Daft Property - Irish Property News

Average house prices are now back at January 2004 levels - report... AVERAGE HOUSE prices in Ireland are now back at the level seen in January 2004, according to the latest ESRI/Permanent TSB house price index. Prices fell by 1.5 per cent in August, according to the data released yesterday, bringing the decline in the past year to 13 per cent. According to the survey, house prices have now been falling for two full years and are 24.4 per cent lower than at their peak in February 2007. Niall O’Grady, general manager of business strategy at Permanent TSB, said the rate of decline had been more dramatic during the summer due to the low levels of activity in the market and a lack of confidence in any recovery this year. “Recently, prices have started to fall faster in the Dublin region due to the high level of surplus stock available,” he said. House prices in Dublin have fallen by 18 per cent over the past year, compared with a 12 per cent decline for property outside the capital, the sur...

New-house completions at lowest since 1970s... HOUSE completions are to fall to their lowest level since records began in the 1970s. The number of new homes expected to be finished next year will be 10,000, whereas even during the recession-hit 1980s the lowest number of completions was 15,654 in 1988. A gloomy economic forecast from the Department of the Environment says it will be another two years before we see a return to economic growth. And it says that the estimated 150,000 unsold homes currently on the market will discourage new building activity for the next four years. The Construction Industry Outlook 2009-2011, conducted by DKM Economic Consultants for the department, finds that the current downturn in the industry is the most severe on record and that the number employed in the industry could fall to just 138,000 by the end of the year. This is half the number employed in 2006 at the height of the boom when 267,000 people worked in construction. New figures from the Depart...

A little bit of history repeating... Shoulder pads, Arctic rolls and grown-up boybands. We're reliving our youth... Have you noticed how eerily familiar so many things feel at the moment? Take a walk round the shops and you'll see Dynasty-inspired shoulder pads, stone-washed denim and 1980s neon bright colours. Just recently Blur headlined at Glastonbury, The Eagles played Dublin and Michael Jackson topped the charts. Meanwhile, the hottest rumour circulating in the film world is that singer Rihanna is set to reprise Whitney Houston's role in a remake of 1990s classic, The Bodyguard. The whole world seems to be suffering a collective case of déjà-vu. The nostalgia wave has even hit food. Milky Way has re- issued their 1989 'the red car and the blue car' ad, Birds Eye's Steakhouse and Arctic rolls are back on the shelves after a 12-year absence and Cadbury is describing the re-launch of the Wispa bar as 'the most successful revival ever'. According to ps...

Builders? You can afford them now... JUST WHEN the construction industry thought the news couldn’t get any worse, it suddenly did. Several reports published this week have painted a bleak picture for an industry already on its knees after the property sector meltdown ... They indicate that prices for big and small construction jobs have fallen almost as dramatically as jobless numbers in the sector have risen. Although homeowners will have sympathy for individual tradesmen who have lost their jobs, they will relish the consequential price drops and the sudden availability of tilers, plumbers and carpenters who could not be got for love nor ridiculous sums of money at the height of the boom. “Builders were making money hand over fist for years and even at a 30 per cent discount they are still making money and don’t let anyone tell you any different,” one industry source unsympathetic to the plight of builders told The Irish Times this week. The Construction Industry Federation stoutly r...

Emigration hits new high as foreign workers leave... FOREIGN workers have been losing their jobs in droves and leaving the country -- resulting in the first net emigration since 1996. Figures from the Central Statistics Office show that a quarter of all the jobs held by foreign workers disappeared in the 12 months to last April. Most of these belonged to workers from eastern Europe. This job loss compared with a drop of 8pc in employment overall. This reduction, and a doubling of unemployment to more than 11pc, is the steepest decline in the labour market ever recorded. It was driven by a loss of more than one in three of all building jobs -- where employment collapsed by 86,000 -- a 13pc fall in retail and wholesale, and a 9pc drop in industrial employment. Analysts say the worst of the jobless rises may be over, with increasing emigration keeping down the total. They expect unemployment to peak at around 14pc next year -- better than earlier estimates of 17pc. "These figures to ...

Superpub entrepreneur now entering last-chance saloon... CAPITAL Bars is the Dublin hotel and superpub group owned by brothers Liam and Des O'Dwyer. Through Capital Bars, the O'Dwyer brothers own a number of prominent premises in Dublin, including superpubs Cafe En Seine, which holds up to 1,500 people, Zanzibar and the Trinity Capital Hotel. The chain also includes Break for the Border and Howl At The Moon. Like many of the country's hospitality entrepreneurs, the O'Dwyer brothers have been exposed to the downturn. Earlier this year the group said that it was experiencing "huge downward pressure on room rates and occupancy" and said that it was engaged in "aggressive cost cutting". Last May Deepdrill Developments, a property vehicle controlled by the two brothers, filed a High Court petition to shut down Danninger, the main operating company behind Ireland's biggest developer, Liam Carroll, who will seek an unprecedented second examinership hear...

If the Green Party has its way, there will be no immediate recovery in property values... THE LAST few months have been spent analysing the wreck that is the Irish property market. Though most attention in recent weeks has centred on Liam Carroll’s attempts to save the Zoe group of companies, punters have been equally interested in the huge price reductions for new apartments and second-hand homes. Luckily for first-time buyers, there are mortgages available for many of those who can comply with the strict new ground rules on job security, earnings and savings. For others anxious to trade up now that prices are on the floor, there can be little prospect of securing bank loans unless the Nama strategy works and the banks are recapitalised to resume lending, first of all to businesses and, after that, to house purchasers. Mind you, the events of last week did little to inspire much confidence in the property industry. Firstly, there was the proposal to introduce a punitive property tax o...

The property bubble was partly fuelled by political and regulatory mistakes, education minister Batt O’Keeffe has admitted. Addressing the Construction Industry Federation (CIF) conference and dinner last Friday night, O’Keeffe said that those in positions of leadership in the construction industry had the ‘‘opportunity to help shape the future of the sector in a way that acknowledges the mistakes of the past’’. He listed those mistakes as ‘‘the failure of the Central Bank and Financial Regulator to properly control lending practices and the failure of the private sector, including developers and bankers, in amassing wealth without adequately considering the longer term implications’’. He also admitted to a ‘‘failure of politicians to curb a culture of one-upmanship and target-driven greed in the banking and property sectors’’. O’Keeffe said that the annual construction industry review and outlook, to be published this week, ‘‘will not make for happy reading’’. It will show that almost...

House prices to fall until 2012, industry bosses told... HOUSE prices will continue to slide until 2012, it has been claimed, as construction chiefs were told the industry will never be the same again. Yesterday’s figures also show that lending to the construction industry soared from €10 million in 2001 to €115m at its peak. The statistics were revealed at the Construction Industry Federation (CIF) conference in Cork. Labour party leader Eamon Gilmore said that the industry will never again employ the same number of people as it did two years ago. He said there will again be a demand for new housing but he wants a construction industry – like any other – that is sustainable. At its peak in 2007, the industry employed 280,000 direct employees and a further 120,000 indirect, equivalent to 19% of total employment. Today it employs 200,000 but the CIF said that another 100,000 direct and indirect jobs could still be lost. Mr Gilmore also said there is huge scope for reform in Ireland’s pl...

Cute hoor/fast buck gene to be removed from national herd... The Greens have done a complete about-turn and embraced genetic modification on a grand scale THE GREENS have embraced the concept of genetic modification, and with remarkable results. That’s a turn-up for the books. The party doesn’t do things by half measure. Their conversion isn’t down to some namby-pamby tinkering on the fringes of the allotment, or attempts to grow a pig from quorn. John Gormley, Eamon Ryan and their ecologically motivated Frankensteins have only gone and engineered a change to the basic genetic make-up of the Irish people. Using a secret procedure (which has been fully approved by their frightened partners in Government because they fear an agonising political death if they don’t), the party has succeeded in removing the cute hoor/fast buck gene from the national herd. “We’ve actually taken away that whole speculative impulse,” Eamon Ryan announced at a press conference yesterday. Thanks to new legislat...

Fears raised over stamp duty issue... REACTION: ESTATE AGENTS fear the struggling second-hand housing market may well grind to a halt after the disclosure that stamp duty may be abolished and replaced with an annual property tax. The Government will be under pressure to clarify whether it plans to implement proposals by the Commission on Taxation in the December budget, having already signalled that it it may not proceed with the property tax. Buyers who may be tempted by heavily discounted prices in second-hand houses will be reluctant to make commitments until the stamp duty issue is clarified. The report comes at a time when house sales were beginning to pick up at the opening of the autumn selling season. However, agents last night warned that activity could cease until the Government indicated whether it would proceed with the taxation changes. The Irish Auctioneers Valuers Institute (IAVI), which represents about 1,700 estate agents, last night urged Minister for Finance Brian Le...

Roll up for the great property giveaway... Agents say an estimated 24% drop in house prices is far too low... There were double-takes all round last Monday when the Permanent tsb /ESRI house price index announced a 24% drop since February 2007 – a figure many believe to be conservative in the extreme. It's difficult to find out exactly what a property sells for as, under the Data Protection Act, publication of selling prices is prohibited and information is therefore based on asking price. Those involved in the business believe a truer estimate of just how far property prices have plummeted is between 40% and 50%. And counting. Ronan O'Driscoll, director of new homes at Savills, points to "the concrete example" of his own home. "I bought it for €1.9m in 2006, but one on the same road sold recently for around €850,000." The new homes landscape has changed radically in ways other than price, he adds, saying that negotiating a deal on a brand-new property is no...

Vested interests: 38 politicians voting on Nama have extensive property portfolios... Almost 40 of the politicians who will vote on the critical Nama legislation designed to clean up the banks' toxic loans to property developers have extensive property interests both here and abroad themselves. The current register of interests, in which politicians are legally obliged to reveal any outside commercial interests, shows that, excluding the hundreds of acres of farmland owned by politicians, 38 TDs and senators have substantial development land and commercial property holdings. These range from the relatively modest three properties held by Taoiseach Brian Cowen, including one in Leeds, to Fine Gael's Alan Shatter, who lists joint ownership with an "other" of 14 investment properties in Dublin, London and Florida. Of the 38 politicians, 17 could be considered to have significant interests which, during the property boom, would have provided a comfortable income on their ...

Cowen says FF should have taxed property more... THE GOVERNENT should have taxed property more and spent less during the economic boom, the Taoiseach said last night on the Late Late Show with new host Ryan Tubridy. Under questioning from Tubridy about what he accepted blame for during his years as Minsiter for Finance, Mr Cowen said “looking back now we should have taxed housing more than we did”. When Tubridy asked Mr Cowen why this was not done, he said: “Because at the time there was no-one suggesting that that was a policy intiative that was relevant or that was going to solve the problem.” Tubridy again asked the Taoiseach to clarify what he accepted he had done wrong, and Mr Cowen said: “If I knew then what we know now we wouldnt have spent as much.” However, Mr Cowen said he wanted to make the points that during the economic boom Ireland was still reducing its debt, still had surpluses, and was not spending everything that was coming in. He insisted that the decisions taken wer...

Property: making a move... With house prices set to fall even further, it's no surprise that most buyers are sitting on the fence. But for those who have no choice but to bite the bullet, think long-term... All the available data and commentary on the domestic property market suggests the continuing fall in prices still has some way to go, so it's no surprise that the majority of potential buyers are still opting to "sit on the fence". But the Irish Banking Federation (IBF) recently reported a 9pc rise in new mortgage lending in the second quarter of 2009 when compared with the first three months of the year. But with new lending still 7pc lower than in the same period last year, the IBF said it was too early to say if the market had turned a corner. Karl Deeter, of Irish Mortgage Brokers, reports an increase in applications and numbers of loans because of recent price falls. "We had felt for some time that price drops would come fast once the realisation about t...

Recession wipes €72,250 off value of the average home... HOUSE prices plunged another 1pc in July, bringing the total wiped off the value of the average home since the height of the property market to €72,250. New figures show house prices fell by 1.1pc in July, bringing the drop over the previous 12 months to 12.5pc. The annual fall in prices in June was 11.7pc. The average price for a house nationally in July was €238,828, compared with €311,078 in February 2007, when property prices peaked. Prices are now down 24pc since February 2007, according to the Permanent TSB/ESRI house price index. Permanent TSB's Niall O'Grady admitted that the property market had remained sluggish throughout the summer, with low levels of activity. He said that despite lower interest rates and improved affordability, consumer confidence needed to pick up before there could be any increase in activity. "It will definitely be a buyers' market for the coming months." Permanent TSB admitt...