When it comes to buying houses, people in Dublin are clearly superstitious

Who would have thought that in this day and age, the Irish people would still be suffering from this ancient affliction? The terrible problem of Triskaidekaphobia, or the fear of the number thirteen.

The Irish people, as a nation have achieved many great things, we’ve become one of the biggest technology capitals in Europe, we’ve produced some of the world’s greatest athletes and sports stars, we’ve lead the way in giving equal rights to every citizen, not to mention the musicians and actors that other countries would love to claim as their own, but we know they’re Irish in their hearts.

But alas, we still have trouble shaking the quaint “luck of the Irish” image that American tourists hope to see when they step foot in temple bar. The image of a superstitious nation who base decisions on old wives tales and mythology.
We may say to ourselves that this isn’t the case, that it’s just how the Irish people are portrayed on tea towels found in Carroll’s. But like everything in life, you can only really find the truth by looking at the data.

So that’s what we here at Idiro Analytics did. We are experts in data analytics for business. We looked at the data, to prove how far we’ve come as a nation, that we base our decisions on reason and logic and not on whether or not our palm itches (so we know we’ll be coming into some money). But unfortunately, the data showed us our true colours.

We looked at the price of houses in Ireland over the past six years. We took the data from the Property Services Regulatory Authority, showing every house sold in the Republic of Ireland since January 1st, 2010. We analysed housing data from every corner of Ireland, looking at the values, the locations, the house names etc.

And we found that when it comes to a large decision, such as buying a house, a lot of our nation are still as superstitious as ever. The value of properties sold in counties such as Dublin, Cork, Kildare, Cavan and Longford is significantly lower if the house is a number thirteen.

When analysing the average prices of houses we can see the drop in value for houses numbered 13 compared to their neighbours 12 and 14. It seems the Dublin population are slightly more superstitious 4.01% than the people from Cork 3,46%. In Longford, this drop in value is as much as 23.8%.

So all that hard work done by Brian O’Driscoll, all of those times he put his body on the line to dispel the unlucky nature of the number 13, it appears, have all been in vain.
This isn’t the case for the entire country though, the west of Ireland can be proud that they have bucked the trend. With counties Galway having an 8.67% increase in value for houses numbered 13 over their 12 and 14 neighbours, Mayo having a 3.28% increase, and Sligo having a massive 20.22% increase.

Some other insights we’ve pulled from the data are, that houses with particular words in the names have a higher average value. If you’re looking to buy a house with “Mara” in the name (refers to the sea) in Dublin, you might have to be willing to pay up to 115.18% on average more than houses named “An Tigin” (The Cottage).

The two most popular saints in Ireland to name a house after are St. Patrick and St. Mary, although we probably could have guessed that one. With the choice of over 10,000 named saints (it’s difficult to get a definitive ‘headcount’), the Irish people prefer to keep it traditional.

Idiro Analytics provide Big Data Analytics solutions to businesses across Ireland. We help businesses gain a better return on investment by helping them understand and use the data they already have.