Introduction:

The Central Statistics Office (CSO) has today (18 November 2020) published the Residential Property Price Index (RPPI) September 2020 and, for the first time, quarterly price indices for new and existing dwellings in Ireland. This represents an increase in the level of detail provided with the RPPI.

New information for users:

In recent years, the CSO has published the national RPPI along with 13 sub-indices: 11 regional house price indices and two indices for apartments inside and outside of Dublin. In an additional chapter in the RPPI publication, the CSO has now published two further sub-indices for new and existing dwellings. It should be noted that it was not possible to disaggregate these sub-indices by region or dwelling type (i.e. house or apartment) due to the low number of transactions for new dwellings. In terms of the volume of properties purchased by households, new dwellings account for approximately 20% of the total filed with the Revenue Commissioners.

Quarterly versus monthly price indices:

The sub-indices for new and existing dwellings are computed on a quarterly, rather than on a monthly, basis. This is due to the low transaction numbers for new dwellings, which would result in a highly volatile monthly index. Pooling transactions over a quarter, rather than over a month, allows for the calculation of more robust estimates of price change.

Definition of new and existing dwellings:

A new dwelling is defined as a dwelling that has not been inhabited previously. The RPPI does not include self-builds where the land was purchased separately.

The information on dwelling status is provided to the Revenue Commissioners on the stamp duty returns. All transfers of ownership of residential properties in the State must be referred to the Revenue Commissioners for stamp duty assessment under the Stamp Duties Consolidation Act (SDCA) 1999.

Quality adjustment methods:

Residential properties are heterogeneous, meaning that no two houses or apartments are identical. This poses a challenge when trying to construct a price index as there is a need to separate pure price change from differences in the mix of properties being purchased over time. To overcome this challenge in the RPPI, the CSO uses quality adjustment techniques (i.e. hedonic regression) for the measurement of price change of residential property. The sub-indices for new and existing dwellings are computed using the same quality-adjustment techniques as the regional sub-indices.

For full details on the data sources and methods used to compile the RPPI, please refer to the RPPI Technical Paper (PDF 1,423KB) .