With house prices still falling, the ECB almost certain to raise interest rates again on Thursday and a property tax on the way, the flow of bad news to home owners apparently shows no signs of stopping.

Both of the major property websites, daft.ie and myhome.ie, show that the asking prices being demanded by house sellers continued to fall in the second quarter of this year with daft.ie putting the fall at 5.26pc and myhome.ie at "only" 4pc.

Overall daft.ie calculates that asking prices for homes in Dublin have fallen by a massive 51pc since their 2007 peaks with myhome.ie reckoning that asking prices are down 47pc in the capital. In truth the difference between the two is largely immaterial, Dublin and the rest of the country has suffered one of the most severe property price crashes in recorded economic history.

pressure

And the bad news is that things are likely to get even worse before they get better. On Thursday the sado-monetarists in Frankfurt, aka the ECB, will raise interest rates by a further 0.25pc.

While this may make sense for the booming German economy, it piles even further pressure on the peripheral Irish, Portuguese, Greek and Spanish economies.

While asking prices are not the same thing as the actual prices at which properties change hands they do provide a good indication of how sellers view the market.

What the latest figures from both daft.ie and myhome.ie make clear is that sellers are gradually being forced to reduce their expectations in line with the new market reality.

Unfortunately they have further to drop. As the large number of properties allegedly being offered for sale that are failing to sell testifies, asking prices almost certainly have further to fall.

Recent auctions of distressed properties, i.e. those seized by banks and other financial institutions, have generally featured asking prices 60pc-70pc below peak levels.

If the crowds of eager buyers who have thronged to these auctions are any guide, that's where prices have to fall in order to entice large numbers of buyers back into the market.

In the short term further falls in house prices will condemn even more home owners to negative equity.

Last week's census results also contained more bad news on the housing market, putting the number of vacant houses at 294,000, the equivalent of more than one house in every seven in the country.

Throw in the reluctance of the banks to lend and the outlook for the housing market appears to be a truly grim one.

However, amidst all of the doom and gloom, the census results did contain one potential ray of sunshine for house prices. Yes, the stock of vacant houses is as high as the pessimists had been predicting, but what no one had anticipated was the extremely strong population growth, with the number of people in the country increasing by 340,000 over the past five years rather than the 240,000 the CSO had been expecting.

vacant

In addition the stock of vacant homes appears to be disproportionately concentrated in the north and north-west.

The reality is that most of the 30pc of homes that are vacant in Co Leitrim will end up being bulldozed.

Meanwhile there are the first signs of an emerging housing shortage in regions of such as Fingal, aka north Co Dublin.

The stronger-than-expected population growth means that, when prices do eventually bottom out, the demand for housing will be much stronger than had been previously expected.

When combined with the fact that most of the stock of vacant homes is concentrated in areas where most people don't want to live, it is at least possible to see, if not a recovery in house prices, then certainly a bottoming out by 2012.

- Dan White