Daft Property - Irish Property News

THERE was further gloom for homeowners after property prices plunged again last month. Prices have been diving now for almost four years. And there is no let-up in sight, with economists predicting prices will keep going down next year. The average residential property has lost almost €150,000 in value since the peak and is now worth around €169,000, according to the latest gloomy figures. Around €232,000 has been wiped off the value of houses and apartments in Dublin as the capital continues to suffer much sharper price declines than the rest of the country. The new figures from the CSO also show that the annual rate of decline in prices jumped to 15.6pc in November. Prices fell by 1.5pc last month and are now down 46pc from the peak of the market in early 2007, the official figures show. The CSO only gives percentage changes, but analysts have calculated that the price of an average property is now just €169,000. This is down from €314,000 when the property bubble was at its m...

ESRI has been getting its forecasts wrong for years... In Irish economic circles, you tend to take much more stick from having been right than having been wrong. Those economists who got it wrong in the boom and believed the hype about the soft landing, such as the ESRI, still manage to grab front-page headlines. In contrast, those who called it right are put under constant scrutiny and are still being dismissed by the establishment as cranks, celebrities or, at best, lucky opportunists. The "insiders" rally round each other even when they are wrong and the "outsiders" are denigrated. In the economics world, for what it's worth, the outsiders' crime -- the crime of being right -- is particularly dangerous precisely because it exposes the limitations of the insiders. This type of insider/outsider prototype is commonplace in Ireland. Yesterday, we saw more of this type of behaviour where the establishment insiders carry on with their forecasts despite th...

The hangover of Ireland's property boom: Abandoned ghost estates and lifeless houses stripped of their worth... Anyone against debt forgiveness should read this dispatch from a ghost estate... and thank God it's them instead of you... Rhoda Brogan stands at the front door of her three-bed semi, quietly surveying the abandoned, lifeless houses that surround her. In the centre of the estate there is a green area, wildly overgrown with weeds and nettles and circled by a cracked road and street lights that don't work. It is eerily calm; there are no cars driving around, no children playing - the only sound is the wind. All of a sudden, Rhoda’s eyes narrow and focus on an abandoned home directly across the road and she considers something for a moment before noticing the open windows. ‘Oh my God! Someone has got into that house since I left this morning,’ she says, quickly crossing the street with her four-year-old daughter, Saoirse, in tow. Around the back of the em...

Economist reveals appalling vista of bankrupt and beleaguered Republic... THE EURO ZONE debt crisis will be solved “eventually” as it is to Germany’s benefit to remain in the euro, UCD economist Morgan Kelly has said. Delivering the Hubert Butler Lecture at the Kilkenny Arts Festival on Saturday, Kelly predicted very large European Central Bank loans to Ireland, Spain and Italy. Even if the Republic were to receive favourable terms, “deep problems in Ireland remain”, he added. In an hour-long address, Kelly also predicted that Irish debt will approach €250 billion by 2015, €50 billion more than Coalition estimates, and has said there was “no way we can repay that”. He also warned that the losses in the Irish banks would be much greater than predicted, reaching €100 billion rather than the €60 billion estimated. The academic, who has been praised widely for forecasting the depth of the recession, has recently warned of an impending mortgage default crisis and on Saturday descr...

Bertie bags $40,000 - for tips on Celtic Tiger 'success'... FORMER Taoiseach Bertie Ahern is charging American companies a fortune to present a new lecture -- about how he transformed our economy in the Celtic Tiger boom. The man targeted by many as the architect of our crippling recession, is charging more than $40,000 (€27,554) a time for speaking engagements with the elite Washington Speakers Bureau. During the lecture, Mr Ahern offers tips to bosses of leading firms on how to be competitive. The former Fianna Fail leader has been employed for a number of years as one of the highest-paid speakers with the bureau -- whose motto is 'Connecting you with the world's greatest minds' . In his latest lecture -- entitled 'Prime Minister as CEO' -- he tells listeners to adopt Ireland's Celtic Tiger as a model of economic growth. Last night it was described as "bewildering". Bosses of the bureau refused to reveal the number of times Mr A...

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...

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...

Homeowners to blame for crisis too, says Bruton Irish people 'ought to have been aware where things were going' when buying during boom... FORMER Taoiseach John Bruton says that Irish people "ought to have been aware where things were going" with the economy when they bought houses during the boom. "I have been someone who has been very critical of the EU authorities and the ECB and others in not using powers that they clearly had under the treaties to ensure prudential supervision both in the countries lending to Ireland and in the Irish banks themselves, and I think there is a responsibility there that I don't row back from, but, on the other hand, we also ought to have been aware where things were going. "Everybody could see that house prices were rising faster [than they should have been]," Mr Bruton -- who now holds the position of president of the IFSC -- told the Sunday Independent. The former Taoiseach's attempt to add ordinary...

Hundreds of repossessed homes in Ireland to be sold by auction... UK property consultancy Allsop to hold auction in April at Dublin's Shelbourne hotel: Flats in Ireland that could have fetched €150,000 in the Celtic Tiger years are to be put on the market for as little as €25,000 (£21,000) in the country's first ever mass auction of repossessed homes. And, in a sign of how wide the property crash is, the latest item to turn up in liquidation sales in Dublin is a job lot of 15 cranes, including a pair towering over Anglo Irish Bank's half-built headquarters in the city's docklands. "Tower cranes were among the most sought-after heavy plant and machinery 10 years ago," Ricky Wilson of Wilsons Auctions says. "You couldn't buy them quick enough. Now they are left idle for two or three years on sites." He has 15 cranes worth €500,000 going on sale on 26 March, with German, Dutch and Polish buyers expressing interest. But it is the auction ...

Boom buyers seethe as units now three for price of one... HOUSEHUNTERS in a busy commuter town can now get a two-bedroom apartment for just €110,000 -- a third of the original asking price. It's a case of 'three for the price of one' at the exclusive Capella Court apartments in Newbridge, Co Kildare. When the gated development first opened in 2007 -- buyers forked out prices starting at €322,000. Attractive But now they will be seething at the prospect that newcomers can buy three apartments for the money they handed over at the height of the boom. Residents at Capella Court who bought in 2007 will be paying three times the amount in monthly mortgage repayments of their new neighbours for apartments of the same size and specifications. The attractive price tag comes as receivers have been appointed to re-launch the apartments. Dwellings are finished inside and lighting, footpaths and landscaping are in place. The two-bedroom apartments are set to attract investors, with ave...

Recession: the bad luck of the Irish... It was once hailed as the best place to live in the world. Now it’s in the grip of a terrifying economic storm. Could Ireland be the first euro country to go bust? In Ireland, the biggest funerals take place in the smallest churches. St Mochta’s, on Dublin’s western fringes, is little bigger than a front room. So many mourners turned up for the funeral of Patrick Rocca that they spilt out onto the pavement. Anyone who is anyone in modern Ireland was there, huddled together under a sky the colour of a day-old bruise. Politicians, pop stars, billionaire developers, horsemen and the sporting elite. Even the paparazzi. Rocca would have liked that. The 42-year-old was the self-styled poster boy for the new, resurgent Ireland, with a glamorous wife, private planes and helicopters, and a property business worth, at its peak in 2007, €450m. But one morning in January, he snapped. The first sign that anything was wrong was when neighbours saw him walking ...

Trophy seaside home tells story of the boom... IF A SINGLE house could tell the story of the property boom then it might be Sorrento Villa on Vico Road in Dalkey, Co Dublin. The Victorian detached house, facing the sea, slumbered up on the hill for decades, its interior divided into two spacious units that would have been described as flats rather than apartments. The house dates from the 1860s when it was built by a provost of Trinity College as a summer villa: and he chose one of the finest sites on the hill with a sunny east-to-south exposure. Two years ago when property prices reached fever pitch, it came on the market with an Advised Minimum Value (AMV) of €4.5 million. However, after intense bidding at auction it sold for €5.6 million. Stamp duty at 9 per cent added an additional €500,000. The new owners went on to spend many thousands more on redecorating the rooms and making changes to the layout, converting it to a five-bedroom house. They also drew up plans to install an expe...

Classic song by the spitting image TV show to the tune of the Madness song - Our House. Based on the financial situation of the time, rather like that of today..... Lyrics: Dad believed what Maggie said Get a mortgage buy a home So dad took out a great big loan For a while there we were chuffed Now the market has collapsed And we're absolutely stuffed Our house, in the middle of a slump Our house, no one wants to buy this dump Dad is desperate to sell But now our homes worth even less Than a pension from Maxwell Our living room's a mess Full of magistrates and bailiffs Trying to repossess Our house, in the middle of the boom Our house, it was worth a small fortune Our house, left us in a dreadful state Our house, why the hell'd we decorate We really caught a cold Nowhere we can go to now All the council houses have been sold Our dads taken some stick He's still voting Tory though By God he must be thick Our house, didn't work out like we planned Our house, prices dr...

Does the following sound fimilar?... " This is an extraordinary period...Over the past few weeks, many...have felt anxiety about their finances and their future. I understand their worry and their frustration . We've seen triple-digit swings in the stock market. Major financial institutions have teetered on the edge of collapse , and some have failed. As uncertainty has grown, many banks have restricted lending. Credit markets have frozen. And families and businesses have found it harder to borrow money. We're in the midst of a serious financial crisis ... First, how did our economy reach this point? For more than a decade, a massive amount of money flowed ...from investors abroad, because our country is an attractive and secure place to do business. This large influx of money to... banks and financial institutions -- along with low interest rates -- made it easier...to get credit. These developments allowed more families to borrow money for cars and homes... some for the ...

House building crash helped spark sudden rise in jobless figures... HOUSE building crashed after the Christmas holidays last year, new CSO figures show -- helping to explain the sudden rise in unemployment during 2008. Output in house construction was at the lowest level since the current statistics began in 2000. It was also 20pc less than the previous low point eight years before. House building slumped more than l30pc on the previous quarter, as builders left sites closed after the New Year break. This left the volume of output down 38pc on the same period of 2007. The value of houses built was down 35pc, suggesting little change in prices over the 12 months. Non-residential building was up almost 9pc compared with 2007, and the value of the buildings was 14pc greater. This gain left total construction down almost 22pc on the previous year. But Rossa White, economist at Davy Research, said the figures seemed to be saying that non-house building was already slowing fast in 2007. ...

Came across a great article by Shaun Connolly, Political Correspondent, on the Irish Examiner Newspaper: " Clowning around in the doleful economic circus ... ROLL up! Roll up! Marvel at the economic circus act of the Two Brians — Mr Boom and Mr Bust! Thrill as Brian Cowen — Mr Boom — hurtles through the air powered only by the overheating property explosion! Scream as Brian Lenihan — Mr Bust — plunges back down to earth as the housing bubble bursts violently in his face! Quiver as the Two Brians tremble on the high wire together, desperately trying to keep their fiscal balance with no safety net blow them. The recession started precisely four minutes late as the Taoiseach and Finance Minister delayed their entry to what, by the look on their glum little faces, could well have passed for their political funerals. With the stock market collapsing at an even faster rate than the unemployment lines were growing, it was hardly any wonder both men looked sullen as they unveiled their my...

Ireland Property - Daft Property! "There are two tellings to every story"... Story 1 is the average punters view: House prices in Ireland are dropping dramatically..."For Sale" signs are springing up everywhere like some prolific new species (albeit genetically modified .) The buy property and become rich fantasy is fading fast into the mists, like so many other myths and legends. For some negative equity is now a reality. The building industry is crumbling. Unemployment rising. Repossessions increasing... Story 2 is the vested interests view: The Irish property market is only adjusting slightly...There's no need for panic...The prices drops are good for homeowners as they will produce a more balanced and stable market. There's now good value for buyers etc. "A little of anything isn't worth a pin; but a wee bit of sense is worth a lot"... Property Bubble? The Irish property market has enjoyed unprecedented growth every year since 1993. To sta...