Daft Property - Irish Property News

I’VE OFTEN referred, half in jest, whole in earnest, to the likelihood that the blame game would get underway and that everyone would start suing everyone else until eventually, the Irish State would have to accept responsibility for the bank crash. And, it looks as if that might happen if the Irish Property Council (IPC) gets its way, as last week it announced its intention to take the Irish State to court. The IPC is an organisation, which represents a broad range of people in the property business, including builders, developers and investors. (And, before you go into hysterics; this organisation represents everyone from the small guy with one little investment property, to the much-hated big-time developers who once owned vast property portfolios.) The IPC’s main bone of contention is that borrowers are the only ones being held responsible for the Irish property crash. Bankers, the financial regulator and the government appear to have got away scot-free, despite the fact that t...

The ordinary citizens of this State would be well entitled to ask if there is some point in the near future when we will stop being burnt by the great ongoing bonfire of the vanities of our former Celtic Tiger masters. They would be right, for such now is our 'state of chassis' that the Moriarty Tribunal ceased to be the central issue of public discourse after little more than two days. But when it comes to issues of survival, ethics will always come second to economics. Yet ethics is not unimportant either, for the issues Justice Moriarty dealt with cut to the heart of the colossal political failure of the first Irish Republic. Once again, another tribunal has revealed that we as a State are utterly incapable of governing or policing ourselves. And unfortunately this failure even extends to a tribunal which after 14 years of investigation has only provided us with the prologue to the resolution of the controversy about the mobile phone licence. The outside world, on wh...

Brace yourself...€200m cuts and tax rises on way. IRISH taxpayers are being warned to brace themselves for further hardship with over €200m in increased charges and spending cuts on the way. Finance Minister Michael Noonan said his 'mini-Budget' would include more cuts and tax hikes. While the Programme for Government contains a pledge not to increase income tax, there are many other indirect taxes which could be increased instead. These include charges for State services -- for example A&E charges. The Government has promised a 'Jobs Budget' within the next three months which will cost €220m to implement. But it has to raise this money in other ways to ensure that the funding from the EU-IMF bailout deal continues to flow. Wage In the Dail yesterday, Mr Noonan confirmed that the Government would need money to pay for measures such as reversing the cut in the minimum wage, halving the lower rate of employers' PRSI and reducing the lower rate of V...

Property Council to sue State, banks over collapse: AN ORGANISATION representing property investors and developers is to take a class action in the High Court against the Government, the Financial Regulator and the banks over their roles in the collapse of the property market. The Irish Property Council (IPC) is to outline its plans today for the court proceedings which will set out to apportion responsibility for the collapse. It says the ruination of the property market has been caused “by the reckless lending of our banks, lack of regulation by our Government and the disregard of prudent advice on fiscal policy by the Government in power”. The council is to invite developers, house purchasers or investors who are now “total casualties of the collapse” to put forward their names for the court action and a claim for compensation. The IPC was set up last year to provide support for small builders, developers and investors who have run into financial difficulties following the...

Tiny green shoots of property recovery brutally crushed by our Central Bank... Our leaders are facing the mother and father of all political and diplomatic battles in Brussels. 'I'M not happy with the idea that some governments obviously find some pleasure in torturing Ireland in the meetings and outside. I don't like this way of dealing with serious problems." These words are not those of Michael Noonan but of Luxembourg Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker, chairman of the euro group of finance ministers. Juncker criticised the link between a lower interest rate on bailout loans and pressure to increase corporate tax. Again, they are words that could have been written by Noonan -- and my guess is that they were, in fact, inspired by Limerick's master of the soundbite. Only a few months ago, Noonan was bitterly critical of the Government for its failure to nourish our diplomatic relations with small EU countries such as Luxembourg, Denmark, the Netherlands...

British housing associations may buy ghost estates... HOUSING ASSOCIATIONS in Britain are considering buying ghost estates in Ireland after meeting former minister for housing Michael Finneran last month before he left office. Mr Finneran travelled to Britain with representatives of the Housing and Sustainable Communities Agency in a bid to get them involved in his social housing leasing initiative. The initiative was introduced by Mr Finneran in 2009 as a solution to the lack of funds available to local authorities to build social housing. But take-up by Irish organisations has been slow. Under the scheme, British associations would buy ghost estates in Ireland from developers or from Nama and they would rent the properties out to provide social housing in Ireland for the estimated 130,000 households on waiting lists. In return, local authorities would pay the associations 92 per cent of market rent for the property and they would also receive a rent from the tenant. Histo...

House prices could fall 13.4% this year in bank test scenario... HOUSE PRICES could fall by a further 13.4 per cent this year and 14.4 per cent next year before recovering in 2013 under a scenario considered by the Central Bank to stress test the banks. This would represent a 55 per cent decline in house prices from the peak of the market in 2007. But under a worst-case scenario, house prices may fall by 17.4 per cent this year and 18.8 per cent next year, which would be a decline of 60 per cent from the peak. The Central Bank, which published details of the scenarios yesterday, is testing the lenders to see how much of the €35 billion set aside in the EU-IMF bailout fund for the banks will be needed. Minister for Finance Michael Noonan acknowledged yesterday that more than €10 billion may be required, but said he had “no idea at this stage” how much more was needed. He was speaking after he and Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform Brendan Howlin met senior officials ...

Growing dole queues expose fragility of Irish economy... Unemployment figures show Ireland cannot afford to lose a single multinational – but this is not stopping France and Germany trying to force it to raise corporation tax: Sometimes you have to wonder if the rest of Europe understands the fragility of Ireland's economy. Do the Germans and French not understand that there is a prospect of zero growth in the economy in the next three years and that forcing multinationals out of the country could finish Ireland off altogether? Their constant attacks on Ireland's low corporation tax rate have even got on the nerves of Ryanair's Michael O'Leary, who has warned that any increase will jeopardise the country's ability to pay off its debts. Figures out on Tuesday showed a surprise rise in unemployment. Yet Ireland swiftly came under attack again for its low corporation tax of 12.5%, as if this was any part of a fix for the challenging times ahead. German fina...

European debt masters must study their part in our downfall... Stony-faced IMF and ECB officials touched down in Dublin yesterday as they make yet another attempt to solve the Irish banking crisis. This crisis is now almost three years old if you take the starting point to be the so-called 'St Patrick's Day massacre' of 2008 when Anglo Irish Bank's stock price plunged by 15pc. Despite plans to spend 36pc of everything Ireland produces on this one segment of the economy, all policy interventions to date have not only failed to shore up the system, but in some cases have made it even more unstable. While the primary responsibility for this failure must lie with our outgoing Government, wider culpability stretches in a southern direction to Brussels, then onward to Frankfurt. Last year economists Klaus Regling and Max Watson, in a key report, made it very clear the causes of Ireland's financial crisis were primarily homegrown, but deep involvement of European...

'Bang twins' may never get to run a business again... POST-boom Ireland is awash with cautionary tales of Celtic Tiger excesses, as a rattle around the carcasses of fallen property developers and entrepreneurs will show. Few can compete with the so-called Bang twins for youth, glamour and tasteful extravagance. Simon and Christian Stokes, the 35-year-old identical twins behind Bang Cafe and exclusive private members club, Residence, saw their entire business go bust with debts of €9m, €3m of which is owed to the tax man. The debt may be in the ha'penny place compared with the eye-watering billions owed by some of their former customers. But their fall has been arguably steeper and more damning than some of the country's richest tycoons. Last week, further humiliation was heaped on them with revelations that even as their businesses were going under, the twins spent €146,000 of company money in 18 months on designer shopping sprees, five star holidays and sumptu...

'Suicide' if we give in to EU on taxes... 'No surrender' insists Enda Kenny. 'Stand up to Merkel' says McDowell. An overwhelming majority of Irish people have endorsed Taoiseach Enda Kenny's refusal to budge on Ireland's corporation tax rate during intense clashes with German and French leaders Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy. Any climbdown by the Taoiseach on the issue would represent a case of "economic and political suicide", Michael McDowell, the former Progressive Democrat leader, said yesterday. According to the latest Sunday Independent/Quantum Research Poll, 78 per cent of people think Mr Kenny was absolutely correct to refuse to offer "a gesture" to Mr Sarkozy in terms of our corporation tax rate in return for more favourable rates on the €85bn IMF/EU bailout. People polled on Friday night saw the Irish corporation tax rate as the 'bedrock' of our multinational employment base and export figures. Further...

Expert says Irish emigration wildly exaggerated... IRELAND IS in the grip of a “media, moral and public panic” about emigration that is not justified by the number of Irish people leaving the country, a migration expert has said. Prof James Wickham, director of the Employment Research Centre at Trinity College, told a conference yesterday that during the general election campaign politicians and the media wildly exaggerated emigration rates. “During the election we were told every day how 1,000 Irish people were leaving the country every week. The only problem with that is that a substantial number of them are returning immigrants,” said Prof Wickham. The most recent estimates published by the Central Statistics Office indicated 27,700 of 65,300 emigrants recorded in the year to the end of April 2010 were Irish. Prof Wickham said there is a very real danger that the “media, moral and public panic” surrounding emigration could become a self-fulfilling prophecy. “The rhetoric...

Census to answer questions about state of nation... ARE WE losing our religion and getting divorced more often than before as the recession tightens its grip? How many of us are moving abroad to find work and escape the economic crisis? These questions and many more will be answered by Census 2011, which takes place on Sunday, April 10th, and will provide researchers with a treasure trove of statistical data to pore over to determine the state of the nation. Some 5,000 staff working for the Central Statistics Office (CSO), who are called enumerators, will begin distributing green Census 2011 forms to all 1.8 million households across the State from today. Everyone who is in the State on Sunday, April 10th, must fill in one of the 24-page forms, which include a range of personal questions designed to create a comprehensive picture of the social and living conditions across the State. The green forms ask for basic information about the occupants of a household such as their age...

I’M WAITING for the implosion. I feel it in my gut and over many years I’ve learnt to trust gut instinct. Something just doesn’t add up. Why are so few houses on the market these days? You might be fooled into believing there is a glut of properties for sale, until you actually go out to look, whereupon you soon realise the turnover of property is so slow that you are looking at the same selection each week. Indeed, so few houses are coming on the market, particularly at the upper end, that the few potential buyers out there are now frustrated, as the choice is so limited. Why are people not selling? It makes no logical sense given what we now know about the vast numbers of mortgages in arrears. Estate agents say that homeowners at the middle to upper level are not selling because property has lost so much value of late they would prefer to hang on until the market improves. Which is all very logical and reasonable assuming these owners can hang on – but are we talking about ...

Hundreds of repossessed homes in Ireland to be sold by auction... UK property consultancy Allsop to hold auction in April at Dublin's Shelbourne hotel: Flats in Ireland that could have fetched €150,000 in the Celtic Tiger years are to be put on the market for as little as €25,000 (£21,000) in the country's first ever mass auction of repossessed homes. And, in a sign of how wide the property crash is, the latest item to turn up in liquidation sales in Dublin is a job lot of 15 cranes, including a pair towering over Anglo Irish Bank's half-built headquarters in the city's docklands. "Tower cranes were among the most sought-after heavy plant and machinery 10 years ago," Ricky Wilson of Wilsons Auctions says. "You couldn't buy them quick enough. Now they are left idle for two or three years on sites." He has 15 cranes worth €500,000 going on sale on 26 March, with German, Dutch and Polish buyers expressing interest. But it is the auction ...

Struggle to pay bills is about to get much worse... With a swathe of EU interest rate hikes coming our way, mortgages will shoot up by thousands of euro a year: THE President of the European Central Bank (ECB), Jean-Claude Trichet, shocked us all last week when he suggested that the next ECB rate hike could be as early as this April. There are already 60,000 homeowners struggling to pay their mortgages. With a raft of European interest rate hikes on the cards, many of them will find it even harder to pay their mortgage in a few weeks' time -- and tens of thousands more homeowners will share their fate. We all knew that the ECB interest rate -- which influences the amount of interest you pay on your mortgage -- was on its way up. Yet surging oil prices and a pick-up in eurozone inflation mean this rate hike will now happen a lot sooner than we ever expected. Some economists believe the ECB rate could increase four times this year. As the ECB rate has been at an all-time ...

WELCOME TO THE HOUSE OF PAIN: The ECB headquarters in Frankfurt... What will the ECB rate rises mean to your mortgage? THE Independent Mortgage Advisers Federation (IMAF) has done the sums to show how much more you will pay for your mortgage if the ECB rate rises. The figures assume that the ECB rate increases by 0.5 per cent to 1.5 per cent by the end of this year -- and by another 1 per cent to 2.5 per cent next year. The figures also assume that lenders pass on the full extent of the ECB rate rises to standard variable customers. (ECB rate rises are automatically passed on to tracker customers.) €200,000 MORTGAGE €2,200 a year more If you've a 25-year standard variable mortgage of €200,000 with Permanent TSB, your mortgage repayments work out at €1,191 a month. If the ECB rate increases by 0.5 per cent, your monthly repayments will increase to €1,251 -- another €60 more a month, according to Michael Dowling of IMAF. If the ECB rate hits 2.5 per cent by the end of 2...

Voter betrayal: FG/Labour to ditch pledges on economy... They will brazenly follow Fianna Fail's four-year austerity plan as Labour protects public sector. The Fine Gael/Labour coalition Government is to implement in detail the outgoing Government's four-year austerity plan as approved by the EU-IMF, the Sunday Independent can reveal. In what will amount to the most barefaced breach of election promises ever perpetrated by an incoming Government, the coalition partners' programme for government will cause uproar when it is published today. While an attempt will be made to dress up the programme as a new plan by a new Government, when it is analysed it will be seen for what it is -- the continuation of the economic policies of Fianna Fail and the Greens, virtually in minute detail, as laid down by the EU-IMF. If anything, Fine Gael will be seen to have capitulated more as it is handing over responsibility for reform of the public sector to Labour, whose core suppor...

'My business closed and I couldn't find long-term work'... LAST MONTH Helena gave birth to her daughter Anna. Four weeks later, she faces the possibility of eviction from a homeless hostel in Dublin with Anna, her two sons Ondrey and Patrick, and her husband Stefan. The family, who are originally from the Czech Republic, are just one of hundreds – and possibly thousands – of EU migrant families experiencing destitution as the recession tightens its grip. Stefan and his family arrived in Ireland in 2006 to find work and create a new life. He worked for several months as a self- employed painter, but work dried up as the economy slowed. He picked up sporadic work here and there but ended up relying on benefits. “My business closed and I couldn’t find any long-term work. They have now stopped our social welfare benefits and want to send us back to the Czech Republic,” says Stefan, who is a member of the Roma community. “I dont want to go back to the Czech Republic. T...