Daft Property - Irish Property News

The Irish economy is set to repeat its old mistake of excess mortgage-lending... The run-up to Christmas is always a good time for burying bad news and this year was no different. On the Friday before Christmas, Bank of Ireland announced it was going to have to put more money aside to absorb possible losses on Irish residential mortgages. Just how much more money was not very clear but it would appear to run into several hundred million euro. The statement was extremely technical and did not actually talk about losses or defaults. But the point is clear. The bank had already put aside some money to absorb losses that might occur as a result of people not being able to pay their mortgages. It now seems that more people than expected are going to default and the bank has had to put some extra money aside. It is as timely a reminder as you could hope for that the Irish banks are still broken and still fighting their way through a mountain of problem mortgages as a result of their rec

Write-offs and negative-equity loans already on offer -- just don't tell everyone The debate about debt forgiveness has raged across the nation, polarising public opinion. Laura Noonan investigates what banks are really doing to help struggling homeowners. It might surprise people to know that some banks have been embarking on forms of mortgage write-offs for quite some time. And that's not all that's been going on -- some of the other new-fangled "solutions" expected to be recommended by the Government's latest mortgage expert group, like negative-equity mortgages, are already in action, too. The reason the public don't know about these developments is simple -- the banks don't want the masses to know. Because as soon as you admit things like this are happening, you run the risk that everyone will want a piece of the action. The action so far has largely been limited to borrowers who've actually left their home by way of "volu

Property investor... The Government’s €500 million plan to provide mortgages to those turned down by the banks is a failure.... A PLAN, sponsored by the Government, to make it easier for first-time buyers to get mortgages has flopped because of stringent qualifying conditions and needless bureaucracy. Towards the end of 2008, when the mortgage market began to dry up because of the banking crisis, the Department of the Environment was portrayed as rushing to the rescue of young workers unable to get funding from the banks and building societies. The €500 million mortgage plan announced by Minister for the Environment John Gormley was seen as a serious alternative for those anxious to get on the property ladder. The grand plan, promoted as the Home Choice Loan, has turned out to be a “No Choice Loan”. The difficulties in complying with the terms has meant that, almost 18 months after the launch of the scheme, only three people in the entire country have managed to draw down mortgages (ea