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Showing posts from November, 2012

Irish House Prices Still Falling...

House prices go into reverse as property register takes guesswork out of buying... HOUSE prices fell last month in a move that reverses rises in the previous three months. The fall of 0.6pc in October means that prices have now risen in five of the 10 months of this year so far.  The value of the average property in the State is now half of what it was during the peak in the market in 2007. Dublin prices were down 0.2pc in October, and are 7pc lower in the year so far. Residential property prices in the capital are 56pc lower than they were when the market was at its highest, according to the CSO index. Prices outside of Dublin were down 0.9pc last month, and are now down 47pc from the peak. Some property experts said the introduction of the new property price register in September prompted falls in prices, as people can now seen exactly what prices houses and apartments are selling for, rather than relying on estate agents. The average value of a property nationally is

Irish Fairy Tale Hides Horror Story...

How the great Irish fairy tale hides the true horror story... Gene Kerrigan's new book presents an alternative view of the economic crisis, suggesting that some people are actually benefiting from austerity policies. We've been subjected to the Big Lie. We are not all in this together, as this extract reveals By now, they can recite the fairy tale in their sleep. Politicians, their media fans, tame economists and hired mouthpieces use the fairy tale to explain what happened. Like all stories, the details can be changed from time to time, but the basic fairy tale about the Celtic Bubble, the crash and the recession is pretty consistent. And it goes like this. Once upon a time, the Irish people threw off the shackles of the past that held us back. We began to work hard, to innovate, to find within us the talents we always had but which had been suppressed or neglected for too long. In the bad old days, you see, the Brits held us back, or perhaps the Catholic Church sti

Ghost Estates In Dublin...

The term ghost estates colloquially refers to the list of 2,000 unfinished housing developments  compiled by the Department of the Environment. Dublin doesn’t do too badly in the 2011 rankings with 95 estates identified in the city council area, compared to 149 in neighbouring Fingal. The other two Dublin councils also returned quite positive figures; DĂșn Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council has 60 unfinished developments and South Dublin County Council 50. It’s clear the capital has escaped lightly when some of the numbers recorded in sparsely populated counties are considered. Sligo has 237 unfinished developments, Roscommon has 235. Dublin also has a low number of estates considered the most problematic. These are the developments where residents’ living conditions are such that they are not required to pay the household charge, generally where the developer has abandoned the unfinished estate. Only 19 estates in the city council area are on this list. Elm Park was on the depa