Daft Property - Irish Property News

A surge in the number of home repossessions is on the cards after the Central Bank decided to change the rules. Debt-ravaged homeowners will no longer have one year's protection from having their houses repossessed. The 12-month ban on banks taking back properties from homeowners in arrears is being cut to two months. The move and other changes to regulatory rules for how struggling borrowers should be treated by lenders have been condemned by David Hall, of the Irish Mortgage Holders Organisation, as a "banker's charter" that will lead to a spike in repossession. He claimed: "The banking dogs are set to be unleashed on mortgage holders in arrears." The move to change the Central Bank's code of conduct on mortgage arrears – a rule book for how banks are to treat borrowers behind on their payments – is to be radically changed. The revised code is set to come into operation from next Thursday with a number of changes that banks have lobbied ...

Number of mortgages in arrears hits new peak of 14pc... ONE in seven mortgage holders is now in arrears, according to calculations by a leading ratings agency. Large numbers of these homeowners are understood to be avoiding getting into talks with their banks on restructuring their mortgages. Moody's also said house prices would fall another 20pc. The rating agency said its calculations show 14pc of residential mortgage holders are now in arrears, which works out at 107,000 households. This is a new peak, it said. Figures released by the Central Bank last month showed 10.2pc of mortgage holders were three months or more behind on their payments. "The steep decline in house prices since 2007 has placed the majority of borrowers deep into negative equity," it said. "Irish house prices have already fallen by 49.9pc between September 2007 and April 2012, and Moody's expects that house prices will fall a further 20pc from today's levels." Central Bank figu...

Nama might prove 'laboratory' for EU, leaked cable said... THE FIANNA Fáil-Green government considered the National Asset Management Agency (Nama) “might prove to be a laboratory” for other European Union states faced with banks on the brink of collapse, according to the latest batch of diplomatic communications published by Wikileaks. Ireland’s permanent Ambassador to the EU, Rory Montgomery, made the comment to the US ambassador to Ireland, Dan Rooney, at a meeting in Brussels in September 2009. Mr Montgomery revealed the EU “was watching closely” the establishment of Nama. At the same meeting he said that year’s budget would focus on cuts in public sector pay. The cable reports Mr Montgomery’s view was that “Ireland [was] paying too many civil servants too much to provide public services that could be provided for much less.” Mr Rooney met EU commissioner Charlie McCreevy on the same trip. Mr McCreevy had advised the Fianna Fáil-Green coalition to act quickly in es...

More than 60,000 homeowners fall 90 days behind on repayments... THE number of homeowners who are three months or more behind on their mortgage repayments has jumped to 60,000. Ratings agency Moody's released statistics yesterday showing 7.62pc of the home loans that have been sold off to investors are now 90 days or more in arrears. If this figure is applied across the entire 782,427 mortgages in the market, it means just short of 60,000 homeowners are now three or more months behind on their repayments. Figures from the Central Bank last month put the number of homeowners in arrears in the three months to March at just shy of 50,000, or 6.3pc of all mortgages. Now Moody's has produced figures for April showing the percentage in arrears has gone up from 6.65pc in February. This means an additional 8,000 mortgage holders fell behind on their payments between February and April. However, the Central Bank pointed out that the number of repossessions remained low at ...

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...

Department says it warned of property bubble... THE DEPARTMENT of Finance says it warned the Government from 2005 onwards about the dangers of a property bubble, internal official documents show. Briefing material prepared for the department’s secretary general Kevin Cardiff last month states that the department warned over several years that the “over-emphasis on construction left the economy vulnerable to macroeconomic shocks”. It also defends the department’s performance in failing to forecast the extent of the downturn, and points to similar failures by institutions such as the ESRI, Central Bank and the private sector to predict the magnitude of the slowdown. The material was prepared for the secretary general ahead of his appearance before the Oireachtas Public Accounts Committee just over a month ago. The contents of the documents have been released under the Freedom of Information Act in the same week Minister for Finance Brian Lenihan announced an external review of the depart...

Underwater mortgages: a guide to survival... Latest estimates suggest that as many as 340,000 home-owners, or one in five homes, are stuck in negative equity... HINDSIGHT IS a wonderful thing. Looking back at the prices people paid for Irish property during the boom, it’s easy to see how unsustainable they were. However at the time, despite warnings from everyone from the Central Bank to the Economist magazine that Ireland’s property market was a bubble which had to burst, banks and consumers ignored the advice and ploughed money into property, propping up prices until the inevitable collapse during 2008. Now, latest estimates suggest that as many as 340,000 home owners, or one in five homes, are stuck in negative equity and prices are still sliding . If this is the case, then people who purchased property as far back as 2003 with loan-to-values (LTVs) of more than 80 per cent, will discover that they owe more to the bank than what their house is worth. For example, at the peak of the ...

THE average house has lost almost €46,000 of its property-boom value. Prices fell in October for the 20th month in a row. House prices are now down 15pc from their peak of January/February 2007, according to the latest figures from the Permanent TSB/ESRI house price index. Over the past year prices are down 10.2pc after average prices nationally showed a fall of 0.8pc in October, a marginally smaller drop than in the previous two months. However, many economists feel that price declines have been more severe, with a number of estate agencies estimating that prices are already 30pc off their peak. And new figures out yesterday from the Central Bank seemed to back this up. They showed that residential mortgage lending is at its lowest level in 22 years. Permanent TSB executive Niall O'Grady yesterday defended the accuracy of the house price index. "The index remains as valid as it was when house prices were rising," he said. However, he admitted that there was a three-month...

Ireland's decision to guarantee all bank deposits will contribute to the demise of the single European currency, because it will erode the euro's credibility ...Hugh Hendry, chief investment officer and Partner at Eclectica Fund, told CNBC on Thursday... Watch the video: Promises of lavish spending such as this and others being discussed in Europe will erode investors' confidence, Hendry warned. The plan pledges to guarantee the liabilities of six Irish-owned banks totaling some 400 billion euros ($565 billion), more than twice the country's annual gross domestic product . "The decision, if left to stand … my prophecy is it will bring down the currency. The euro is not a tenable currency if you have politicians making such decisions. The reality is there is no such thing as a free lunch "... Irish lawmakers backed the plan and the government said it may be extended to foreign banks with retail units in Ireland, but it has raised questions in Brussels and Londo...

THE Irish banking system would have “totally collapsed” without the Government’s €400 billion crisis guarantee plan, the Tánaiste warned yesterday . Mary Coughlan made the claim as opposition parties attacked the rescue bid’s “vagueness”. The enterprise, trade and employment minister insisted failure to act would have tipped Ireland into economic meltdown. “We would have found ourselves in a different set of circumstances if we had not brought in this legislation. We would have undermined the system of banking and it would have totally collapsed,” she told the Dáil . Ms Coughlan was responding to demands from Labour leader Eamon Gilmore to explain exactly how much taxpayers were expected to put at risk to cover the rescue plan, and what banks would be charged if they take up the Government’s offer to cover their liabilities. “This country is being asked to go guarantor for the banks and in effect we are being asked to put up the deeds of the country as security in doing so. “How muc...