Dublin - XINHUA
More houses have come on the market for sale in the past three months than in any previous quarter since 2008, according to Ireland's biggest property website Daft.ie.
In a house price report released on Tuesday, Daft.ie said almost 15,000 properties came to market between April and June as the national average asking price rose 9 percent from the same period last year.
The average asking price nationwide is now 187,000 euros (256,000 U.S. dollars), compared to 171,000 euros a year ago and 380,000 euros at the 2007 peak.
House prices in Dublin have risen 21 percent in the past year, with the surrounding counties of Meath, Kildare, Wicklow and Louth also experiencing annual price increases of between 6 percent and 13 percent. In the other major cities, increases occurred in Galway and Cork of 5 percent and 2 percent respectively. In Limerick city, prices were down by 9 percent, whilst Waterford city experienced a decrease of 4 percent.
The report highlights that there were 28 percent more transactions at the start of 2014 than a year ago. This also represents the 10th consecutive quarter of growth in the number of property sales.
Daft.ie economist Ronan Lyons said there had been much talk of the housing market being illiquid, with a lack of homes available to buy. But he said the figures from the last three months show that the tide may be turning.
"More than 6,000 Dublin homes were listed during the second quarter, the largest number since early 2008. As a result, the total stock sitting on the market rose in Dublin from less than 2,300 in March to more than 2,800 in June," he said.
"Further increases in supply will be needed, though, to work through the backlog in pent-up demand from the years of the crash," he added.