Door number 13 is €4,335 cheaper than the average Irish property

Friday the 13th may be considered by superstition to be one of the unluckiest days of the year, but new research from Ireland’s No.1 Property website Daft.ie, shows that the value of homes at number 13 are typically €4,335 cheaper than the average Irish property (€241,000 – Q3 Daft.ie House Price Report).

In order to calculate the price difference, Daft.ie carried out regression analysis on almost one million Irish properties that have been listed on the site since January 2006.

The research also shows that since the start of the property price register in January 2010, Friday the 13th has occurred 13 times and on those days there are roughly 10% fewer transactions than regular Fridays, which are normally the busiest days of the week for transactions.

Ronan Lyons, Economist at Trinity College Dublin & author of The Daft.ie Report said: “We often think of housing markets as being simply about cold laws of supply and demand. But while these are the top-level forces at work, there are lots of quirks of human behaviour that affect any individual property or transaction. What’s interesting about this research is that our superstitions appear to affect not only prices – with properties numbered 13 cheaper than the average – but also quantities, with fewer transactions on a Friday the 13th than on other Fridays!”

The superstition does not stop there, Ireland’s No.1 property website also analysed people’s perceptions around house numbers and found that nearly one in five of us (19 per cent) would try to avoid buying a property at number 13.

Martin Clancy from Daft.ie said: “When it comes to superstition and property, triskaidekaphobia – the fear of the number 13 – appears to be having an impact on not just perceptions but actual property prices. Our research shows that properties at number 13 are 1.8% cheaper than the average Irish property, which could provide a saving to savvy house hunters with no superstitions.”