Daft Property - Irish Property News

Just eight houses sold under the hammer in Dublin this year, as the number of houses offered at auction collapsed by 80 per cent. In total,19 properties were offered for sale in the capital’s auction room; in 2006, at the height of the boom, more than 1,000 properties were auctioned in the city. Estate agents Bennetts held most of this year’s auctions, putting five properties under the hammer. Lisney handled four auctions, as did Sherry FitzGerald, while Colliers Jackson-Stops auctioned three. Douglas Newman Good, Harper O’Grady and Property Team each held one auction. Simon Ensor, director of auctions at Sherry FitzGerald, described the number of auctions this year as unprecedented. ‘‘In the past, a quiet year for us would have been one where we [Sherry FitzGerald] held 25 auctions and where overall, there were around 100 across the entire market," he said. ‘‘I’ve been selling houses by auction since the mid-1980s, and I don’t ever remember a year where there were so few sales.&q

Desperation as luxury home prices halved... A DEVELOPER of luxury homes just 11km from Dublin Airport has been forced to slash the €1.4m sales price in half in a bid to attract buyers. Detached five-bed houses at Lynnwood in Ballyboughal, in north Co Dublin, originally went on the market for €1.4m. The 3,013-sq-ft (280sq-m) houses were first reduced by €450,000 in a bid to attract purchase-shy buyers. Then on Tuesday, the price was cut back another €100,000 to €850,000. By late yesterday, developers Area Building dropped the price by another €100,000 to €750,000. The move to cut the price in half came days after leading developer Taggart was forced into administration. Selling agent Paul Tobin said the homes were fully fitted out to a high standard. He insisted that the developer had spent €1.1m building each of the houses in the small scheme, once land values and construction costs were added together. Mr Tobin said the developer had been trying to sell the houses for months and was n