Daft Property - Irish Property News

Thousands of 'ghost estate' residents will now fall into tax net... THOUSANDS of homeowners living in unfinished developments will be hit with property tax bills from the summer. People living in estates which were classed as "seriously problematic" just four months ago will be forced to pay the tax after the Department of the Environment decided they did not qualify for a waiver. Last year, some 1,322 housing estates containing 43,000 homes were considered exempt from the household charge because essential works needed to be carried out. The Government has now decided that just 421 estates, with about 5,100 households, will not have to pay the property tax. Housing Minister Jan O'Sullivan defended the move, saying that essential works, including public lighting, water treatment systems, roads and open spaces, had been provided in many estates since last summer. The reduction in those qualifying for a waiver showed that progress was being made in ta...

The legacy of the boom and the subsequent property collapse have come home to roost in 2012. This is the year the Nama deferred payment scheme was launched, a ghost estate was sold at a distressed property auction, and the country’s most expensive property failed to sell despite a 74 per cent price drop. Here are 10 properties that sum up where we are now ... 1. Walford, Shrewsbury Road Now that the madness of the property boom is a distant memory, it has become apparent that not only was Walford on Shrewsbury Road in Dublin 4 never worth the €58 million paid for it in 2005, it has failed to find a buyer for it, even at the radically reduced price of €15 million. The Edwardian house on 1.8 acres went on the market in September 2011 but was recently withdrawn, presumably because it failed to meet the guide price. When it was sold in 2005, the cachet of the road and the development potential drove rich individuals into a frenzy, pushing the price substantially ove...

Mortgage misery index shows commuters' pain... DURING the Celtic Tiger era, the most high-profile example of how the country was finally wealthy was the booming numbers who constituted Ireland's 'rich list'. However, the new realities of post-boom Ireland are epitomised by a county-by-country breakdown of the numbers receiving Mortgage Interest Relief Supplement (MIRS), that has just been compiled by the Department of Social Protection. MIRS is a scheme whereby the Department of Social Protection pays the interest part of a mortgage when householders become unemployed and can no longer meet their payments. Such payments are supposed to be short term -- although in practice this is no longer the case -- and are meant only to cover the interest element of the mortgage. After a modest start to the scheme, the numbers availing of it -- and therefore its cost -- have almost quadrupled. Unsurprisingly, the department's figures indicate that the two counties wi...

House prices continue to tumble despite faster selling time... HOUSE prices are continuing to plummet with asking prices now as much as 47pc lower than the peak just four years ago. A new report from property website Daft.ie says that although homes are selling faster, prices are continuing to fall. And the findings are confirmed in a separate report from myhome.ie, albeit with variations in the average asking price for a house. Daft.ie says the average asking price in June was €196,000, down 47pc from the peak. The myhome.ie survey says the average asking price nationally is now €249,000, 40pc down on peak. Prices of new homes are now back at the 2001 level, myhome.ie adds, with average asking prices of €239,000 in Cork, €234,500 in Galway, €185,000 in Limerick, while the Dublin figure is €286,000. Daft.ie said that Dublin asking prices fell by 5.26pc over the past three months, and now the typical figure is half of what it was during the peak in 2007. South County Dub...

Property auction disaster shows prices still falling... IRELAND'S first discounted property auction proved a disaster yesterday, with just two of the 63 properties on offer being sold. Only two separate plots of land sold for a total of €95,000 at the auction in a Cork hotel, despite the fact that over €10m worth of houses and properties were on offer. Those same properties were worth almost €30m just five years ago. But yesterday potential bidders felt the prices were still too high. Analysts grimly warned last night that it was proof the Irish market had still to reach rock bottom -- with potential buyers convinced that prices will fall back further. Yesterday's auction was the first to involve discounted Irish properties. These are cut-price holdings being sold by private owners or developers eager to dispose of assets. Ireland's first distressed-property auction took place in Dublin last April when €14.8m worth of deals were struck. Distressed property invol...

Rock-bottom lots top the agenda in Cork... A Cork agent is hoping to repeat the success of the Allsop/Space auction, putting 65 properties to auction tomorrow in Cork A GLUT of houses selling at half their original price in Urlingford, a convent in Tipperary and a handful of island properties off the Cork and Kerry coast are hotly tipped to draw bidders to a auction of discounted property in Cork tomorrow. The 65 properties going under the hammer at the Radisson Little Island at noon have attracted 40,000 hits to the auction website (macestateagents.ie) over the past three weeks. The auction is being run by Noel Forde and Tom McCarthy of Mac Estates and GMAC Properties of Bandon and Castletownbere. Their initial aim had been to auction Cork properties, but since they announced plans for the auction they have attracted properties from Kildare, Kilkenny, Tipperary, Waterford, Kerry and Clare. Inundated with offers from owners eager to offload property, auctioneer Noel Forde cap...

House prices must drop 40pc to restore investor confidence... PROPERTY prices need to fall by about 40pc or by around €100,000 before it would make sense to consider investing in houses, a report from Irish Mortgage Brokers and an academic indicates. House prices in Dublin need to fall from €283,800 to around €179,000 for property to be a good investment. Similar percentage falls are needed in Cork and Galway, the report by financial adviser Karl Deeter and lecturer Frank Quinn says. "Our calculations indicate that from an investor perspective the time has not yet arrived for a confident return to property for investment," the 'Residential Property Investor Report' says. Asking prices for a house in Cork of €248,000 need to fall to €141,000, while prices in Galway need to drop from €235,000 to around €141,000. The report concludes that "over-valuation is still the dominant characteristic of the Irish residential property market" . The report adds: "Fall...

Not a single new home registered by Premier in January... THE private housing market could be in danger of grinding to a complete halt with one of the two home-registration firms in the country not registering a single house in January. The Irish Independent has learned that Premier Guarantee did not register a single housing unit in January, with its larger rival Homebond only registering 149 houses, including just 24 in Dublin. At the peak of the property market in 2006, Homebond was registering 6,122 houses a month or about 72,000 in a full year. Premier, the smaller of the two registration services, was registering about 2,117 houses per month, or almost 25,000 per annum. Of the 149 houses registered with Homebond in January, 62 were in Cork, 16 in Kildare and 24 in Dublin. In most of the other counties there were less than three houses registered, with many counties only registering a single house. One of the few things propping up the housing market now is one-off housing which o...

The Plans That Crashed To Earth... The Celtic Tiger has come and gone and the skyline of our capital city remains much the same. What happened to the skyscrapers that the 'starchitects' were supposed to bring... They were supposed to symbolise the new Ireland, a collection of skyscrapers and internationally renowned buildings that would illustrate to the world the global hub that the country, and in particular Dublin, had become. In the end, they were never built, with some left firmly at ground level as the economy crashed and the myth of Ireland's national wealth was exposed. In other cases, the planners decided against high rise, while a combination of An Bord Pleanála and significant opposition from well-to-do residents of areas like Ballsbridge has seen other plans turned down. This was Celtic Tiger Ireland and it was a new place, some of us said, with new ideas and a new way of looking of things. The housing boom had made most of us appear better off (even if it was ...

Record increase in families fighting to save home... REPOSSESSION orders sought by banks and mortgage lenders soared by more than 100pc last year in the wake of the downturn. According to figures complied by the Courts Service, 758 new applications for possession orders were brought to the High Court in 2008 -- compared to 374 the previous year. The increase is the largest ever recorded by the courts and points to aggressive tactics deployed by some lenders to recover their debts. Many of the applications were from subprime lenders, such as Start Mortgages, but there were also from major banks such as AIB and Bank of Ireland. In the past six months of 2008 the High Court received 505 applications -- compared with 253 at the start of the year. However it was the final quarter of last year, when the country was hit by massive job losses, which saw applications gain momentum. Between October and December 294 applications were brought by lenders -- compared to just 96 during the same perio...

Try it, and if you like it, then buy it... Could a rent-to-buy housing scheme that helps first-time buyers get on the ladder help stabilise the new homes market, asks Róisín Carabine... A rent-to-buy scheme that allows prospective buyers to lease a new home with the option to buy later, using part of the rent towards the purchase, is growing in popularity with first-time buyers and developers as the credit crunch worsens and residential sales stagnate. Seán Power of Rent2Buy in Ballincollig, who first introduced the scheme to Ireland three years ago, says interest has more than doubled in the last few weeks, with 1,200 first-time buyers now registered on its database. "Of those who have recently signed up, the majority – around one in six – want to buy and live in and around Dublin. We've a number of buyers particularly interested in the Swords area," says Power, who plans to match 1,000 prospective buyers with homes in 2009. The scheme was first launched at The Beeches, ...

50,000 new homes lying empty in 'ghost' estates... AT LEAST 50,000 newly-built homes are lying empty in 'ghost' estates across the country because of the economic downturn. Hard-pressed developers and estate agents are being forced to drop their asking prices by as much as 50pc in a desperate effort to shift unwanted homes dotted across the country. An Irish Independent investigation has also found that hundreds of housing estates which should have been completed at least two years ago are still unfinished. Figures from local authorities show that county councils will not take responsibility for maintaining roads and open spaces in at least 300 estates because they have not been finished to the standard required by the planning permission. The glut of empty homes -- many built under tax break schemes -- shows the pressures now being faced by homebuilders in the economic downturn. Warned House completions are at their lowest level in years and builders are putting off st...