Daft Property - Irish Property News

Bulldozers send boomtime buildings crashing down... TWO unfinished houses that would have fetched €200,000 each during the boom have been bulldozed because of public safety fears. The unoccupied houses -- and foundations for three more -- were levelled at Church View in Clongeen, Co Wexford, at a cost to the taxpayer of €28,000. Other residents of the estate last night said they were relieved that Wexford County Council had taken action against the developers, Impulse Construction Ltd, by knocking down the houses. They said the unfinished houses had attracted vandals and encouraged anti-social behaviour for some time, and were unsightly at the entrance to the estate. This was the first time houses had been demolished in a new estate in Wexford, but the Department of the Environment confirmed other houses had been demolished on a small number of occasions. Wexford County Council confirmed it has more plans in the pipeline to carry out "public safety works which may involv...

Barack Obama and the Queen to visit Ireland during its time of despair... The financial rescue package for Ireland has been a national shame – so why are there no barricades on the streets of Dublin? Strange times in Ireland; a British queen and an American president staging back-to-back visits this week and next. But what is everybody talking about? It's the economy, stupid. Yes, the economy is really the only topic on the front pages, on the TV, on the lips of the subdued window-shoppers up and down Dublin's Grafton Street in turbulent May sunshine and showers. The Queen, who is said to love facts and figures, may or may not learn on her visit that Ireland has 14% unemployment, that its economy will grow by only 0.6% this year, that house prices have fallen 12% this year and 40% since the 2007 peak, with the decline accelerating. She may or may not discover that Ireland has suffered the biggest decline in educational standards of any developed nation in the last deca...

Boomtime buyers bypassed apartments for a suburban semi... IT's a snapshot of home ownership at the end of the property bubble and shows that, for most of us, only a house is a home. New research shows that despite a raft of advertisements encouraging people to buy 'luxury' apartments in 'exclusive' developments during the boom, buyers instead chose the traditional semi-d in the suburbs. The Eurostat housing report 2009, published yesterday, shows that Ireland has the lowest level of flat dwelling in the European Union. Just 3.1pc of the population live in flats or apartments, compared to an EU average of 41.7pc. Given our population of 4.5 million people, it means that just under 140,000 people live in a flat. This is despite more than 130,000 being built between 2000 and 2009 during the property boom. The most popular form of housing is a semi-detached or terrace house -- almost 58pc live in these homes, more than twice the EU average of 23pc. Detached...