Are house prices ready for a correction?

If you study economics in college one of the first things you learn, a foundational principle of economics, is about supply and demand.

You learn that if supply is constrained or restricted or non-existent prices are likely to rise.

And if the supply taps are turned on prices are likely to fall.

There is a report in the Irish Times this morning about the supply of second-hand houses in Ireland now.

The number of second-hand houses on the Irish market now is down 50% in 10 years. And the population of Ireland has grown by an average of 65,000 every year since 2016.

How could house prices fall in these circumstances?

It is hard to see, quite frankly. Not unless the laws of economics are turned upside down and reformulated.

Yet every time I make a video about buying property and publish it online a small number of individuals will predict a house price crash and a correction like we had at the end of the Celtic Tiger years.

Everyone is entitled to their opinion, of course.

But I like mine to be based on data.