Following the release of recent data on housing supply, mortgage lending and residential prices we have updated our models and forecasts for the Irish housing market, including projections for 2023, summarised on the website.
We are revising up our estimate of house completions this year, and now expect a figure around 29,000, which if broadly right will be the strongest supply figure since 2008. Annual completions have been in a 20,ooo-21,000 range for the past three years and as such well below the 33,000 figure deemed by the Government to represent annual demand. Completions this year have picked up and the 7,500 figure for q3 brought the four-quarter total to just shy of 28,000, prompting our upward revision. Some analysts had reduced their completions forecasts earlier in the year, in response to the surge in housing construction costs, but that is more likely to impact supply next year.
We have also revised up our estimate for new mortgage lending. For house purchase we expect 36,500 new loans, 6% above the 2021 figure,and again another 14-year high. The double-digit rise in house prices is reflected in much higher average mortgages, and we expect that figure to be around €279,000, up from €250,000 in 2021. The resulting total figure for house purchase is €10.2bn against €8.6bn last year. Total new lending has been boosted by very strong growth in switching, which amounted to a third of mortgage loans in the third quarter. This has no effect on net lending, nor on the housing market , but is substantial now, and we expect total lending this year to rise by €4bn, to €14.3bn.
House prices are still rising but at a slower monthly pace than last year, so the annual inflation rate in residential prices is slowing, to 12.1% on the latest CSO figure (for August) from a high of 15.0% in February. We expect this trend to continue, with a December forecast of 8.0%. This would give an average figure for the year of 12.5% which is in line with our model forecast- falling real incomes act to dampen prices but offset by strong price momentum, low interest rates and the lagged impact of weak supply,as the growth in the housing stock has not kept pace with the growth in population.
The interest rate impact this year has been surprising, in that the average new mortgage rate has actually fallen since the turn of the year, despite the significant rise in market rates, which has led to significant increases elsewhere; the average new rate in the EA in September was 2.40%, 111bp higher in the year, against 2.58% in Ireland, which is 11bp lower.Consequently, although affordability has deteriorated in response to the rise in the average new mortgage it is still below the long run average on our affordability model.
Expectations play an important part in short term house price movements, albeit hard to adequately capture in modelling, and there is a risk that prices weaken more than we expect if potential buyers decide to postpone purchases given uncertainty about the outlook for inflation, employment and interest rates. On the latter we expect new mortgage rates to start to climb soon and so affordability deteriorates in 2023, to above the long run average. However, inflation is expected to slow and absent a big employment shock real household incomes will be broadly unchanged after a fall this year. On the supply side the recent commencement data points to a weaker supply total next year, and we expect completions of 25,000. This is supportive of prices but we still expect a further slowdown, with a 2% annual end-year rise expected in 2023 .New purchase mortgage lending will also slow, to €9.5bn, with the total figure ( i.e. including switching) marginally higher than 2022, at €14.5bn.