Northern Ireland Housing Bulletin for April - June 2018

The Department for Communities has released the Northern Ireland Housing Bulletin for April-June 2018. The bulletin highlights trends in homelessness, housing supply and house prices in Northern Ireland.

Homelessness

4,914 households presented as homeless to the Housing Executive in this quarter, representing an increase of 5.7% on the same quarter in 2017. The figures for homelessness fluctuate from quarter to quarter and year to year, but between 18,000 – 20,000 new households have presented as homeless each year since 2011. Of the households presenting as homeless between April and June 2018, almost three quarters were accepted as Full Duty Applicants (FDA), which is an increase of 16.9% on the same quarter in 2017. Of those households accepted as FDA and on the NIHE waiting list, 628 were discharged. 

The most common reason for households presenting as homeless are:

• current accommodation is unreasonable, (1,274 households in April-June 2018);
• sharing breakdown and family dispute, (1,031 households); 
• loss of rented accommodation (795 households).

Around 2,500 households become homeless because they've had to leave their rented accommodation each year. 

Housing Supply

The statistical bulletin highlights the number of housing starts and completions from both Building Control and the Social Housing Development Programme. There were 2,536 new dwelling starts in the quarter, an increase of 3.8% on the same quarter in 2017. Of these, 311 were social housing starts, representing an increase of 1% on the numbers recorded in April-June 2017. There were also 2,023 completions, of which 362 were social housing completions.

House Prices

The average (standardised) house price in Northern Ireland based on sales between April and June 2018 was £132,795 representing an increase of 4.4% on the same quarter in 2017. The standardised house price is based on the price of all houses sold in the quarter, but takes into account the difference in types of dwellings (e.g. the average price of an apartment is £108,327; a semi-detached house is £128,559 and a detached house is £197,481).