet about how price falls differed across property type and location. This paper examines this issue, using a dataset of over one million property listings to calculate 2007 and 2012 prices for a set of standardised properties for over 1,100 sales regions and 312 lettings regions. It finds four stylised facts about the distribution of house prices and rents in Ireland during this period. Firstly, the spread of prices across different property sizes increased significantly in the crash. This is consistent with a "property ladder" effect during the bubble temporarily pushing up the relative price of smaller properties. Secondly and conversely, the spread of rents from largest to smallest property sizes fell between bubble and crash. Thirdly, there was at most a small fall in the spread of both prices and rents across space. Lastly, in both bubble and crash periods, the spread of rents was constrained relative to the spread of prices, particularly in the upper tail, a finding suggestive of renter search thresholds.

Keywords: Housing Markets, Housing Prices, Hedonic Regression, market cycles

JEL Classification: R31, G12, H4, L92, E32

Suggested Citation

Lyons, Ronan C., East, West, Boom & Bust: The Spread of House Prices & Rents in Ireland, 2007-2012 (March 2013). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2015276 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2015276

Ronan C. Lyons (Contact Author)

Trinity College Dublin ( email )

Dublin 2
Ireland

Spatial Economics Research Centre, LSE ( email )

Houghton Street
London, WC2A 2AE
United Kingdom

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