Daft Property - Irish Property News

Thousands at risk of rate hikes as AIB bars mortgage switchers... THOUSANDS of homeowners are effectively trapped with their existing lenders after the biggest bank in the country, AIB, admitted yesterday that it no longer accepts mortgage switchers. Just two lenders will now accept switchers, leaving thousands of homeowners trapped and vulnerable to being hit with higher mortgage rates. The AIB move is a huge blow to mortgage holders who are with Permanent TSB as it has increased its mortgage rates twice in the past six months, and those with Halifax, which is closing its retail operations here. AIB has the lowest home-loan rates in the market, with a standard variable rate of as low as 2.25pc and a three-year fixed rate of 3.19pc. In comparison, Bank of Scotland (Ireland)/Halifax has a three-year fixed rate of 7.25pc. Permanent TSB shocked homeowners this month when it pushed up its standard variable rate for existing customers by 0.5pc. Other lenders are now expected to follow the m...

It's time to shout 'stop' -- NAMA is grand larceny... The land has reverted to the price you'd get from a farmer for putting a donkey out to graze on it For the past year, this column has been warning of a "triple lock" in the Irish banking system, which would financially incarcerate the Irish people for a generation. The triple lock would solder the people to the banking system in a suffocating embrace forcing us to borrow from tomorrow to pay for yesterday and, in the process, destroy the opportunities of today. Now with the Government upping its stake in Bank of Ireland, this prediction -- regretfully -- is coming to pass. The worst thing is that it doesn't have to be like this. The latest news that some development land in Athlone valued in the boom at €31m is now worth only €600,000 has truly terrifying implications for all of us, because it means NAMA will bankrupt us, and the triple lock implies that we can't sever the fortunes of the people fro...

Not a single new home registered by Premier in January... THE private housing market could be in danger of grinding to a complete halt with one of the two home-registration firms in the country not registering a single house in January. The Irish Independent has learned that Premier Guarantee did not register a single housing unit in January, with its larger rival Homebond only registering 149 houses, including just 24 in Dublin. At the peak of the property market in 2006, Homebond was registering 6,122 houses a month or about 72,000 in a full year. Premier, the smaller of the two registration services, was registering about 2,117 houses per month, or almost 25,000 per annum. Of the 149 houses registered with Homebond in January, 62 were in Cork, 16 in Kildare and 24 in Dublin. In most of the other counties there were less than three houses registered, with many counties only registering a single house. One of the few things propping up the housing market now is one-off housing which o...

Devastating 'pyrite epidemic' hits 20,000 newly built houses... UP to 20,000 homeowners are facing the devastating "pyrite problem" which is destroying recently built houses. The Irish Independent has learned that this many claims for pyrite-related damage, such as cracked floors and walls, have been made to the builders' insurance company HomeBond -- which may not have enough funds to cover the cost of all the claims. Its cash reserves have dropped from €50m in 2007 to €26m, according to its latest accounts, due to declining stock market returns. This means it would only be able to pay around €1,250 per household. The average cost of removing the pyrite from a house and repairing the damage is between €50,000 and €70,000. HomeBond only covers a portion of the cost if the builder is liquidated or unable to pay for all the repairs -- so families are facing potentially huge bills to repair their homes. The claims against HomeBond are separate to a landmark case pres...

Mortgage lending at lowest level since records began... MORTGAGE lending plunged last year to the lowest level since records began in 2005, as borrowing by investors and those seeking to trade up plummeted. Just €8.08bn of mortgage loans were issued in 2009, a 65pc drop on the previous year, the Irish Banking Federation said yesterday. The number of loans made fell 58.5pc to 45,818. “The data illustrate how difficult 2009 was for the mortgage market,” Irish Banking Federation boss Pat Farrell said. “The general economic situation, consumer confidence, the unsold housing stock and house-price movements will be among the factors to influence market activity in 2010.” Despite the plunge, first-time buyers and people moving house still only accounted for two-thirds of mortgage lending in the final quarter of 2009. Investors and those seeking socalled top-ups or remortgages accounted for the remainder. The market remains so moribund that there are more people borrowing money to “top up” the...

Names of top 10 borrowers in first wave of Nama transfers revealed... ANGLO IRISH Bank will transfer close to €10 billion in loans into the National Asset Management Agency (Nama), accounting for the largest amount owed by the top 10 developers moving to the agency in the coming weeks. The Irish Times has established the identities of the top borrowers being moved in the first wave of transfers to the State agency. They are developers Liam Carroll; Bernard McNamara; Sean Mulryan of Ballymore; financier Derek Quinlan; Paddy McKillen, owner of the Jervis Street Shopping Centre; Treasury Holdings, which is owned by Johnny Ronan and Richard Barrett; Cork developer Michael O’Flynn; Joe O’Reilly, the developer behind the Dundrum Shopping Centre in Dublin; Dublin builder Gerry Gannon, co-owner of the K Club golf resort in Co Kildare; and Galway businessman Gerry Barrett, owner of Ashford Castle in Co Mayo and G Hotel in Galway. More than €16 billion in loans linked to the top 10 are being mov...

Mortgage timebomb will cause new banks crisis when it goes off... The recommendation that the moratorium on repossessions should be extended by a further year is another sign that the clock is ticking on our €150bn mortgage time bomb. Last year all of the main banks and building societies agreed not to repossess the homes of people whose mortgages were in arrears for at least 12 months. Now, with the 12-month moratorium about to expire for many of those in arrears, there are fears that the number of homeowners facing repossession could rocket. For some it has already happened. Entertainer Adele King (better known as Twink) revealed that her family home was about to be repossessed by her lender. Twink's statement came on the same day that the Oireachtas Committee on Social and Family Affairs recommended the 12-month moratorium on home repossessions be extended to 24 months. The recommendation comes just 11 days after the Financial Regulator extended the 12-month repossession morator...

Ireland poses real threat to future of the euro, says top think-tank... Ireland has been identified as one of a small number of countries that poses "a real risk" to the future of the euro, according to reports in a Sunday newspaper. The report cites research from influential German think-tank CESifo, which warned of "very serious" slowdown in the Irish economy three years ago. The new research reportedly lists Ireland and Greece as two countries where international money markets see a significant risk of a sovereign default or an exit from the single currency. This perceived risk is reflecting in the markets for Irish and Greek debt, CESifo says, even though leaving the eurozone is not on the political agenda. Ireland, along with Finland, also comes in for a mention in CESifo's list of countries for which eurozone membership is "not optimal", due to our heavy reliance on trading with non-eurozone countries. Stable Against the backdrop of last week...

Green minister fears Greek-style crisis if banks don't get houses in order 'fast'... Ireland could be plunged into a Greek-style crisis unless the banks get their house in order "quickly''. That's the stark warning issued by the Communications, Energy and Natural Resources Minister Eamon Ryan yesterday. "The final bill for everything, that is all the madness in mortgages, the developers and general finance could be as high as €34bn," he warned. "We have done a job in projecting the Government's ability to manage its own finances. Now we have to convince the outside world that the banks have the capacity to manage their own finances," he said. Mr Ryan also noted that within Government, the view was "the sooner we do it the better''. Referring to the improved image of Ireland in the international community, he said of the banking crisis: "We have a limited window of opportunity to resolve this now. If we miss this opp...

Kevin Myers: Failure is actually what independent Ireland has always done best. We even failed at prosperity... THE Taoiseach's recent 1916 speech, and the warm reception the references to the "heroes" of the GPO got from the Dublin Chamber of Commerce, were depressingly illuminating. They confirm that our political and economic classes are steeped in denial and hallucination. Yes, Mother Ireland has reverted to ancient delusional habits, and is sustained by illicit bottles of poteen around the national household, labelled 1916. And whenever the old woman feels another attack of the vapours of 21st century realism attacking her, she reaches for a bottle, yet again. A polity which feels the need to recycle ancient events as a modern inspiration is in dire trouble. That's the real lesson from the Taoiseach's rodomontade of last week. You can look at these things mythically or you can look at them literally: either way, no interpretation of the event of 1916 is of an...

David McWilliams: We're all fools if we think recovery plan is patriotic... It's been nearly 18 months since the Government announced its bank guarantee. Anglo Irish Bank was nationalised over a year ago and it is coming up to a year since the Government first mooted the NAMA plan. Yet nothing has actually been done since then. Not a single loan has been transferred to NAMA. There has been lots of talk, lots of bluster and point scoring, but still credit in the economy contracts, house prices continue their slow strangling decline and, most significantly, the rest of the world has moved on. Why the delay? One interpretation is that our government doesn't understand that speed is crucial. If we compare our stagnation with other countries that have been faced with national bankruptcy, we compare dreadfully. Look at what the Swedes achieved in their crisis of 1993 when their property market collapsed along with their banks. In the four months between November 1993 and February...

New report will show number of empty homes well above 300,000... With so much vacant property about, councils are now actively seeking homes to rent from a minimum of 10 years for those on waiting lists... A REPORT being finalised by planners at UCD for publication this month is expected to conclude that the number of empty houses or apartments in the State may be even higher than the 302,625 figure suggested recently by their colleagues in NUI Maynooth. Dr Brendan Williams, lead author of the UCD report, told The Irish Times that “our figures might be higher”. He had also visited some uncompleted housing estates last weekend and they painted a “bleak picture” of the current levels of vacant housing. The 300,000-plus figure, calculated by the Maynooth-based National Institute of Regional and Spatial Analysis (Nirsa), took a lot of people by surprise – especially as the Construction Industry Federation had been sticking to a vacancy rate of around 40,000. It was also way above the Depa...

Irish among most pessimistic in EU about economy - survey... IRISH PEOPLE are among the most pessimistic in Europe about the economic and employment situation in their country and most people expect the situation to be worse in 12 months’ time, new EU research suggests. Although the research also suggests that the Irish are among the most satisfied Europeans with the area they live in, contentment with the public administration is very low and the cost of living is a major source of unhappiness. In a report drawn up amid signs that the world’s worst recession since the 1930s may be bottoming out, the European Commission warns that the social consequences of the downturn may take months or even years to manifest themselves fully. Irish attitudes to the situation were gauged in a survey of 1,007 people in May and June last year, following months of bad economic news. Some 90 per cent of Irish respondents described the situation as bad, one of seven countries in which nine out of 10 peopl...