Daft Property - Irish Property News

'Hot' buyers wait in the wings for market to bottom out... ESTATE AGENTS who feel they may never complete another good sale should be cheered by some new research from Sherry Fitz-Gerald. A survey carried out by the company suggests there are over 650 buyers with an estimated €831 million to spend in the Dublin residential market - as soon as prices have stabilised. Group chief executive Mark Fitz-Gerald sees prices bottoming out in the next six months, with prices having already dropped by 35 per cent in some neighbourhoods. The survey carried out among the company's branches has identified 656 "hot buyers" in the Dublin area; people who have expressed a strong interest in buying in the coming months. An additional 74 buyers are poised to spend €26 million in Cork city, according to the agency's research. Sherry FitzGerald found that 65 buyers are waiting in the wings to buy property in Ballsbridge, with a collective budget of €129 million. In the area stretc

140,000 homeowners 'have fallen into negative equity'... Jim Power, chief economist with Friends First, said: "I reckon the majority of first-time buyers who bought into the market over the last three years are in negative equity." Analysing the gains made up to the peak of the housing boom, and the losses since, Mr Power said negative equity was affecting "at least 140,000 people and that's rising by the day". He warned that, in terms of the recession, "we haven't seen anything yet" and predicted the numbers in negative equity could reach 200,000 by the end of 2009. Latest Census figures show there were 570,000 residential mortgage holders in 2006, with tens of thousands of new mortgages taken out since. So the continuing decline in house prices means that one in three mortgage holders are likely find themselves trapped in a home worth less than the loan they took out to pay for it. With €125bn owed on Irish mortgages, homeowners facing r

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

Where do we go from here? As the State stepped in this week to avert a collapse of the Irish banking system, Joe and Mary citizen were left pondering a very uncertain future ... ' WE ARE WHERE we are . It's time to move on. Just do the vote. Just . . . just get it done. Okay?" blustered a Wall Street trader last Monday, minutes after the US Congress rejected the $700 billion (€505 billion) bailout for the banks. The CNN interviewer persisted with a question about the rage bubbling under Main Street USA. The tetchy trader ignored it. "We are where we are," he repeated. "It's time to move on. Just do the vote." Sound familiar? It should. The mantra was snapped up on this side of the Atlantic this week and used to quell the rabble demanding that the Irish masters of the universe be made to account for themselves before Ireland Inc's reputation was sold to save their necks. "Listen. We are where we are," snapped one cheerleader dismissivel

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

THE GOVERNMENT has no plan to deal with the biggest economic crisis in a quarter of a century and lacks the conviction to win public confidence, Fine Gael leader Enda Kenny told an opening session of a two-day special conference of his parliamentary party in Co Clare yesterday. Warning that the next general election "may come a lot sooner than expected", he told his colleagues that if they were "united, disciplined and tough" they would win power in the next Dáil. Focusing on the Government's approach to the economy, Mr Kenny said people were frightened because nobody seemed to be in charge. "In response to the biggest economic crisis in a quarter century, the Government first denied, then dithered, then went on holidays ." He added: "All the Government seems to be able to do is congratulate itself - in advance - for tough actions they haven't yet taken, and they'd never have needed to take if they'd done their job well enough in

Smart talk? The whole global warming and need for carbon reduction is very much debatable. But measures are being taken in Ireland to reduce your carbon footprint in your house... It's now time for..."Smart meters scheme to help reduce home electricity bills... HOUSEHOLD ELECTRICITY meters in the Republic are to be replaced by "smart meters" which offer a range of functions including the intelligent use of cheap-rate electricity, while also providing for householders to sell home-generated electricity back to the national grid. The meters are to be rolled out over the next four years at a cost of almost €1 billion. Launching a pilot scheme involving an initial 15,000 smart meters yesterday, Minister for Energy Eamon Ryan said they would help householders to reduce their electricity bills, improve the operation of the electricity system and reduce carbon emissions. Smart meters can monitor and record the amount of electricity used by the householder, as well as when i

Exchequer faces €5bn shortfall as tax revenues drop sharply... TAX REVENUES are continuing to plummet, according to the latest official figures, which indicate the shortfall for the year could exceed €5 billion. This is far worse than the Government was expecting as recently as two months ago. In July, the Government projected a tax shortfall of €3 billion for the year, but a rapid slowdown in consumer spending has hit VAT receipts, while the dramatic slowdown in stamp duty and capital gains tax receipts has continued due to the property crash. The implications of the figures will be discussed by the Cabinet today at its first meeting after the August holiday break. Substantial cuts in public spending for next year now appear inevitable and are likely to be accompanied by increases in borrowing and taxation. The Opposition parties last night accused the Government of failing in its duty to get to grips with the crisis in the public finances during the summer and taking its traditional

The fundamentals of the Irish housing market point to more sharp falls over the next two to three years... WITH HOUSE prices falling fast and likely, come the autumn, to fall even faster, no sane person would currently even think of buying a house. But this immediately raises the question of how long the crash will last. In other words, how long will it be before you can buy a house and not regret the decision for the rest of your life? Looking at past collapses in house prices abroad, we can see that they fall into two broad groups. In the first group, that includes Japan and Switzerland, prices suffered a long, slow decline of a few per cent a year for a decade. The second group, that includes the Netherlands and Finland, saw real prices halve in three to four years, and then fall gently for a few more years. If this second pattern repeats in Ireland, given that we are already one year into the crash, we can expect two to three more years of sharp falls. After that, prices should sta

Property prices fall further as Dublin second-hand homes drop by 10.4%... THE AVERAGE cost of a new house was just over 3 per cent lower in the first three months of this year than in the same period last year, according to new figures from the Department of the Environment. Prices of second-hand houses suffered a sharper fall of 5.4 per cent, but the greatest decline was in the price of second-hand houses in Dublin which were 10.4 per cent lower in the first quarter of the year than in the same period of 2007. The price of new houses in the capital fell by 4.8 per cent... The department's housing statistics show a steady increase in the provision of social and affordable housing, but very steep declines in the total numbers of houses built and started in the first three months of the year. Just over 14,000 houses were completed, a decline of 30 per cent on the first quarter of 2007. The number of houses on which construction began was even more dramatically reduced. There were jus

Changing times for " 21st-century Ireland, where people are looking for ways to reduce both their spending and their negative impact on the environment"... Recycling the good old days... WHAT'S THE STORY WITH WARTIME NOSTALGIA BOOKS? 'Knickers renewed - one good pair from two old pairs; here's how to manage it," begins one snappy article from a collection of pamphlets originally published by the British government during the second World War and which have recently appeared in book form. The trick, apparently, is to cut a new gusset from the back of one pair and neatly sew it into place on the other pair and off you go, good as new. Make Do and Mend contains dozens of original facsimile leaflets offering hundreds of tips on how to make everything from carpets and gloves to saucepans and blinds last a whole lot longer. There are details on how to darn deftly and instructions on how best to convert a tired pair of men's pyjamas into a reinvigorated summer f

Sign of times as Lidl eyes Habitat store... Upmarket furniture store Habitat could be replaced in the city centre by a discount supermarket. German retail giant Lidl is one of only two businesses -- the other an overseas bank -- pitching for the lease of the massive store, located off the bottom of Grafton Street on College Green. Crunch Lidl and fellow discount chain Aldi have seen a significant increase in business since the effects of the credit crunch. They have also been helped by a recent National Consumer Agency survey. The research found that a basket of 28 own-brand goods was more than 50pc cheaper in Lidl than in Tesco or Dunnes Stores. Several leases available on Grafton Street have been slow to sell because of the deterioration in consumer spending. Property adviser CB Richard Ellis has predicted that business premises on the high street will only sell when values have been cut by 50pc. Lidl is not the only big-name trader to have checked out the former Habitat store. Nearb

Homeowners left reeling as 30pc price fall predicted... HOME owners are reeling from a double-whammy of bad news, after both an international broker and one of Ireland's leading economists warned house prices could plummet even further over the coming months. In a statement announcing the predictions, international broker Credit Suisse said that Ireland's property market is continuing to tumble, with house prices potentially falling by another 30pc over the coming months. The internationally-respected firm has made the comments because it says the market is only reacting to the credit crunch now. The upshot is that the impact of the credit crunch has yet to filter through to the Irish housing market, with any weakness already experienced down to a drop in demand rather than tighter credit. "As a result, we see mortgage affordability decreasing and house price declines accelerating. What is more, the housing market has been underpinned by strong immigration and rental deman

Plan to redevelop Clarence Hotel approved... An ambitious plan to redevelop the Clarence Hotel on Dublin’s Wellington Quay has been approved by An Bord Pleanála. The scheme, devised by architect Norman Fosteer, involves demolishing the hotel and adjoining buildings on the quay, retaining their façades and constructing a much larger hotel arranged around a dramatic atrium and topped by a flying saucer-style roof . The owners of the hotel, who include U2's Bono and the Edge , welcomed the Bord’s decision in a statement this afternoon. “We are delighted that An Bord Pleanala has given us the green light for Norman Foster's design for The Clarence. …We believe it's great news for Dublin and for Temple Bar in particular, where we've been working for over 20 years and where a hotel has been trading on The Clarence site for 177 years," it said. The Department of the Environment, Local Government and Heritage had objected to the scheme, saying it could set a precedent for

..."Does Brian Cowen really know what he is doing? ...The Lisbon Treaty defeat was a fiasco for the government. Not that it matters even a tiny bit in the real world, but in the world of political perceptions and of the neurotic EU, it means everything and Cowen did not have the stature - yet - to tell the EU to cop on. ...Cowen seems to have been unnerved by the Lisbon defeat. He has seemed unsure, vacillating and unsettled since then. His performances over the last few days have been his worst, aided and abetted by Lenihan. ...The announced cuts in public expenditure are risible. Given the constraints that the prevailing hegemony has imposed on our political culture, tax increases of any sort are out of the question. There is no question that the people who made fortunes during the boom years should now bear the burden of a few bad years. Also no question about borrowing, beyond the constraints imposed by the EU. ...So the only way to deal with a sharp fall in tax revenues is to

"Asking prices on Daft.ie down 8% in past 12 months... The asking prices for houses advertised on Daft.ie have fallen back to the same levels as May 2006, according to the latest figures from the property website. Average asking prices are down almost 8% over the past 12 months, with the sharpest falls recorded in Monaghan, Sligo, Offaly, Louth and Cavan. Daft.ie says it expects prices to fall even further as there is an oversupply of houses in certain areas of the country. However, it says many people, particularly in south Co Dublin, are still posting unrealistic house prices." ... Report from the Belfast Telegraph.

Post "poperty boom", Ireland is now in "property crash" phase, and the country's finances are in dire straits. But it's not just Ireland going through bad times - there's a lot of turmoil elsewhere like in the US...so who's to blame there???? "Spicing up the blame game with some new contenders... Now the Dow Jones Indust­rial Average has dip­ped into bear-market terri­tory, it's time to address an important matter: We need new people to blame. The latest trio of popular villains is so unoriginal. Short sellers? Oil speculat­ors? Accounting rulemakers? Surely we can do better. After careful study, and some occasional attention to factual detail, I propose a new set of people and things to blame for the market meltdown, around which we all can rally in the shared cause of finger-pointing, schädenfreude, and the illusion of accountability. The sole criterion to join my list of Seven Deadly Sinners: they all had to be just as much to blame as sh

In today's Sunday Buisness Post, Post David Cullen in Belfast reports, on the Property scene in Northern Ireland... "North facing property crisis as house values take a hammering... The deepening crisis in the North’s residential property market is highlighted by figures showing a near 19 per cent slump in values in the year to the end of June. The survey, by Nationwide building society, also showed that prices had dropped by 9 per cent in the second quarter of this year - the steepest correction in property values recorded across Britain and the North. The downturn comes on the back of an unusually sharp jump during 2006 and 2007, when prices grew by almost 80 per cent. ‘‘These increases were clearly not sustainable and left the market particularly vulnerable to external shocks, such as the financial downturn that began last August,” said Fionnuala Earley, chief economist of Nationwide. ‘‘We are now seeing the consequences of that excess vulnerability.” The average price of a

A New Marketing concept in Ireland called "Recession"... An ad on daft.ie: ..."This is a private sale, so the saving to the Vendor on auctioneers fees is reflected in the price which was orignally offers in excess of 400k prior to the recession!!!" Description: "Summerhill, Carrowmore Lacken, Ballina,Co. Mayo Detached House Excess €370,000 ...dormer home was completed in June 2004 to a very high standard in an area of outstanding natural beauty where planning simply isnt being granted anymore. It has truely wow views out of every window and is within walking distance of pub and beach. The elevated property overlooks the Ross Estuary, Rathfran Abbey, Bartra Island and Killala Bay. Sligo, Enniscrone and the Donegal mountains, together with Nephin Mountain are also to be seen. The rural location is ideal for a large family home or holiday house away from hussle and bussle and yet is less than an hour from Knock Airport. This is a private sale, so the saving to the

Time for the Summer SALES!... The Sunday Buisness Post's, Michelle Devane, "looks at what’s on offer for buyers ahead of the summer season... Eirene, Marino Avenue East, Killiney, Co Dublin Savills HOK Was: €6 million Now: €4.15 million Built in 1884, this spacious detached period residence was designed by the renowned Victorian architect Thomas Deane and is full of original period features. Eirene has been on the market for almost four months and its asking price has been reduced by 30 per cent to €4.15 million. With five-bedrooms and 325 square metres of living space, which is in need of modernisation, it is set on two acres of private mature grounds with views across Killiney Bay. The Dart station, Killiney beach and the Holy Child convent are within a couple of minutes walk... 49 Clarinda Park East, Dun Laoghaire, Co Dublin Savills HOK Was: €2.55 million Now: €2.15 million Beautifully restored and refurbished, 49 Clarinda Park East is a two-storey over garden level propert