Daft Property - Irish Property News

Property prices fall further as Dublin second-hand homes drop by 10.4%... THE AVERAGE cost of a new house was just over 3 per cent lower in the first three months of this year than in the same period last year, according to new figures from the Department of the Environment. Prices of second-hand houses suffered a sharper fall of 5.4 per cent, but the greatest decline was in the price of second-hand houses in Dublin which were 10.4 per cent lower in the first quarter of the year than in the same period of 2007. The price of new houses in the capital fell by 4.8 per cent... The department's housing statistics show a steady increase in the provision of social and affordable housing, but very steep declines in the total numbers of houses built and started in the first three months of the year. Just over 14,000 houses were completed, a decline of 30 per cent on the first quarter of 2007. The number of houses on which construction began was even more dramatically reduced. There were jus...

The end of July reports show... Number signing on Live Register rises by 10,600 The rise in the number of people claiming unemployment benefits over the last year has increased at the fastest rate since records began over 40 years ago. In July, 10,600 people joined the Live Register bringing the seasonally adjusted total signing on to 226,000, on a seasonally adjusted basis, according to figures released by the Central Statistics Office this morning. The monthly increase is the second highest on record after March of this year. The number on the register is the highest in a decade. Last month’s increase lifted the standardised unemployment rate to 5.9 per cent, the CSO said. Over the last 12 months the number of people seeking unemployment benefits has risen by over a third with 63,647 people joining the register. In July 6,700 males and 3,800 females joined the register. Leo Varadkar, Fine Gael enterprise spokesman accused the Government of losing control of a deteriorating economic...

The Million Euro Man...We can rebuild him... Great to see Irish taxpayers money being spent on essential Dublin city projects! Why not pretend it's still "Celtic Tiger" time and just forget about Ireland's current recession, property crash, 3rd world conditions of public hospitals, spiralling cost of surviving and the debt the country is in etc etc!... Dublin says yes to giant sculpture in the Liffey ... On the Sunday Times... "Dublin city council has granted planning permission for Antony Gormley’s 48-metre statue in the River Liffey. Objectors to the Iron Man wire sculpture had included a group of 96 nearby residents who said it would tower over their houses on the quays. There is a four-week deadline for objections to be submitted to An Bord Pleanala. There were fears that the statue would become a roost for birds and be coated with droppings. One of the conditions set down by the council is that the Dublin Docklands Development Authority (DDDA), which commiss...

House building crash helped spark sudden rise in jobless figures... HOUSE building crashed after the Christmas holidays last year, new CSO figures show -- helping to explain the sudden rise in unemployment during 2008. Output in house construction was at the lowest level since the current statistics began in 2000. It was also 20pc less than the previous low point eight years before. House building slumped more than l30pc on the previous quarter, as builders left sites closed after the New Year break. This left the volume of output down 38pc on the same period of 2007. The value of houses built was down 35pc, suggesting little change in prices over the 12 months. Non-residential building was up almost 9pc compared with 2007, and the value of the buildings was 14pc greater. This gain left total construction down almost 22pc on the previous year. But Rossa White, economist at Davy Research, said the figures seemed to be saying that non-house building was already slowing fast in 2007. ...

Changing times for " 21st-century Ireland, where people are looking for ways to reduce both their spending and their negative impact on the environment"... Recycling the good old days... WHAT'S THE STORY WITH WARTIME NOSTALGIA BOOKS? 'Knickers renewed - one good pair from two old pairs; here's how to manage it," begins one snappy article from a collection of pamphlets originally published by the British government during the second World War and which have recently appeared in book form. The trick, apparently, is to cut a new gusset from the back of one pair and neatly sew it into place on the other pair and off you go, good as new. Make Do and Mend contains dozens of original facsimile leaflets offering hundreds of tips on how to make everything from carpets and gloves to saucepans and blinds last a whole lot longer. There are details on how to darn deftly and instructions on how best to convert a tired pair of men's pyjamas into a reinvigorated summer f...

The 210 apartments in the nine-storey Gasworks building, in Ringsend near Landstown - Dublin 4, have been vacant since they went on sale two years ago. Developer Liam Carroll has since got the OK to convert the Gasworks apartments into a 520-bed hotel. However local residents are saying "no" to the plans and have appealed the proposal. Their main concern seems to be they will have to pay for the upkeep of common areas - hotel guests will not etc. The original promotion of the apartments, 2 years ago, by Hooke & Mac Donald mentioned: ...One of the most interesting and significant residential projects ever to be carried out in Dublin was launched on the market... A familiar feature of the South Dublin skylinehas been transformed. The striking metal cylinder of the former gasholder at Barrow Street creates a frame within which a stunning new nine storey block of large two bedroom apartments has been built. The curves of the building complemented by its dramatic glass fa...

Towns feel pain as jobs vanish... Ireland's towns, once noisy with the sounds of construction, are ominously quiet, as people get to grips with a new reality and the prospect of emigration, writes Ronan McGreevy . A WEEK AFTER Leitrim were knocked out of the Connacht championship by Galway, the county captain, Gary McCloskey, emigrated to London. McCloskey, who was Leitrim player of the year in 2007, had been out of work for five weeks, having been made redundant by Shine Construction, based in Athlone. Shine, which had been involved in several projects in the midlands including the development of Athlone town's new stadium, blamed the downturn in the building sector for its closure in May. The firm had debts of €3.5 million and assets of just €990,000. Twenty others lost their jobs. "I had no work for five weeks," says McCloskey, a Trinity College graduate in civil engineering. "It came to a crunch and that's it - hop on a plane to London. It was easy, given...

Sign of times as Lidl eyes Habitat store... Upmarket furniture store Habitat could be replaced in the city centre by a discount supermarket. German retail giant Lidl is one of only two businesses -- the other an overseas bank -- pitching for the lease of the massive store, located off the bottom of Grafton Street on College Green. Crunch Lidl and fellow discount chain Aldi have seen a significant increase in business since the effects of the credit crunch. They have also been helped by a recent National Consumer Agency survey. The research found that a basket of 28 own-brand goods was more than 50pc cheaper in Lidl than in Tesco or Dunnes Stores. Several leases available on Grafton Street have been slow to sell because of the deterioration in consumer spending. Property adviser CB Richard Ellis has predicted that business premises on the high street will only sell when values have been cut by 50pc. Lidl is not the only big-name trader to have checked out the former Habitat store. Nearb...

Homeowners left reeling as 30pc price fall predicted... HOME owners are reeling from a double-whammy of bad news, after both an international broker and one of Ireland's leading economists warned house prices could plummet even further over the coming months. In a statement announcing the predictions, international broker Credit Suisse said that Ireland's property market is continuing to tumble, with house prices potentially falling by another 30pc over the coming months. The internationally-respected firm has made the comments because it says the market is only reacting to the credit crunch now. The upshot is that the impact of the credit crunch has yet to filter through to the Irish housing market, with any weakness already experienced down to a drop in demand rather than tighter credit. "As a result, we see mortgage affordability decreasing and house price declines accelerating. What is more, the housing market has been underpinned by strong immigration and rental deman...

Plan to redevelop Clarence Hotel approved... An ambitious plan to redevelop the Clarence Hotel on Dublin’s Wellington Quay has been approved by An Bord Pleanála. The scheme, devised by architect Norman Fosteer, involves demolishing the hotel and adjoining buildings on the quay, retaining their façades and constructing a much larger hotel arranged around a dramatic atrium and topped by a flying saucer-style roof . The owners of the hotel, who include U2's Bono and the Edge , welcomed the Bord’s decision in a statement this afternoon. “We are delighted that An Bord Pleanala has given us the green light for Norman Foster's design for The Clarence. …We believe it's great news for Dublin and for Temple Bar in particular, where we've been working for over 20 years and where a hotel has been trading on The Clarence site for 177 years," it said. The Department of the Environment, Local Government and Heritage had objected to the scheme, saying it could set a precedent for ...

..."Does Brian Cowen really know what he is doing? ...The Lisbon Treaty defeat was a fiasco for the government. Not that it matters even a tiny bit in the real world, but in the world of political perceptions and of the neurotic EU, it means everything and Cowen did not have the stature - yet - to tell the EU to cop on. ...Cowen seems to have been unnerved by the Lisbon defeat. He has seemed unsure, vacillating and unsettled since then. His performances over the last few days have been his worst, aided and abetted by Lenihan. ...The announced cuts in public expenditure are risible. Given the constraints that the prevailing hegemony has imposed on our political culture, tax increases of any sort are out of the question. There is no question that the people who made fortunes during the boom years should now bear the burden of a few bad years. Also no question about borrowing, beyond the constraints imposed by the EU. ...So the only way to deal with a sharp fall in tax revenues is to...

"Asking prices on Daft.ie down 8% in past 12 months... The asking prices for houses advertised on Daft.ie have fallen back to the same levels as May 2006, according to the latest figures from the property website. Average asking prices are down almost 8% over the past 12 months, with the sharpest falls recorded in Monaghan, Sligo, Offaly, Louth and Cavan. Daft.ie says it expects prices to fall even further as there is an oversupply of houses in certain areas of the country. However, it says many people, particularly in south Co Dublin, are still posting unrealistic house prices." ... Report from the Belfast Telegraph.

Post "poperty boom", Ireland is now in "property crash" phase, and the country's finances are in dire straits. But it's not just Ireland going through bad times - there's a lot of turmoil elsewhere like in the US...so who's to blame there???? "Spicing up the blame game with some new contenders... Now the Dow Jones Indust­rial Average has dip­ped into bear-market terri­tory, it's time to address an important matter: We need new people to blame. The latest trio of popular villains is so unoriginal. Short sellers? Oil speculat­ors? Accounting rulemakers? Surely we can do better. After careful study, and some occasional attention to factual detail, I propose a new set of people and things to blame for the market meltdown, around which we all can rally in the shared cause of finger-pointing, schädenfreude, and the illusion of accountability. The sole criterion to join my list of Seven Deadly Sinners: they all had to be just as much to blame as sh...

In today's Sunday Buisness Post, Post David Cullen in Belfast reports, on the Property scene in Northern Ireland... "North facing property crisis as house values take a hammering... The deepening crisis in the North’s residential property market is highlighted by figures showing a near 19 per cent slump in values in the year to the end of June. The survey, by Nationwide building society, also showed that prices had dropped by 9 per cent in the second quarter of this year - the steepest correction in property values recorded across Britain and the North. The downturn comes on the back of an unusually sharp jump during 2006 and 2007, when prices grew by almost 80 per cent. ‘‘These increases were clearly not sustainable and left the market particularly vulnerable to external shocks, such as the financial downturn that began last August,” said Fionnuala Earley, chief economist of Nationwide. ‘‘We are now seeing the consequences of that excess vulnerability.” The average price of a...

Came across a great article by Shaun Connolly, Political Correspondent, on the Irish Examiner Newspaper: " Clowning around in the doleful economic circus ... ROLL up! Roll up! Marvel at the economic circus act of the Two Brians — Mr Boom and Mr Bust! Thrill as Brian Cowen — Mr Boom — hurtles through the air powered only by the overheating property explosion! Scream as Brian Lenihan — Mr Bust — plunges back down to earth as the housing bubble bursts violently in his face! Quiver as the Two Brians tremble on the high wire together, desperately trying to keep their fiscal balance with no safety net blow them. The recession started precisely four minutes late as the Taoiseach and Finance Minister delayed their entry to what, by the look on their glum little faces, could well have passed for their political funerals. With the stock market collapsing at an even faster rate than the unemployment lines were growing, it was hardly any wonder both men looked sullen as they unveiled their my...

A New Marketing concept in Ireland called "Recession"... An ad on daft.ie: ..."This is a private sale, so the saving to the Vendor on auctioneers fees is reflected in the price which was orignally offers in excess of 400k prior to the recession!!!" Description: "Summerhill, Carrowmore Lacken, Ballina,Co. Mayo Detached House Excess €370,000 ...dormer home was completed in June 2004 to a very high standard in an area of outstanding natural beauty where planning simply isnt being granted anymore. It has truely wow views out of every window and is within walking distance of pub and beach. The elevated property overlooks the Ross Estuary, Rathfran Abbey, Bartra Island and Killala Bay. Sligo, Enniscrone and the Donegal mountains, together with Nephin Mountain are also to be seen. The rural location is ideal for a large family home or holiday house away from hussle and bussle and yet is less than an hour from Knock Airport. This is a private sale, so the saving to the...

Time for the Summer SALES!... The Sunday Buisness Post's, Michelle Devane, "looks at what’s on offer for buyers ahead of the summer season... Eirene, Marino Avenue East, Killiney, Co Dublin Savills HOK Was: €6 million Now: €4.15 million Built in 1884, this spacious detached period residence was designed by the renowned Victorian architect Thomas Deane and is full of original period features. Eirene has been on the market for almost four months and its asking price has been reduced by 30 per cent to €4.15 million. With five-bedrooms and 325 square metres of living space, which is in need of modernisation, it is set on two acres of private mature grounds with views across Killiney Bay. The Dart station, Killiney beach and the Holy Child convent are within a couple of minutes walk... 49 Clarinda Park East, Dun Laoghaire, Co Dublin Savills HOK Was: €2.55 million Now: €2.15 million Beautifully restored and refurbished, 49 Clarinda Park East is a two-storey over garden level propert...

Sunday Tribune's Ken Griffin reports today that... ONE OF the country's leading property magazines has become the latest victim of the construction slowdown, having ceased trading due to deteriorating advertising revenues. Publication of 'Irish Property Buyer' was suspended on Wednesday after a last-ditch attempt to save the magazine collapsed. The title was established four years ago by publisher Joan Fitzpatrick and a former senior editor with the 'Irish Times', Don Buckley, at the height of the property boom. At one stage, the monthly title sold over 7,500 copies per issue but this had fallen to nearer 6,000 in recent times. Buckley told the Sunday Tribune the title had been running at a loss since the end of 2007. "The slide began towards the end of 2006. Last year, we pumped our reserves from previous years into the title to maintain its position but things continued tailing off," he said. He said even advertising for over­seas properties, which h...

The Irish Examiner mentions in a report today: SURGING unemployment and sliding tax returns helped blow a €5.6bn black hole in Government finances last night... The opposition’s ire focused on Mr Cowen, who had been Finance Minister up to May, rather than Mr Lenihan. Labour leader Eamon Gilmore accused Mr Cowen of “walking the country into the red”. Fine Gael finance spokesman Richard Bruton said Mr Cowen had to take personal responsibility for the scale of downturn as he had introduced four inflationary budgets designed to meet the needs of the “electoral cycle, not the economic cycle”. These budgets had used the unsustainable revenues from the property boom to “ramp up spending increases” at twice the rate of growth of the economy, Mr Bruton said. The Irish Independent paints a similar gloomy black hole picture... MINISTERS will have to cut €500m from their spending plans to pay for increased dole payments, as the property slump blows a €3bn black hole in their tax take. Departmen...

The Irish Times has a report from Stephen Collins, (Political Editor,)on the deteriorating state of Ireland's finances... "Tax Returns expected to show tax shortfall of at least €1.5bn... THE SCALE of the financial crisis facing the country will become clear today with the publication of the exchequer returns, which are expected to show a dramatic shortfall of at least €1.5 billion in tax revenues for the first half of the year. The Cabinet discussed the rapidly deteriorating financial situation yesterday, but final decisions on the strategy to deal with the issue will not be taken until next week's Cabinet meeting after Ministers have considered the official figures. The Taoiseach, Brian Cowen, confirmed in the Dáil yesterday that tax revenues for the first six months were down but he said exact figures would not be available until today. He added that the Minister for Finance Brian Lenihan had briefed the Government in general terms about the figures and would be issuing...