Record numbers of auction properties sold for in excess of 1m in the first four months of 2006. One agent reported a figure of 192 second-hand houses going under the hammer for over the seven figure sum, compared to 122 for the equivalent period in 2005.

Not that that figure bought an equivalent whopping amount of space either. As one agent wryly remarked to this paper last summer, the days when 1m bought a big house with acres of garden rolling down to the sea in Killiney are long, long gone. Buyers were chasing an ever decreasing supply earlier in the year, and although the properties were mainly refurbished period houses, they were generally quite modest in scale.

In late spring, two refurbished and extended properties for sale by auction on St Alban's Road, off the South Circular Road in Dublin 8, each had an original AMV circling the 1m mark, one of which solid in excess of that figure, while the other was withdrawn, quoting 1.05m.

"Two- to three-bed properties up to 1,200sq ft off the SCR, such as Lombard Street and Curzon Street, Ovoca Road and parts of Portobello that would have made 850,000 in 2005, are now around the 1m mark, " says agent Felicity Fox.

On the northside, traditionally sought-after addresses in Howth, Malahide and Clontarf had long exceeded the 1m mark, but certain areas, formerly considered not as fashionable, caught up in 2006.

Step forward parts of Dublin 7, 9 and 11, for example.

"The Homefarm Road and Griffith Avenue would already have witnessed excess 1m prices, but now the smaller, more modest homes have reached that level, " says Martin Doyle of Douglas Newman Good's Phibsborough branch.

"Hollybank road has now hit the 1m mark, as have the the more modern (1930s/40s) four-bed houses in Iona Villas. The likes of Mobhi Road, with three- and four-bed semis, and particularly if extended beyond their average 1,300sq ft, hit the 1m price bracket. On the Homefarm Road, smaller 1930s properties of just around 1,000sq ft now cost between 1 . . . 1.1m. On Griffith Avenue, more modest three-beds of 1,000sq ft are tipping the 1m mark."

The market in Phibsborough itself last year has not been as clear, adds Doyle, stating that roads such as Rathdown and Charleville had already hit the 1m mark in 2005.

"We sold one of the smaller houses at the bottom of Rathdown Road during the year for 950,000. The houses in popular places such as the New Cabra Road, or Shandon Road, are not quite there yet, with prices running between 700,000- 900,000.

"When you look at the market since 2001, places such as Shandon have actually tripled in price . . . and that's probably the picture just about everywhere in the city."