Daft Property - Irish Property News

Too many estates in the capital have been left in a mess after developers pulled out... THE Government is being called on to change derelict site legislation to prevent vacant Nama land turning into a new generation of eyesores. The call comes as it emerged that there are over 3,700 unfinished houses in developments in south Co Dublin alone. Councillors have backed a motion seeking a review of the laws and a redress of the balance "between the interests of developers and local communities". It was brought before a meeting of the council by Cllr Dermot Looney (Lab), who said the existing legislation favoured developers who had been allowed to leave behind ghost estates and "other kips" after the property crash. Derelict At the same meeting it emerged that South Dublin County Council has 3,789 houses in 23 developments that have not been completed. The council will now write to the Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government, John Gormley, to carry out...

If the Green Party has its way, there will be no immediate recovery in property values... THE LAST few months have been spent analysing the wreck that is the Irish property market. Though most attention in recent weeks has centred on Liam Carroll’s attempts to save the Zoe group of companies, punters have been equally interested in the huge price reductions for new apartments and second-hand homes. Luckily for first-time buyers, there are mortgages available for many of those who can comply with the strict new ground rules on job security, earnings and savings. For others anxious to trade up now that prices are on the floor, there can be little prospect of securing bank loans unless the Nama strategy works and the banks are recapitalised to resume lending, first of all to businesses and, after that, to house purchasers. Mind you, the events of last week did little to inspire much confidence in the property industry. Firstly, there was the proposal to introduce a punitive property tax o...

The Orphans of Ireland... DINGLE, Ireland — Under a sky that looks like a late-winter coat of sheep fleece, the island of saints and scholars falls away in a sheer drop to the Atlantic. The next parish over, they say from this far western edge of Ireland, is Boston. It is reassuring to an Irish-American on a first-time visit to find the wellspring of poets and balladeers as advertised: those emerald fields, those ruddy-cheeked fishermen warming pub seats, a land of stone and cold wind that produced a lyrical people and a music embraced more than ever by the young. But it is also jarring to see this ancient landscape littered with empty monuments to the kind of excess that helped bring down the global economy. For a time, the Irish thought they would never fall off those cliffs into the sea; a nation of barely 4 million people could defy gravity. If Barack Obama, the president with roots in County Offaly, were to skip across the Irish Sea this week he would find a big part of what affli...

Land values go up like a rocket and fall like a stone... SITE EVALUATION: Why would a developer bid €225,000 an acre in 1999 and €2.8m an acre in 2007? Bill Nowlan explains WHY HAS THE value of development land fallen so precipitously, by over 50 per cent in the past 12 months, when residential and other property values have only fallen by 25 per cent or 30 per cent? There is an old property cliché which says that "land values go up like a rocket and fall like a stone" and this seems to have been bourne out in Ireland over recent years. Why does this happen? To answer this question requires an insight into the way developers prepare their bids for development land and I set out below a glimpse into that process. Let me start by looking at how a developer in normal times estimates his bid for a plot of land with planning permission, which in estate agents' parlance is ready-to-go. The key starting point in a developers equations is the expected sale price of the finished b...