What a difference a year makes! This time last year, we had reached the peak of the property boom. Few if any dinner parties passed off without the subject of property prices rearing their ugly head. We bemoaned the fact that the modest homes we grew up in were now in the realm of winning the lotto, although we were supposedly wealthier, more travelled and better educated than previous generations. By dessert we had worn ourselves out exchanging tales of frantic bidding wars that would-be buyers entered into, having indebted themselves into ripe old age to buy a coveted piece of property in neighbourhoods where you take your life in your hands to walk through under cover of dark.

But that was then and this is now. And oh how quickly the tides have turned. In less than six months, what was a seller's market is now most definitely a buyer's market, although some vendors are having trouble accepting that the good times really are over.

"It's certainly a buyer's market, " agrees Trina Beakey of Savills HOK in Phibsborough.

"There's so much property out there that buyers have a great selection to choose from. The first-time buyers are out in full force since the abolition of stamp duty but they're mainly looking, sitting on the fence, and slow to make any offers."

She adds that homes in Dublin 7 or Dublin 9 which were selling for 635,000 last year are now achieving 585,000, a drop of 50,000.

Joseph Keegan of Gunne agrees. "We've had one of our busiest weeks in terms of viewings but nobody's made any offers."

But while the buyers have become aware of the changing market, are the vendors still living in the past, with unreasonable expectations? "It's hard for vendors to realise that their property is no longer worth what it was worth last year, " says Keegan. "We would have carried out evaluations on properties in January, when vendors were just considering selling.

Now they are coming back to us having made the decision to go on the market and they're shocked when you give them the new selling price.

But you can only deal with any market in its current state so trying to get the same prices that you got in the boom time isn't realistic anymore, " he adds, explaining that a two-up, twodown in the north city that would have gone on the market at 480,000 earlier in the year would now be priced at 450,000. What's more, according to one agent, an estimated 60% of sale-agreed homes are ending up back on the market, as buyers pick and choose from the glut of properties available.

WHAT'S ON THE MARKET

Property website www. myhome. ie gives a good idea of what's on the market in each area. This week, we took a look at what's still on sale in Dublin and found a glut of homes all competiting for a buyer.

Lucan 267 homes
Castleknock 248 homes
Clondalkin 212 homes
Malahide 180 homes
Glasnevin 113 homes
Clonee 111 homes
Clontarf 110 homes
Drumcondra 100 homes
Blanchardstown 88 homes
Cabinteely 82 homes
Dundrum 81 homes
Ballsbridge 80 homes
Crumlin 64 homes
Rathmines 59 homes
Citywest 51 homes
Artane 52 homes
Dalkey 48 homes
Harold's Cross 49 homes
Sth Circular Road 45 homes
Ballyfermot 42 homes
Drimnagh 41 homes