Daft Property - Irish Property News

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

Celtic Tiger developers trying to scam Nama – Taoiseach Taoiseach Enda Kenny has declared concerns that developers could be buying back assets seized by Nama at knockdown prices. Mr Kenny said he had some indications that boom-time speculators who could not repay massive loans - now tied to the taxpayer - were attempting to repurchase their properties at their current prices. Just over a week ago, the state toxic assets agency dismissed allegations repeated by a Fianna Fail senator about the practice. Mark Daly had claimed the taxpayer was picking up the bill, running into hundreds of thousands of euro, for the plunging loan values while those who borrowed the money regained their properties at a fraction of the original price. Speaking at the British Irish Parliamentary Assembly in Cork, Mr Kenny signalled his intention to meet finance minister Michael Noonan about the issue. "I have had some indications of attempts to acquire property that was taken from developers thr

Banks 'ignoring their ghost estates'... BANKS are choosing to avoid the legal responsibility for cleaning up hundreds of unfinished housing estates. Some 230 unfinished and dangerous estates have been abandoned by developers -- and banks which funded the projects have decided not to appoint receivers in an attempt to claw back the money. If receivers were appointed the banks would be legally responsible for clearing up the mess. Banks across the board have been blamed for refusing to address the problem. According to Housing Minister Willie Penrose, in some cases efforts by local authorities to meet with banks and developers to discuss the problem had met with no response. Banks also failed to appoint people to deal with the issue. He warned he would consider introducing legislation forcing the banks to take responsibility, or face the prospect of being fined. "I'll be looking to the banks and developers to designate key contacts. I'm also examining t

Nama's equity plan 'is doomed by ECB rates'... Hobbs rubbishes scheme to protect homeowners, insisting any progress would be wiped out by a few interest hikes. A proposal by Nama to protect homebuyers from negative equity has been dismissed as an attempt to "manipulate property prices" and will not work in the face of rising interest rates imposed by the ECB, leading economic adviser Eddie Hobbs says. "They're trying to put a floor on the market. You would have to say that it's a positive attempt, but the history of economics is littered with various attempts to manipulate property prices. If interest rates rise, it doesn't matter what kind of floor you try to put on the market, because you'll be overwhelmed by it. "I'm in Germany at the moment and the place is absolutely hopping. The German economy is booming and inflation is rising in Europe. The Central Bank in Frankfurt is going to raise interest rates to protect the Germa

National group to oversee efforts to deal with ghost estates... A NATIONAL co-ordination group is to be established within weeks to oversee action by local authorities in dealing with the most problematic ghost housing estates, according to Minister of State for Housing and Planning Willie Penrose. Addressing the Irish Planning Institute’s annual conference in Galway yesterday, he said one of his top priorities was that “clear, decisive and proactive actions are taken to progressively resolve the issues with unfinished housing developments”. It has emerged that the National Asset Management Agency (Nama) has 10 per cent of about 150 of the worst ghost estates that are unfinished and pose health and safety issues. The vast majority of the ghost estates that require the most work were financed by the foreign-owned banks operating in Ireland. About 28 per cent of the loans at Nama relate to land and development and about 16 per cent are in the Dublin area, where there is a great

Millions wiped off value of land in dezoning... DEVELOPERS have taken massive hits on the value of their land banks, as one-in-three local authorities have dezoned land earmarked for development. The moved has wiped hundreds of millions off the value of land across the country -- with taxpayers facing a massive bill for NAMA loans linked to land returning to agricultural use. Planning Minister Willie Penrose said yesterday that 12 of the State's 34 local authorities had made changes to their development plans which has resulted in thousands of sites now being classed as unsuitable for development. Last year, local authorities were ordered to dezone, rezone or forbid development on massive land banks to comply with tough new planning guidelines which set out where houses and commercial units could be built. The move came because councillors had zoned enough land during the boom years to build more than a million homes that were not needed. Councils had previously zoned m

At last! A plan to kick-start property... Nama's €1bn 'financial muscle' to get sales moving and help balance books. Frank Daly, the chairman of Nama, which has €1bn at its disposal, has said that the State agency intends to use its "financial muscle" to "kickstart the property market". Yesterday, Mr Daly told the Sunday Independent that the provision of "limited financial support" for the purchase of property was a "natural next step" for Nama. He said: "What we're aiming to do is build market confidence at sustainable levels -- to use Nama's financial muscle to kickstart the property market in a way that will benefit the project itself and provide people with an opportunity to own their own home." The disclosure that Nama has up to €1bn to directly intervene in the moribund market comes after an auction of property in Dublin on Friday which has generated a huge level of excitement. A total of €15m was s

Grinding despair of negative-equity generation hangs over all our lives... All truth passes through three stages. First it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident. Arthur Schopenhauer Ireland, 2031. A teenager and his teacher are walking out of an economics class. "My God, what lunacy," says the teen. "I can't believe that the banks were allowed to behave like that." "I know," answers his lecturer. "Imagine, they were able to sell full-recourse mortgages to naive first-time buyers, often way over 100 per cent, without any risk to themselves whatsoever. No wonder they all went mad and pushed money on any poor sod they could." "And then when the crash came, all the big property borrowers and the banks were protected by the Government via Nama and the bank guarantee, while all the small homeowners were screwed?" "Correct, son." "That's not capitalism,

For sale: the post-bubble rubble. €4,000 or nearest offer... SMALL PRINT: ON TUESDAY, an intriguing notice appeared in the small ads section on the back page of this newspaper. It read: “Arch for sale. This arch was built by artist Emma Houlihan. It was part of a Nama-related art project and built from the reconstituted rubble of a destroyed Leitrim house. Custom built. Perfect for gardens and spaces. Can function as a sculpture or a functional object.” There was a number listed to call, for queries about “cost and shipping”. Emma Houlihan was in Stockholm this week, where a number of interested parties had already called her number, although no solid offers of purchase had so far been made. What is this “arch” she is selling? “It’s a project I undertook while artist-in-residence for the Leitrim Sculpture Centre last summer,” she says. “It struck me that Leitrim was the ghost estate capital of Ireland, and I wanted to make a piece of art connected with that fact. I was mostly i

We need to re-trace our steps and go over what a complete mess has been made of this country.. . IS sovereignty of so little account that two senior cabinet members can consider throwing it away while the rest of the Government don't even know their leaders are doing this? What is being done to our country? Who will buy us, or sell us, next? What has really been going on since Brian Cowen concluded his disastrous occupation of the Finance Ministry and graduated to his even more disastrous holding of the job of Taoiseach? We need to re-trace our steps and go over again what a complete mess has been made of this country's governance, bringing us the acute embarrassments of this week. It began with Anglo, followed by all the other banks. It then proceeded to the Lisbon Treaty vote, enhancing Europe's powers over our sovereignty. Then it floundered into the disaster called NAMA and ended with debts that needed international rescue. It concludes with loss of sovereignty. Anglo f

Doomsday media coverage and the matter of the truth... A bit like the rain in a Frank McCourt novel, the bad news on the economy never stops pouring down on us. That picture of Ireland now seems firmly set in the opinion of the international media. Once the sick patient of Europe dutifully taking its medicine to help it get better, we are now, as the doctors might say, experiencing an adverse clinical event that is threatening our very life. The cure might be killing us. Last week's extremely disappointing news that the economy had contracted again by 1.2% in the second quarter added yet another symptom to the many more that erupted within just a few days: international bond market rates at record levels upping the price of government debt and therefore necessitating an even worse budget; long-term unemployment up; emigration up; 110,000 households in arrears on electricity and gas bills. The list of damaging symptoms was endless. All last week, international commentary from the Wa

A drunken Premier playing right into the hands of the EU Can one bank bring down a country? At the end of August, a reporter from the New York Times asked that question about Ireland's bust Anglo Irish Bank. The Dublin government denied such a thing were possible. Yet now it is looking very much like it might happen. Anglo's debts are so vast that the government may have to pay 34billion euros to bail-out the bank. Bail-outs for other Irish banks will bring the total to 50billion euros. Party animal: Irish Premier Brian Cowen and admirers at a Fianna Fail function Brian Lenihan, the finance minister, was forced to admit yesterday that these bail-out costs will push the national deficit this year to 32 per cent of GDP. Such figures would be shocking in Britain. Even at its worst, Britain's deficit is heading for little more than 10 per cent. However in Ireland, where the entire working population numbers just 1.8million and unemployment is at 14 per cent, figures like that a

Call for inquiry into property bubble... An independent inquiry is needed into the Government’s failure to control the property bubble, a State-funded academic institution said today. In a scathing report, the National Institute for Regional and Spatial Analysis (Nirsa) also demanded a full investigation into charges of cronyism in the planning process. Furthermore, the body which examines how the country is developing, claimed the National Asset Management Agency (Nama) is a worrying organisation set up as part of a response to protect developers potentially at the expense of taxpayers. Professor Rob Kitchin, director of Nirsa, which is based in NUI Maynooth, said an inquiry into planning decisions and alleged close links between politicians and property speculators was necessary if the housing market was to recover. “An independent inquiry is needed to investigate all aspects of the planning system and its operation within and across different agencies and at all scales in Ireland in

Selling off state assets on the cheap is just madness... This Government will not contemplate selling property just in case it would bankrupt the banks. The State's argument is that the market is depressed so if we were to sell the land, we would not get a fair price for it. So we will postpone the problem: we get NAMA -- a financial skip into which the banks throw their worthless mistakes -- and you pay. The logic of NAMA and this Government's central strategy is to wait for the value of land to improve before selling. Whether you agree with it or not, this is their logic. It can be summed up by: "Don't sell land in a depressed market." Yet at the same time, the Government has just announced that it will sell real assets via privatisation in a similarly depressed market. So why can it sell ESB -- a real company with real assets -- and not a field in Athlone which is worthless and should command the price a farmer would pay you to put a donkey grazing on it? Why i

And They're Off... The Hook Again... As the Nama smoke begins to clear, it is apparent developers deemed too big to fail are being bailed out just like the banks... Last week, there was the ritual sacrifice. Seán FitzPatrick "bowed to the inevitable" as he said himself, and petitioned to be declared a bankrupt. From here on in, if he is to enjoy any luxury in his life, it will be as a kept man. His wife, who never worked a day in Anglo Irish Bank, enjoys half a pension pot somewhere north of €3m. She is also part owner of a number of properties, which is just as well for the FitzPatricks, if they are to continue living in the style to which they have become accustomed. There is little sympathy for FitzPatrick. In a country where so many are struggling, he has become the pantomime villain. As a result, there was no way that Anglo Irish Bank was ever going to accept a private deal to settle his debts. The public would have been outraged. But what of all the rest? FitzPatric

NAMA is now the biggest danger to property prices... If one is to take NAMA planners at their word , a wave of commercial property and development land is set to be unleashed into the Irish market, presumably driving up supply and hammering prices downward . The original idea of NAMA, that it could hoard properties in ways not open to the banks, seems to be subtly changing. Now the agency is talking about developers rapidly reducing their debts via sales of assets and in less than three years. The obvious question arises, who is going to buy all the land banks that are going to be unleashed and what will the unleashing do to prices? One view is -- who cares if prices plunge downward, the market needs to find a price floor at some point. That is all very well, but it is the biggest developers who'll be selling first, the smaller ones will come to the fire sale party late and most likely pay the price, literally. There is also the concern about overspill into the residential market,

Writing Ireland's wrongs... Like buzzards picking over a carcass, foreign media is delighting in writing in-depth analysis pieces on our economic tribulations...The way they see us: we were once the landlords of the world; now ghost estates is where we're at. Ireland may not be ablaze, but it is all the rage. Last Tuesday, the UK Guardian newspaper did a major feature on the once mighty, but now much lamented, Emerald Isle. The week before that both the Financial Times and the New York Times produced long articles on Ireland and the state it's in. The headlines said it all. "Ireland's miracle – or mirage?"; "Ireland's shattered dreams"; "How bankers brought Ireland to its knees". It immediately becomes obvious that these esteemed organs are not in pursuit of clues as to how the country produced Jedward or Crystal Swing. Ireland has now become something of a laboratory for chin-stroking international journalists. Profiling the place is a

Nama: the truth it's a bailout for developers... The National Asset Management Agency (Nama), which was set up to cleanse the banking system of toxic debts, has been revealed to be solely a bailout for builders and developers. The stark truth of the agency's core objective emerged this weekend as the Government's banking strategy lurched towards outright nationalisation. The deepening crisis in European stock and currency markets forced the Educational Building Society (EBS) into state control as it failed to find private investors, and now market analysts say that AIB, the country's largest bank, will be effectively nationalised by the end of the year. The unravelling of the Government's banking strategy -- which was designed to avoid nationalisation -- came as Frank Daly, the chairman of Nama, announced that its "core objective will be to recover for the taxpayers whatever it has paid for the loans in addition to whatever it has invested to enhance property a

Too many estates in the capital have been left in a mess after developers pulled out... THE Government is being called on to change derelict site legislation to prevent vacant Nama land turning into a new generation of eyesores. The call comes as it emerged that there are over 3,700 unfinished houses in developments in south Co Dublin alone. Councillors have backed a motion seeking a review of the laws and a redress of the balance "between the interests of developers and local communities". It was brought before a meeting of the council by Cllr Dermot Looney (Lab), who said the existing legislation favoured developers who had been allowed to leave behind ghost estates and "other kips" after the property crash. Derelict At the same meeting it emerged that South Dublin County Council has 3,789 houses in 23 developments that have not been completed. The council will now write to the Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government, John Gormley, to carry out