Daft Property - Irish Property News

Can we remake Ireland's future? The year ended with the certainty that the global crisis is not a short-term glitch, and that Ireland is suffering more than most. Will 2009 bring the shift in Irish political culture needed to bring us back from the brink? LATE LAST YEAR, when the rock band Tindersticks played in Dublin, they finished their set with The Not Knowing , a haunting ballad of love and denial. The words seemed especially apt and particularly poignant: "The not knowing is easy/ The suspecting, that's okay/ Just don't tell me for certain/ That our love has gone away." Replace "love" with "boom" and the sad song would be a three-hankie job. This time last year, the not knowing still came easy and even the strong suspicion that the good times were definitively over could be drowned in denial, excess or the mellow lullabies of "soft landings". Now we know for certain, and if there is to be comfort in 2009, we have to find it in t...

Buy my house and get me free - sellers turn to novel ways of enticing customers... 2008 Review: HARD SELL: Want a Lamborghini? A pad in Cape Verde? A wife? These days vendors are getting increasingly desperate, says Paul O'Doherty... SO, IT'S come to this. You're sitting on your stack of blocks that someone in risk management - the irony of it - said would make a great investment five years ago, and now, your Polish long-term tenants have gone home and you can't sell, rent or live in it for love nor money. Or, the bachelor pad has just become a fashion accessory too much - read, I can't afford it - and you're going to move back in with poor Mum and Dad. You can take your pick from any number of examples. Meanwhile, the bank wants to know whether, having missed last month's repayment, you would mind calling in for some financial advice? But how to shift that one-time prime piece of real estate that just won't budge? What you know for certain is that you...

2008 Review: Buyers haven't gone away, you know, says Ronan O'Driscoll - but selling the 30,000 empty new homes will be a challenge... THANKFULLY, WE are coming to the end of the GUBU year for new homes in Ireland. It was unquestionably grotesque, unbelievable, bizarre and unprecedented. Whilst we entered 2008 with some degree of nervousness, we were hopeful that it would be a better year than the annus horribilis that was 2007. Sadly, the market went from bad to very much worse. Savills started the year in spectacular style, selling over 650 new homes between January and Easter, with very successful new launches virtually every week. This demand had been triggered by some of our leading developers who reduced prices significantly in the early part of the year. The market responded very positively to the value, with reductions of up to 25 per cent on some new Dublin projects. In January, we even had queues at three of our new developments for Manor Park Homebuilders, Capel Deve...

Property spend plunges €40bn... Irish spend on property has crashed by 60pc in 2008 compared to last year, with expenditure down by a crushing 73pc -- or around €40bn -- since the market peaked in 2006. Our property spend is forecast to fall to €15bn this year -- down from €45bn in 2007 and a heady €54.4bn in 2006, according to the latest 'Property Outlook' from Savills. Joan Henry, head of Research at Savills Ireland says that all sectors of the property market have been affected -- most obviously the new homes area. The total spend on new homes is expected to fall from an estimated €23bn in 2007 to just €6bn this year. Spend in the Irish investment market is expected to be down as much as 75pc from last year's €2bn. Spend on domestic land is expected to fall by a staggering 80pc. In the new homes as in the second hand market, prices have fallen by as much as 30pc this year and maybe more if looked at on an individual basis. "Successive price reductions this year, cou...

Latest round of cuts as vendors move to sell... Prices are tumbling at all levels of the market as homeowners accept that this is what's needed to tempt buyers ...four with deep price cuts: BAGGOT STREET FROM €5M TO €3.8M NUMBER 72 LOWER Baggot Street was priced at €5 million when it first came to the market in August 2006. Since then this price has been revised down to €3.8 million by selling agent Lisney, a cut of €120,000 or 24 per cent. One of the last inhabited houses on Lower Baggot Street, the four-storey over garden level terraced house has been used as a home and dental practice for many years. The 392sq m (4,200sq ft) of living space includes a self-contained flat in the basement. It is also one of the few houses on that part of Baggot Street to still retain its full garden and mews - a two-storey mews house with three small bedrooms, and rear access onto a laneway. The house was put up for auction back in September 2006, but failed to sell. It has been on the market quie...

Dublin's early Xmas lights failing to dispel high street gloom... Christmas is coming early to Dublin this year as city officials try to dispel the gloom from the country's first recession in two decades. Mayor Eibhlin Byrne will switch on the Irish capital's festive lights display on Nov. 9, before cities such as London, New York and Edinburgh, after bringing the ceremony forward by three weeks from last year. ''For retailers, it's not an easy time,'' said Byrne. ''We are harking back to John F. Kennedy and we are asking not what your city can do for you but what you can do for your city.'' Irish shoppers powered the fastest-growing economy in Western Europe over the last five years. Now, consumers are cutting spending as unemployment rises and property prices slump. Gerry Harvey, chairman of Sydney-based electronics and furniture retailer Harvey Norman Holdings Ltd., which has four Dublin stores, described Ireland's economy as '...

So why are we in this international economic crisis - it's no accident - it's been planned for some time. Meet the money masters... "The powers of financial capitalism had a far-reaching plan, nothing less than to create a world system of financial control in private ... all » hands able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole...Their secret is that they have annexed from governments, monarchies, and republics the power to create the world's money..." THE MONEY MASTERS is a non-fiction, historical documentary that traces the origins of the political power structure that rules our nation and the world today. The modern political power structure has its roots in the hidden manipulation and accumulation of gold and other forms of money. The development of fractional reserve banking practices in the 17th century brought to a cunning sophistication the secret techniques initially used by goldsmiths fraudulently to accumu...

BBC panel discuss the ramifications of the passing of the $700 billion 'Bailout Bill' in the US, and the impact that will be felt in Europe and the Middle East...

Exchequer faces €5bn shortfall as tax revenues drop sharply... TAX REVENUES are continuing to plummet, according to the latest official figures, which indicate the shortfall for the year could exceed €5 billion. This is far worse than the Government was expecting as recently as two months ago. In July, the Government projected a tax shortfall of €3 billion for the year, but a rapid slowdown in consumer spending has hit VAT receipts, while the dramatic slowdown in stamp duty and capital gains tax receipts has continued due to the property crash. The implications of the figures will be discussed by the Cabinet today at its first meeting after the August holiday break. Substantial cuts in public spending for next year now appear inevitable and are likely to be accompanied by increases in borrowing and taxation. The Opposition parties last night accused the Government of failing in its duty to get to grips with the crisis in the public finances during the summer and taking its traditional ...

The fundamentals of the Irish housing market point to more sharp falls over the next two to three years... WITH HOUSE prices falling fast and likely, come the autumn, to fall even faster, no sane person would currently even think of buying a house. But this immediately raises the question of how long the crash will last. In other words, how long will it be before you can buy a house and not regret the decision for the rest of your life? Looking at past collapses in house prices abroad, we can see that they fall into two broad groups. In the first group, that includes Japan and Switzerland, prices suffered a long, slow decline of a few per cent a year for a decade. The second group, that includes the Netherlands and Finland, saw real prices halve in three to four years, and then fall gently for a few more years. If this second pattern repeats in Ireland, given that we are already one year into the crash, we can expect two to three more years of sharp falls. After that, prices should sta...

Dubliners are bracing themselves for further flooding as heavy downpours are predicted in the coming days. The news comes as residents in many parts of the capital are today coming to terms with the damage wreaked by Saturday's intense rainfall. Met Eireann says heavy and thundery rain is likely in Leinster tonight, with flooding a real possibility in many areas. And the outlook for the coming days does not look much better, with heavy rain predicted for Tuesday and Wednesday. Meanwhile, a senior Dublin City Council official has admitted the capital's drainage system cannot cope with the "freak" rainfall which occurred over the weekend. Rainfall City engineer Tom Leahy said the system was designed to deal with normal or even heavy rainfall. "It cannot deal with these extreme events," Mr Leahy said today. A top climate expert warned that Dubliners will have to get used to the heavy rainfall and flash floods that hit the city on Saturday. Dr John Sweeney of NU...

The end of July reports show... Number signing on Live Register rises by 10,600 The rise in the number of people claiming unemployment benefits over the last year has increased at the fastest rate since records began over 40 years ago. In July, 10,600 people joined the Live Register bringing the seasonally adjusted total signing on to 226,000, on a seasonally adjusted basis, according to figures released by the Central Statistics Office this morning. The monthly increase is the second highest on record after March of this year. The number on the register is the highest in a decade. Last month’s increase lifted the standardised unemployment rate to 5.9 per cent, the CSO said. Over the last 12 months the number of people seeking unemployment benefits has risen by over a third with 63,647 people joining the register. In July 6,700 males and 3,800 females joined the register. Leo Varadkar, Fine Gael enterprise spokesman accused the Government of losing control of a deteriorating economic...

Homeowners left reeling as 30pc price fall predicted... HOME owners are reeling from a double-whammy of bad news, after both an international broker and one of Ireland's leading economists warned house prices could plummet even further over the coming months. In a statement announcing the predictions, international broker Credit Suisse said that Ireland's property market is continuing to tumble, with house prices potentially falling by another 30pc over the coming months. The internationally-respected firm has made the comments because it says the market is only reacting to the credit crunch now. The upshot is that the impact of the credit crunch has yet to filter through to the Irish housing market, with any weakness already experienced down to a drop in demand rather than tighter credit. "As a result, we see mortgage affordability decreasing and house price declines accelerating. What is more, the housing market has been underpinned by strong immigration and rental deman...

..."Does Brian Cowen really know what he is doing? ...The Lisbon Treaty defeat was a fiasco for the government. Not that it matters even a tiny bit in the real world, but in the world of political perceptions and of the neurotic EU, it means everything and Cowen did not have the stature - yet - to tell the EU to cop on. ...Cowen seems to have been unnerved by the Lisbon defeat. He has seemed unsure, vacillating and unsettled since then. His performances over the last few days have been his worst, aided and abetted by Lenihan. ...The announced cuts in public expenditure are risible. Given the constraints that the prevailing hegemony has imposed on our political culture, tax increases of any sort are out of the question. There is no question that the people who made fortunes during the boom years should now bear the burden of a few bad years. Also no question about borrowing, beyond the constraints imposed by the EU. ...So the only way to deal with a sharp fall in tax revenues is to...

The Irish Examiner mentions in a report today: SURGING unemployment and sliding tax returns helped blow a €5.6bn black hole in Government finances last night... The opposition’s ire focused on Mr Cowen, who had been Finance Minister up to May, rather than Mr Lenihan. Labour leader Eamon Gilmore accused Mr Cowen of “walking the country into the red”. Fine Gael finance spokesman Richard Bruton said Mr Cowen had to take personal responsibility for the scale of downturn as he had introduced four inflationary budgets designed to meet the needs of the “electoral cycle, not the economic cycle”. These budgets had used the unsustainable revenues from the property boom to “ramp up spending increases” at twice the rate of growth of the economy, Mr Bruton said. The Irish Independent paints a similar gloomy black hole picture... MINISTERS will have to cut €500m from their spending plans to pay for increased dole payments, as the property slump blows a €3bn black hole in their tax take. Departmen...

Down, Down, Get On Down... So just how low can it get? Irish Times Property News: "Deep price cuts in end-of-season sales. WITH summer holidays looming and a glut of €1 millon plus homes on the market, and the realisation is finally setting in that a drastic price cut could be required to secure a buyer. While the property market has seen price "adjustments" across the board, heavy discounts are now offer in some cases. In the six properties listed here, the average price cut is 33.4 per cent. The slowdown has been particularly tough on high-end properties, which have a smaller pool of potential buyers. Price drops of over 30 per cent can mean upwards of €1 million being shaved off the asking price. KILLINEY: -31% EIRENE ON Marino Avenue East in Killiney, Co Dublin, came on the market in March at €6 million. Now three months later Savills HOK has cut the asking price to €4.15 million for the two acre property which is a stone's throw from the Dart and beach and may h...

I read in the Irish Independent today that in Dublin's Temple Bar, once a property hotspot, that..." prices are beginning to drop: a spacious second floor, period-style one-bed, renovated 15 years ago on Parliament Street, with views of the Liffey and the evening sun, has been on the market for two months and the price is down from €365,000 to €345,000. At the Friary, off the cobblestones on Fownes Street, a one-bedroom west-facing apartment over Luigi Malone's restaurant is €410,000, but expected to drop. In Temple Bar Square, the quarter's heartbeat, a two-bedroom apartment, with access to a precious roof terrace and views of the city's skyline has been on the market a year and is available for €450,000. In the tenant zone, plans are in the early stages to refurbish and upgrade some of derelict Crampton Court apartments with its little garden, car-parking spacess and views overlooking the Liffey. And to rent? Despite so few properties being available, bites are s...

One of my favourite sites about what's happening with the Irish Property scene is The Property Pin - thepropertypin.com. "... thepropertypin.com was established to discuss the existence of a damaging speculative price bubble in the Irish housing market" ... The Property Pin is " not here to cheerlead the crash but rather to illuminate, to provide balanced discussion and to help prevent another property bubble from occurring in the future." A great forum - well worth a visit!

Bertie Ahern has announced his decision to resign as leader of the country. " Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern earned his nickname the "Teflon Taoiseach" for his uncanny ability to survive personal and political scandals, scandals which would have toppled a less gifted politician... One of his mentors was the disgraced former Taoiseach Charles Haughey, who took millions of pounds from businessmen. He called Mr Ahern "the most cunning, the most ruthless, the most devious of them all"... As Taoiseach, Mr Ahern presided over an economic boom - the so-called "Celtic Tiger" - which has seen Ireland transformed from a largely poor, rural, agricultural country into a prosperous nation, with job opportunities attracting immigrants from all over the world. But the economy, largely based on an unprecedented property boom, has shown signs of flagging for the past year or two, while Ahern has been at the centre of a long-running probe into payments which he alle...

Bargain time again... This time it's in Smithfield, Dublin City Centre, where Chief O'Neill's is up for sale at €18 million - that's a whopping €3m price reduction from the previous price tag of €21 million in 2007! The modern 77-room hotel is well situated overlooking Smithfield Square, (or Plaza as it's now know,) in the heart of Dublin City. The Jameson Distillery tower is included in the sale. It was originally used to distill Ireland’s famous Jameson Whiskey (from 1895), the chimney, with its 360°panoramic views is now a popular tourist attraction. It has some spectacular views over Dublin city, port and surrounding Dublin & Wicklow Mountains. A nice buy!