Daft Property - Irish Property News

OPINION : By 2015, Iceland will almost certainly be a lot better off than Ireland because it dealt decisively with its banks ... WHILE THINGS are hard to predict, the future, especially the situation of the Irish economy, is so stark that even an economist can make some predictions that stand a chance of being right. Two ghosts of Christmas will haunt Ireland in 2015: jobs and debt. For 20 years, the Irish economy experienced extraordinary growth. Unfortunately, this growth came from two separate booms that merged imperceptibly into each other. First we had real growth in the 1990s, driven by rising competitiveness and exports. However, after 2000 competitiveness collapsed, and growth came to be driven by a lending bubble without equal in the euro zone. As Michael Hennigan of Finfacts (www.finfacts.ie) has pointed out, of the half million jobs created in the last decade, only 4,000 were in exporting firms; and fewer people now work in IDA-supported companies than in 2000. The Irish eco...

Just eight houses sold under the hammer in Dublin this year, as the number of houses offered at auction collapsed by 80 per cent. In total,19 properties were offered for sale in the capital’s auction room; in 2006, at the height of the boom, more than 1,000 properties were auctioned in the city. Estate agents Bennetts held most of this year’s auctions, putting five properties under the hammer. Lisney handled four auctions, as did Sherry FitzGerald, while Colliers Jackson-Stops auctioned three. Douglas Newman Good, Harper O’Grady and Property Team each held one auction. Simon Ensor, director of auctions at Sherry FitzGerald, described the number of auctions this year as unprecedented. ‘‘In the past, a quiet year for us would have been one where we [Sherry FitzGerald] held 25 auctions and where overall, there were around 100 across the entire market," he said. ‘‘I’ve been selling houses by auction since the mid-1980s, and I don’t ever remember a year where there were so few sales....

Repossessions occur almost on daily basis, says regulator... Level of arrears doubles in 15 months THE homes of 331 people have been repossessed this year -- almost one a day -- and a further 26,271 mortgage holders are three months or longer behind in their mortgage repayments. This means the percentage of households falling into arrears has more than doubled in the last 15 months, new figures from the Financial Regulator show. But mortgage experts accused the regulator last night of down-playing the extent of the mortgage crisis. They said the figures take no account of the thousands of homeowners who have got permission from their lenders for a payment holiday or are now only paying the interest on their mortgage in a bid to lower the repayments. The figures show that the State's 22 mortgage lenders held a total of 331 repossessed homes by the end of September. In the three months from June to September alone 110 properties were repossessed. Included in the 331 repossessed prope...

The times, they are uncertain... The past year was characterised by harsh economic truths and a grinding dilution of hope, especially for people on the margins of society and those who saw their lifestyles – and livelihoods – dissolve IT WAS the year of uncertainty. Of waiting, and waiting, and dreading. The dominos of society collapsed one by one – the see-no-evil bishops and priests, the senior gardaí who colluded with them, the invincible developers, swaggering bankers, procrastinating judges, grasping politicians, language itself – and trust fell off a cliff. More than two out of three people declared they trusted no-one, in a monthly poll on the mood of the nation. Loss of trust was a theme of the year, says Carolyn Odgers of Chemistry Advertising, which commissioned the poll from Amárach Research. It was confirmed by The Irish Times /Behaviour Attitudes social survey last month . Only three in 100 will be bothered to look more closely at Government and in the event of another rec...

Architects offer ideas for country's 'ghost estates'... IT IS a future where empty housing estates are used as crematoriums and there is a scrappage scheme for ugly one-off country homes. As the National Asset Management Agency (NAMA) prepares to begin operations in the new year, a group of architects have put forward suggestions for what can be done with the unfinished constructions and 'ghost estates', legacies of the economic downturn. From an unfinished hotel which has been handed over to the community, to a 'two-for-one' scheme for unsold houses, the 'Shadowland' exhibition which opened in Dublin yesterday floats some realistic and some more improbable ideas. Among the suggestions are a 'City of Dead', where abandoned or unsold houses are used as crematoriums and chapels. FKL architects, which organised the exhibitions, have also suggested a scrappage scheme for houses. One-off homes would be knocked down and the residents rehoused in to...

Budget 2010: Brian's bitter pill... FINANCE Minister Brian Lenihan yesterday chose to avoid new income taxes by instead slashing social welfare payments and public sector pay. But he insisted "the worst is over" after delivering his third Budget in 14 months. However, there is plenty more pain to come as Mr Lenihan last night revealed plans to achieve €2bn more in cutbacks in 2011 through water charges, a property tax and public sector reforms. The Government is also planning a radical overhaul of the PRSI, income and health levy system, which will also widen the tax base. Mr Lenihan cut €4bn from spending in Budget 2010 and introduced carbon taxes and stealth charges in the health sector. But his Budget was branded as lacking fairness as it hit those on low incomes in the public sector and those dependent on social welfare. The salaries of Taoiseach Brian Cowen and his ministers were reduced by 20pc and 15pc respectively -- but this included the previous 10pc voluntary c...

Pressure on State to stop repossession of homes... There is a "substantial" number of new mortgage holders who should never have been approved for the amount of money they borrowed and repossession orders should not be granted to their lenders, proposals to Finance Minister Brian Lenihan and the Oireachtas committee have urged. A group, whose aim is finding a way to assist thousands of families who face the "very real threat" of losing their homes because of mortgage arrears, said the terms of loans should be amended to what the borrower can afford. The Prevention of Family Home Repossession Group has made submissions to Mr Lenihan and the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance and Public Service on a variety of measures to deal with the problem. They have also warned that many families will find themselves in a poverty trap with a deteriorating economy, spiralling unemployment and the prospect of interest rate rises . "This has the potential to lead to catastro...

House prices drop 1.8% in October... Dublin: House prices fell the most in six months in October, extending a real-estate slump that has pushed prices to their lowest in six years. Prices dropped 1.8% from the previous month, the most since April, Dublin-based Irish Life & Permanent Plc said in a monthly report today. From a year earlier, prices dropped 13.9%. House prices have fallen in every month since March 2007 and are now 27% below their peak in the early part of that year, according to the Irish Life/ESRI index. The average price of a house in Ireland was €228,347, the lowest since October 2003. Report - Irish Examiner.

The lost decade: prices now back to 2001 level... The property industry felt it could walk on water during the first half of the noughties, but after 2006, it all began to go terribly wrong. SO HOW did it all go so wrong in the property market? For a while there, mid-noughties, people in the property business felt they could walk on water. Now, with almost a decade of growth wiped off the value of Irish homes, both buyers and sellers are asking, how low can we go? Are we still in freefall, bumping along the bottom, or seeing the beginnings of recovery? Nobody wants to make the call. Surprisingly, they were asking the same questions back in 2001. “Now that the boom is over, everyone wants to know what is going to happen to property prices. Is now a good time to buy, will values drop even more in the spring? Should sellers wait?” this supplement asked in December 2001. After six consecutive years of growth since the mid-1990s, and the euphoria of the millennium, 2001 proved a tough year ...