According to the Irish Times house prices fell in Dublin, with Dun Laoghaire registering a decline of 6.3%. It cites a 25% increase in new-build completions as the cause of this fall.
That is a polite way of saying that people will no longer accept being fobbed off with over-priced Celtic Tiger era crap that has aged badly. The price-gouging was only possible due to supply being within statistical noise of zero, and since that is no longer the case it is pay-back time.
During my abandoned house-huntung a few years ago it was pretty clear that what was on the market would require varying degrees of maintenance, and in a functioning market the cost is subtracted from the asking price. Suppose I was to buy the apartment I am currently in, at the very least I would have the sub-standard electrical wiring replaced, which in turn would likely require the type of gutting that attracts five-figure redecoration bills. Although not applicable to Dublin, there are parts of the country where second-hand homes sell for less than construction cost, probably in no small part due to work that needs to be done on them.
Of course another problem is average asking prices being above what most people can afford. And by afford I mean above what they can legally borrow via a mortgage. That will correct itself sooner or later, and the later it is the more violent it will be. Either a price crash within five years, or a confiscatory socialist government within a decade or two.
With a lot of people in negative equity having bought at the 2007 peak, I suspect that the re-inflating of house prices was no accident. The fore-sighted ones within this cohort will have already started the process of selling up, because if they wait for the rest of the herd, they will be ruined.