Sherry FitzGerald Group hosted a business briefing in the Meyrick Hotel in Galway on February 25 entitled “Outlook 2015: How will Ireland's residential and commercial property markets perform this year … and beyond?”
The speakers at the event were Aidan Gavin, managing director of DTZ Sherry FitzGerald; Marian Finnegan, chief economist; Tony Kavanagh, head of residential, Galway; and Patricia Staunton, head of DTZ Sherry FitzGerald Galway.
The overall theme of the event was a recovering marketplace and the challenges and opportunities that this represented. Marian Finnegan outlined a recovery in the Irish housing market with more than 40,000 transactions nationwide in 2014. That said, Ms Finnegan did note that supply shortages were now evident in all the regional centres, which was putting upward pressure on prices. In relation to the commercial market, Ms Finnegan noted that more than €30 billion was invested in the Irish property market in 2014 including €4.5 billion of commercial property investment, €9 billion of residential property, and €17 billion of loan sales.
Tony Kavanagh noted that average value in the Galway residential market had grown by more than 14.5 per cent in 2014, and commented that the combination of emerging supply shortages and a notable uplift in demand should put further upward pressure on average values in 2015 and beyond.
Patricia Staunton, head of DTZ Sherry FitzGerald Galway, said the Galway market had an inadequate supply of larger grade A office accommodation, notably there was no unit greater than 5,000sq m of grade A office space left in Galway. Ms Staunton suggested that speculative development of such accommodation would be a positive step towards increasing Galway’s attractiveness for inward investment.
In concluding the event Aidan Gavin noted that market confidence was still improving with increased market activity across all sectors, but particularly in terms of loan sales of myriad regional property.
