Castlebar and Westport experience highest house price rises

HOUSE prices in Castlebar and Westport have risen by 2.6 and 3.8 percent in just three months according to the latest survey from Real Estate Alliance (REA).

The price of the average second-hand three-bed semi-detached house in Mayo rose to €195,000, up 2.6 percent from €190,000 in the last three months.

The average time to sell in the county fell this quarter by one week to six, the Q2 REA Average House Price Index shows.

Agents in the county reported that this quarter, 80 percent of properties were purchased by first time buyers, with buyers from outside of the county making up 10 percent of sales.

This quarter, agents found that 30 percent of sales are directly linked to landlords leaving the market.

The average price in Westport rose 3.8 percent to €270,000 this quarter, and Castlebar prices rose 2.6 percent to €195,000.

Speaking to The Mayo News, Robert McGreal of REA McGreal Burke said that prices increases outside of Westport and Castlebar were either one percent or were flat.

Mr McGreal also played down suggestions by Tánaiste Micháel Martin earlier this year that the country had ‘turned a corner’ on the ongoing housing shortage.

No decrease

“THE numbers of people on housing lists across the country hasn’t decreased yet. There’s kind of a mismatch in terms of property availability across the country, and certainly across the county of Mayo in what I would call your ‘Instagram house’, your owner occupied dwelling that just photographs so well and it’s nice and well finished.

“There is huge demand for properties like that, be it an apartment, three bed-semi, four-bed or detached house,” Mr McGreal said.

“You would hear regular anecdotes about how house prices are gone bananas and they’re normally talking about houses like that. Where you have an old farmhouse on an acre or a house built in the 90s in an estate with a low BER rating, that’s being rented out for ten years, the demand is less for those so they can sit and wait for a while,” he elaborated.

“There’s numerous properties across the county, Swinford, Kiltimagh, places like that that we have had houses for sale where we’ve had one bid or maybe two bids.”

Mr McGreal said that recently announced increases to mortgage interest rates were ‘eroding confidence’ in buyers and were likely to lead to flattening of prices.

He added that the newly opened N5 dual carriageway between Westport and Castlebar could lead to even higher house prices in both towns over time.

“So I would expect prices to benefit from that but I don’t see it as a massive jump straight away. It’s something that will happen over time.”

The average listed house price in the county now stands at €203,543, according to a separate report by Daft.ie.

This represents a 5.4 percent increase on the previous quarter and a 1.1 percent increase in a year.

The report found that the average price of a newly built house in Mayo stood at €316,197 in the six months to March 2023.