Daft Property - Irish Property News

Taxpayer beware as Nama makes spectacular loss. Loss-making Nama has become a seemingly endless gravy train. Worse still, it has emerged as a bailout for some of the same developers who have brought this country to its knees... When it was announced by then Finance Minister Brian Lenihan during his emergency budget speech in April 2009, we were told it would get credit moving, we were promised it would not be a bailout for developers, we were told it wouldn't be a gravy train for advisers, consultants and public sector fat cats and we were told it would make a profit. Set up to save the country from the greed and recklessness of the banks and developers, including Liam Carroll, Bernard McNamara and Sean Dunne, Nama was an unprecedented development in Irish history. But, more than two years on from its inception, there is no question on all of these fronts: Nama has failed and failed spectacularly, and the taxpayer should be very concerned indeed. As last Thursday's an...

Web jam as 10,000 download list of NAMA properties... NAMA'S list of property for sale was downloaded by 10,000 people in just a day and a half as bargain hunters scoured the list for cheap deals. A spokesman for toxic debt agency NAMA revealed last night that it was forced to make emergency changes to its website in order to cope with the unprecedented web traffic. It came after NAMA made a list of 850 properties it is selling through receivers available for the first time. The list features property in 25 of the 26 counties as well as Northern Ireland and the UK. The assets listed include everything from car park spaces and bedsits, through to family homes and significant commercial and industrial assets. NAMA is not directly selling any of the property but its 150 staff have been inundated with enquiries since the list went live, sources at the agency said. NAMA is now looking at ways to make the property list easier for the public to access. It also intends to u...

NAMA fire sales aim to breathe life back into market... Thousands chase property at knockdown prices as NAMA puts houses, farms, pubs and apartments up for sale. BARGAIN hunters came out in force yesterday after bad bank NAMA put nearly 1,000 properties up for sale in the largest single sell-off in the history of the State. The prospect of picking up a farm, pub, quarry, three-bed semi, hotel, apartment -- even an airport -- sparked an unprecedented wave of interest within hours of the list being published. NAMA chiefs even promised to finance some of the sales as the agency announced losses of €1.18bn on dealings for last year. It also revealed the extent to which NAMA is to recover money from reluctant debtors. In one case -- and as late as this week -- it seized jewellery worth €200,000 that had been given to a developer's partner. NAMA bosses insisted they were not running a fire sale and kept asking prices and bids received a closely guarded secret last night. Bu...

Luxury flats to be set aside for social housing... THEY once had a price tag of almost €1.5m each but now a set of luxury apartments nestled in the foothills of the Dublin Mountains are being sold for an average of just €177,500. And instead of attracting Celtic Tiger cubs, some of the high-end dwellings are being set aside for social housing. A total of 58 apartments in the Beacon South Quarter, Sandyford, which are in NAMA, have been purchased by the voluntary housing body Cluid. The apartments, which were built at the height of the boom, have views over Dublin and are serviced by the M50 and the Luas. Receiver They were bought from a receiver appointed by NAMA to the development company Landmark Enterprises. It is the first such deal between NAMA and a voluntary body and will see 34 of the apartments going to people on the social housing list for Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown local authority. The remaining 24 will be rented through the private market. Three-quarters of th...

House prices still falling - Dublin tops the list... House prices in Dublin are nearly 47pc off their peak in early 2007 compared with 39pc in the rest of the country, according to the Central Statistics Office. In the year to June, residential property prices at a national level fell by 12.9pc. This compares with an drop of 12.2% in May and a decrease of 12.4pc recorded in the twelve months to June 2010. In Dublin, residential property prices decreased by 2.4pc in June and were 12.6pc down compared with a year ago. House prices in the capital fell by 2.4pc last month and were 11.9pc lower on an annual basis. But economists believe that while the jobs market remains weak, within five years house prices should improve but very slowly. “The bottom line is that the property market remains very ‘soft’ at the moment,” said Alan McQuaid, chief economist at Bloxham Stockbrokers. “ But looking further ahead, we think house prices should increase on a five-year view as the labou...

Bertie bags $40,000 - for tips on Celtic Tiger 'success'... FORMER Taoiseach Bertie Ahern is charging American companies a fortune to present a new lecture -- about how he transformed our economy in the Celtic Tiger boom. The man targeted by many as the architect of our crippling recession, is charging more than $40,000 (€27,554) a time for speaking engagements with the elite Washington Speakers Bureau. During the lecture, Mr Ahern offers tips to bosses of leading firms on how to be competitive. The former Fianna Fail leader has been employed for a number of years as one of the highest-paid speakers with the bureau -- whose motto is 'Connecting you with the world's greatest minds' . In his latest lecture -- entitled 'Prime Minister as CEO' -- he tells listeners to adopt Ireland's Celtic Tiger as a model of economic growth. Last night it was described as "bewildering". Bosses of the bureau refused to reveal the number of times Mr A...

More pain as households hit with new €100 ‘property’ tax... ALMOST all households are set to be hit with a new €100 service charge to be announced this week, the Irish Independent has learned. The Cabinet will sign off on the combined water and property tax tomorrow, despite the easing of the debt burden under the new EU bailout deal. Environment Minister Phil Hogan is coming under pressure to exempt those on low incomes from the new tax, which will result in middle-income earners paying more. The Government is expecting to bring in upwards of €150m from the charge. The flat-rate levy, to be introduced next year, will be the first tough decision to be taken by the Coalition that will prove unpopular to the overwhelming majority of people. The options for the annual charge range from €100 to €200 a year. The likely outcome is a sum at the lower range of €100, with a small number of exemptions -- the solution favoured by Mr Hogan. However, this will have to be approved by the...

Depression surge in rich suburbs over cash worries... Affluent areas see huge jump in demand for mental health services. The number of anxiety and depression disorders in the country's richest neighbourhood has more than doubled since the recession. People worried about their mortgages, losing their jobs and paying private school fees in Dalkey, Blackrock, and Dun Laoghaire, are flocking to their GPs for treatment for mental health conditions. Householders living in the affluent neighbourhood, which is home to U2's Bono, Enya, and film director Neil Jordan, are becoming ill as they struggle to pay their bills. The clinical director of the Cluain Mhuire Community Mental Health Services for Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown, Dr Siobhan Barry, said there has been a huge jump in the number of referrals to their services between 2008 and 2009, when the recession hit the country. The remarkable increase in the numbers attending the public service is also thought to be caused by an i...

New mass sale in autumn... More property auctions are on the cards as owners seek fast sales in an uncertain market. KNIGHT FRANK is the latest estate agency firm to enter the mass auction market with plans to to hold a sale of 30 to 40 homes on a single day in the autumn. The company, which specialises in prime Dublin and country property, is currently scouting for suitable homes to include in an auction scheduled for October. The two auctions held by the Allsop/Space partnership, in April and earlier this month, have shown that there is a market for distressed properties at knockdown prices. Allsop/Space plans to hold a third auction in September with over 100 properties, the vast majority of which are being sold by receivers and banks. Savills is also planning to hold a distressed property sale in the autumn and is believed to be in negotiations with banks to sell their distresed stock. However, Knight Frank sees an opportunity in selling homes for owners rather than for ban...

Eurozone governments in last-chance saloon to save the single currency... All of the metaphors have been used -- from edge-of-a-cliff, meltdowns and hanging threads -- but the real terror confronting the eurozone is that its banks, out of fear that other banks' solvency is threatened by default on sovereign debt, could stop lending to one another. This would bring the credit system to a halt and the ensuing liquidity crisis would, if left unresolved, result in insolvency and default. European economies could languish in deep recession for a decade or more and this is how a euro crisis would play out -- in sets of insolvency, uncertainty and illiquidity. So what exactly happened to the eurozone officials over the past 10 days? First, finance ministers admitted there may need to be a default on sovereign debt. They did not specify for which country or in what form. Instead, they tried to duck out for their summer holidays and said the details would be announced in September. ...

Building ban on rezoned land leaves taxpayer with huge bill... THE taxpayer will be forced to pick up the tab as councils ban housing on massive banks of land -- bought for billions by property speculators at the height of the boom. The value of development sites has plummeted by more than 90pc, after councils rezoned land which is no longer needed for housing. The Irish Independent has learned that 12 of the country's 34 local authorities have already dezoned or banned development on lands. The remainder will do so by the end of the year, under a radical shake-up of planning system countrywide. But the move will have serious implications for taxpayers. Banks lent billions for speculative deals on those lands which have since collapsed -- with the State now forced to pick up the bill. Housing will now no longer be allowed to be built on 8,000 hectares previously earmarked for development in 12 local authorities alone. At the height of the boom, this land could have sold f...

Zonning frenzy brought us down - and made us finally see sense... THE maps would arrive in their hundreds, each accompanied by a letter urging the council to rezone the highlighted land for housing. "When a review of a development plan started, and people saw the notices in the paper, that's when the race started," one insider said. Everyone with a few acres believed their land was ripe for a few houses or apartments. And for the most part, city and county councillors obliged, zoning more than 44,000 hectares of land for housing, even though there was need for only a fraction of that. Eventually the State was awash with unfinished developments and NAMA found itself lumped with €73bn of land and development loans. We've finally come full circle, and are in the middle of moving to a system whereby land will only be earmarked for housing when there is clear evidence there will be enough people to live there. Every council in the country has been told to int...

Banks tell families -- no loans for homes... Mortgage approval plummets by 90% as banks hoard bailout cash A RECOVERY in the property market is being stopped dead in its tracks by the banks, which are turning down at least half of all mortgage applications -- mostly from people who are highly creditworthy. With many experts now convinced that the market has gone below bottom, the difficulty in accessing credit for even high-quality applicants has reached crisis point. Banks are continuing to reject applications for credit and 2011 looks like posting the worst mortgage-origination figures in four decades. On Friday AIB, which is to merge with Educational Building Society, won conditional approval from the European Commission for yet another capital injection -- this time of up to €13.1bn. It is part of more than €19bn that was approved after the latest bank stress tests and comes on top of billions in taxpayers' money that has already been pumped into the banking sector bu...

Dublin protest over EU-IMF bailout... Thousands of people are expected to participate in a protest in Dublin this afternoon against the EU-IMF austerity programme. The protest, organised by the Enough Campaign, is being supported by trade unions, TDs, political organisations and groups seeking to maintain education and health services in their areas. Participants are scheduled to meet at Parnell Square at 2pm. The Enough Campaign said suggestions that the State’s implementation of the EU-IMF austerity programme was going well were badly misplaced. People Before Profit TD Richard Boyd Barrett, an organiser of the march, said he expected a good number of people who were “enraged” by the austerity programme to take part. "It is absolutely mystifying how the EU-IMF delegations 'approval' of the Government’s implementation of austerity in this country is being portrayed by the government and some commentators as a 'good news' story," he said. "We...

Figures dispel myth that we're top home buyers in Europe... HOME ownership in Ireland is in line with the average in the European Union -- debunking the myth that home ownership here is among the highest in the EU. The Spanish, Greeks, Portuguese and people in a host of former Eastern Bloc states all have higher ownership levels than Ireland, figures obtained by the Irish Independent show. Some 74pc of Irish people own their own home. This is in line with the average for the 27 members of the EU. Ireland ranks 18th in home ownership levels out of 31 countries looked by the the EU statistics agency Eurostat. The figures are for 2009, the latest available. The highest home ownership is in Romania (96pc), followed by Lithuania (91pc), Hungary (89pc), Slovakia (89pc), Estonia (87pc), Latvia (87pc), Bulgaria (87pc), Norway (85pc), Iceland (84pc), Spain (83pc), Slovenia (81pc), Malta (79pc), Czech Republic (77pc) and Greece (76pc). Ireland comes in at 73.7pc, while 70pc of pe...

Irish debt cut to 'junk' status as euro zone crisis deepens... Irish debt was cut to “junk” status by credit rating agency Moody’s, last night, hours after the Minister for Finance said that measures to aid Greece proposed by euro zone finance ministers on Monday night would benefit Ireland. Moody’s appeared to contradict the Minister last night saying the measures being contemplated for Greece had increased the chance that Ireland might default on some of its debts if it has to seek another bailout from Europe. The resulting downgrade is expected to lead to a sell-off in Irish bonds when markets open today as many lenders will only hold bonds considered to be investment grade by privately owned rating agencies such as Moody’s. Bloxham analysts said the downgrade would prompt some forced selling by investors who are not allowed to hold non-investment grade securities, and would be dropped from some of the bond indices. “In our view this latest move by Moody’s is cynic...

UK firm in talks over ghost estates project... A BRITISH firm that wants to use ghost estates to train unemployed apprentices is to meet with the Minister for Housing and the Housing and Sustainable Communities Agency tomorrow. Equity Share Partnership (ESP) wants to use the unfinished properties to provide training and housing for the unemployed. It has begun negotiations with Nama, Fás and the banks to complete two pilot projects on ghost estates in Bandon, Co Cork, and Kilminchy, Co Laois. The company said it has financial backing to invest €10 million in the schemes and it hopes to begin work in December. The firm plans to buy the unfinished estates and take on apprentices and unemployed skilled and unskilled workers to complete them. Apprentices will continue to claim unemployment assistance, but they will be given the training necessary to complete their apprenticeships. Other workers will continue to claim unemployment assistance but, in return for their labour, they...

Prices for self-catering holiday homes have been slashed by up to 60 per cent - despite July and August being peak season - because letting agents cannot rent them otherwise. Dream Holiday Homes and self catering.ie, two of the country’s largest such firms, last week reported significant cuts in prices and a surge in business for special-offer rates. Selfcatering.ie managing director Mary Carr said that ‘‘never before in high season have rates been cut to such a degree’’. ‘‘Houses for seven days in the likes of Rosslare or Kenmare, which have always been popular, have dropped from €950 or €850 per week to €750 or €650. ‘‘We have deals for inland accommodation in places like Westmeath for €299 a week and in hotels like Breaffy House [Mayo] for €134 per person sharing for two adults’ bed and breakfast with one evening meal, with two kids eating and staying for free. ‘‘Local attractions and businesses are all offering discounts, and people are more price-conscious than ever. Inste...

Auction Results for the 87 Lots sorted by Lot Number Lots: 1-87 1 Vacant Flat Dublin 1 Sold €148,000 2 Investment Flat Blackrock Sold €270,000 3 Investment Freehold Building Clondalkin Sold €139,000 4 Investment Freehold House Stepaside Sold €146,000 5 Investment Flat Dublin 7 Sold €177,000 6 Vacant Freehold House Castlebar Sold €87,000 7 Vacant Leasehold House Dublin 3 Sold €67,000 8 Investment Flat Dublin 1 Sold €145,000 9 Investment Freehold Building Bray Sold €220,000 10 Vacant Freehold House Stillorgan Sold €280,000 11 Vacant Freehold House Tyrrelstown Sold €129,000 12 Land/Site Blackrock Sold €66,000 13 Vacant Freehold House Thomastown Sold €50,000 14 Investment Freehold House Kilkenny City Sold €440,000 15 Investment Flat Blackrock Sold €285,000 16 Investment Flat Dublin 9 Sold €55,000 17 Investment Freehold Building Drogheda Available €290,000 18 Vacant Flat Arklow Sold €71,000 19 Vacant Flat Dublin 1 Sold €132,000 20 Vacant Freehold House Dublin 4 Sold ...

TODAY’S Allsop/Space auction in Dublin’s Shelbourne hotel will be an interesting test of the longevity of the mass auction and whether it’s here to stay or a mere passing fad. Savills Ireland is getting in on the act in September with the promise of around 100 investment properties. with low reserves and prime locations in Dublin. Not wanting to be left out, auction specialist Merlin Group – better known for its car auctions – announced its move into residential property earlier this week. It is getting properties from banks and says it already has 40 for its first big auction in the Burlington Hotel in Dublin in early autumn. Allsop/Space might find it hard today to match the drama and impact of their – and the country’s – first – discounted auction back in April, which saw €14.8 million worth of deals struck in just six hours on vastly discounted properties in prime locations. This time around it has 87 distressed properties around the country with reserves as low as €40,000 on...

Noonan spells out high cost of our rescue... THE IMF and EU will make a €9bn profit over the lifetime of the bailout loans to Ireland. Finance Minister Michael Noonan last night revealed for the first time just how much the international agencies will make if the €85bn in loans are drawn down in total. The British government is also entitled to send auditors and accountants here to check the books as part of its bilateral deal to Ireland, the Irish Independent has learned. It is also insisting that if Ireland ever leaves the euro the UK must be repaid in full and in sterling -- and not in any new Irish currency. The developments come as the IMF-EU bailout team arrives back in Dublin today to begin the latest examination on whether the Government is meeting the terms of the €85bn programme of aid. The progress of public sector reform and changes to wage-setting systems for low earners will be discussed in talks with IMF-EU bailout team. And it also appears likely the Gover...

House prices continue to tumble despite faster selling time... HOUSE prices are continuing to plummet with asking prices now as much as 47pc lower than the peak just four years ago. A new report from property website Daft.ie says that although homes are selling faster, prices are continuing to fall. And the findings are confirmed in a separate report from myhome.ie, albeit with variations in the average asking price for a house. Daft.ie says the average asking price in June was €196,000, down 47pc from the peak. The myhome.ie survey says the average asking price nationally is now €249,000, 40pc down on peak. Prices of new homes are now back at the 2001 level, myhome.ie adds, with average asking prices of €239,000 in Cork, €234,500 in Galway, €185,000 in Limerick, while the Dublin figure is €286,000. Daft.ie said that Dublin asking prices fell by 5.26pc over the past three months, and now the typical figure is half of what it was during the peak in 2007. South County Dub...

HOUSE prices in Dublin have gone into a 60pc freefall from their peak and are now at levels last seen in 2002. The cost of buying a home in Dublin fell by 16pc in June compared to the same period last year. In real terms, Dublin house prices have fallen by 60.2pc, from the peak of the market in 2006, according to Sherry FitzGerald estate agents. The national market has corrected by 55.2pc and the average cost of a second-hand house in Ireland dropped by 15.3pc. First-time buyers remain the most active sector in the market, accounting for almost one-third of the properties traded in the year to date. Chief economist Marian Finnegan with Sherry FitzGerald said the falls placed the Irish property recession as one of the most significant recessions in the post-war era. "Accelerating deflation in the property market cycle is somewhat contradictory as the factors underpinning the market have strengthened with improved affordability and relatively tight supply, particularly for...

Auction Date: 7th July 2011 Auction Venue: The Shelbourne Hotel, Dublin 2   Another Allsop Space Auction of distressed properties coming up next Thursday. Here's the list of whats on offer... Lots: 1-87 Lot Type Location Reserve Price will not exceed this figure 1 Vacant Flat Dublin 1 €142,000 2 Investment Flat Blackrock €202,000 3 Investment Freehold Building Clondalkin €120,000 4 Investment Freehold House Stepaside €102,500 5 Investment Flat Dublin 7 €175,000 6 Vacant Freehold House Castlebar €42,000 7 Vacant Leasehold House Dublin 3 €62,000 8 Investment Flat Dublin 1 €142,000 9 Investment Freehold Building Bray €150,000 10 Vacant Freehold House Stillorgan €275,000 11 Vacant Freehold House Tyrrelstown €97,500 12 Land/Site Blackrock €30,000 13 Vacant Freehold House Thomastown €60,000 14 Investment Freehold House Kilkenny City €410,000 15 Investment Flat Blackrock €222,000 16 Investment Fl...