Editorial: House prices close to peak levels again but caution urged over notion that ‘you can’t go wrong with property’

According to some house price surveys, Northern Ireland has had some of the biggest price rises in the UK.

Such findings come amid indications that south of the border the housing market could be “cooling” slightly as the average house price rose by 3.7% in the year to March, the slowest rate of increase in almost three years.

The Irish property website Daft.ie warned that average house prices in the Republic are 42% above pre-Covid pandemic levels and 9% below the peak of the Celtic Tiger.

Across the Republic of Irelnd, the average price of a three-bed semi-detached home in the first quarter of 2026 was 435,000 euro, which is about £372,000.

The average listed price rising by 3.7% in a year marks the slowest rate of increase since late 2023, it said.

This might seem of no relevance to Northern Ireland – after all, the all island economy has been talked up for political reasons, and barely exists outside of specific sectors. But there was a curious symmetry to the house price boom on both sides of the border. In 2006 and 2007, both the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland had a colossal boom, more dramatic than in Great Britain, and a spectacular bust. By some accounts, the crash was one of the worst in recorded economic history.

In both jurisdictions prices fell by more than half – the drop in NI was around 58%, slightly more in the Republic. This is why both societies have not yet reached their peak levels, almost 20 years later, whereas the main regions in the rest of the UK have all surpassed their 2007 levels. In other words, we had a bigger boom and a bigger bust.

While prices are nearly back to those levels, in reality they are much lower in real terms, after inflation. We must be wary about any such boom again – the notion that ‘you can’t go wrong with property’ was tested to destruction.