Daft Property - Irish Property News

Luxury flats to be set aside for social housing... THEY once had a price tag of almost €1.5m each but now a set of luxury apartments nestled in the foothills of the Dublin Mountains are being sold for an average of just €177,500. And instead of attracting Celtic Tiger cubs, some of the high-end dwellings are being set aside for social housing. A total of 58 apartments in the Beacon South Quarter, Sandyford, which are in NAMA, have been purchased by the voluntary housing body Cluid. The apartments, which were built at the height of the boom, have views over Dublin and are serviced by the M50 and the Luas. Receiver They were bought from a receiver appointed by NAMA to the development company Landmark Enterprises. It is the first such deal between NAMA and a voluntary body and will see 34 of the apartments going to people on the social housing list for Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown local authority. The remaining 24 will be rented through the private market. Three-quarters of th...

Full employment to bust in four years... IT took just four years for the country to go from full employment to a situation where one-in-seven people is out of work. As recently as 2007 unemployment stood at just 4.6pc -- less than one in 20 of the workforce. That has trebled to 14.6pc today. It may come as a shock to Celtic Tiger cubs, but you only have to go back to 1994 to find a similar proportion of people out of work. Back then, the unemployment rate had been bobbing around 14pc for over a decade -- down only slightly from its peak of 17pc in the mid-1980s. The difference between then and now is that a staggering 440,000 people are signing on for the dole today. Even at its worst in 1993 there were fewer than 300,000 people on the Live Register. Then came the boom and for over a decade Ireland became a Mecca for jobseekers, both international workers and its own returning emigrants who pushed the workforce to a once unthinkable 2.1 million people. Dole queues fell to...