House prices crashed here (NI) in 2008, a lot of them halved. They were grossly over inflated prior to this due to the amount a borrowing on offer.
Slowly over the next 10-12 years the economy recovered and house prices crept up, a little every year. Back to 'normal' .
During the past couple of years we've seen another boom in the property market, due to Covid restrictions people who would have otherwise spent their money on the High Street or holidays were now looking to spend on property, a demand for more space, home offices, bigger gardens, etc, they've also been spending alot on home renovations now that they see the price they can get, demand is outstripping supply, prices are rising, people bidding up £5-10K at a time.
Two of the houses we looked at had been bought prior to the crash, the vendors in both cases were only getting back up to the prices of what they paid originally in 2007.
According to the quarterly reports the bubble or boom had started to plateau in the last quarter of 2021, this of course will be partly due to the season but from my observations the market is beginning to slow.
With the increases in the cost of living driven by Gas and fuel prices and a return to working in the office rather than home, High Street shopping and holidays I think people will start to think twice about moving to a bigger property. I also think the Bank of England will increase Interest rates a few times over the next year.
We sold our house during the summer, it went on the market in the 2nd week in June and was sold (sale agreed) within 5 days. Great for us. Unfortunately I couldn't get my lovely wife to get her head out of the sand to look at properties before ours went to market. We've had 3 sales fall through for a variety of reasons. Our 4th sale agreed seems to be going through okay, fingers crossed.
@matt j I set up instant alerts within a certain area and price range with Propertypal and Propertynewsni, I'm sure something similar is available in your desired area, the house we currently have a sale agreed on only was online for a few minutes, it turned out the estate agent had made a mistake as the vendor didn't want to be bothered with viewings on the run up to Xmas but as I had saw it and phoned immediately we got a viewing the next day, made an offer of the asking price which was accepted. Hopefully you'll have a bit luck and find the right place for you.