Brendan Griffin (Kerry South, Fine Gael)
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To ask the Minister for Finance if he will provide a county breakdown of properties nationwide valued at less than €100,000; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [57524/12]

Brendan Griffin (Kerry South, Fine Gael)
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To ask the Minister for Finance the estimated number of properties nationwide valued at less than €100,000; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [57549/12]

Michael Noonan (Limerick City, Fine Gael)
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I propose to take Questions Nos. 69 and 74 together.

No database exists as yet containing the valuations of the housing stock in the State. Neither a nationwide or county breakdown of properties valued at less that €100,000 is therefore available. The estimated percentages of residential properties valued at less than €100,000 based on (a) the property price register and (b) data used in the Report of the Inter-Departmental Group on the Design of a Local Property Tax, chaired by Dr Don Thornhill (the “Thornhill Report”) are as follows:

In the absence of a property price register at the time of the Thornhill group, the group used unpublished Central Statistics Office (CSO) data based on mortgage transactions and the CSO’s property price index to estimate a distribution of property values.

In Autumn 2012, a national register of property values was published for the first time based on actual transactions in the years 2010 to 2012. The register is published by the Property Services Regulatory Authority (PRSA) based on Stamp Duty data from the Revenue Commissioners and is updated on an on-going basis. The distribution from the register results in a higher incidence of higher value properties. However, caution should be applied to this approach given the low number of transactions, the high percentage of non-mortgage transactions (i.e., cash transactions) and the possible bias in recent transactions towards transactions of higher quality housing stock which may not represent the generality of housing valuations in the State.