More than three-quarters of Irish real-estate agents don’t expect an improvement in housing-market activity over the next 12 months, NCB Stockbrokers reported, citing a survey.

Forty-nine percent of those surveyed expect the property market to remain the same, while 29 percent expect a decline, Dublin-based NCB said in a report today. Twenty-two percent expect an improvement.

“Tighter credit conditions are becoming a problem, especially in relation to first-time buyers,” Breda O’Sullivan, an economist at NCB, said in the report. “Faced with rising interest rates and falling prices, it seems likely that buyers will remain cautious.”

Irish house prices fell 9.5 percent in May from a year earlier as lenders raised interest rates and increased restrictions on borrowing, Irish Life & Permanent Plc said June 25. Fewer people are viewing properties, according to the NCB survey, and 85 percent of agents said that sellers cut their asking prices in the second quarter in a bid to complete transactions.

Around 44 percent said prices fell between 6 percent and 10 percent in the period, while 27 percent said prices dropped as much as 20 percent, according to the survey of 47 estate agents in the three weeks through July 4.

Friends First economist Jim Power last week said house prices may extend declines through 2009 and fall as much as 45 percent from their peak.