Daft Property - Irish Property News

Developers are offering substantially lower prices in the hope of shifting remaining units at schemes built in the last two to three years... PRICE CUTS of up to 40 per cent are being offered by builders in an attempt to get the stalled new homes market moving again and to clear unsold units. While price reductions are bringing many new homes back to pre-2006 prices and interest rate cuts have gone a long way towards improving affordability, lack of finance and negative sentiment remain as the big hurdles for potential buyers. A raft of new homes developers are hoping to shift remaining units at developments built in the last two to three years and are pitching prices at substantially less than the original asking prices. For many builders it is not a case of making a profit any more, it’s simply making some sales to cover the cost of building and paying off some of the debt on sites. Price cuts will be most prominent in large schemes on the edge of the city where developers have stru...

Ireland's Property Market: A Fallen Star? Ronan Lyons, Daft's in-house economist, commenting on the latest Daft research on the Irish property market... When we look back at 2008 in a few years' time, I think it's fair to say we will regard it as the annus horribilis for Ireland's property market. In late 2006, we issued a report which was the first to spot a slowdown in the property market. At the time, it was our view - unpopular though it was - that rising interest rates and high levels of supply would lead to a levelling off in house prices. This turns out to only have been the start of the story. Bursting onto the world stage at the end of the 1990s, Ireland was heralded as an economic phenomenon and rapidly became a global superstar and poster-child for economic development. But recently it looks like it's all just falling apart. Nowhere is this more evident than in Ireland's housing market - until recently the engine of Ireland's economic growth. ...

It's Boom To Bust for Ireland - in fact there are so many reports out that it's hard to keep up with them all! Here's a section of an Irish Times report tôday: "HOUSE PRICES plummeted in April as developers began to offload a glut of unsold houses at knock-down prices. But potential buyers grew more nervous about committing to the plunging property market, new figures show. The drop in the price of new homes was almost twice the national rate, as builders were forced to discount prices in an effort to sell a backlog of houses and apartments rather than wait for a bounce in the market. But figures from the Central Bank show that consumers have so far proved reluctant to take them up on the offer in great numbers, with the growth in mortgage lending last month falling to its slowest rate since 1992. The monthly drop in house prices accelerated from 0.7 per cent in March to 1.1 per cent in April, making it increasingly unlikely that the housing market will turn around thi...

Looks like Interest Rates in Ireland rates will be dropping. According to a report, in The Irish Independent Newspaper (www.independent.ie), The European Central Bank (ECB) yesterday paved the way for the first cuts in nearly five years! ECB president Jean Claude Trichet left rates unchanged when the ECB met yesterday and there was no mention of increases. David Tilson of Bank of Ireland, said: "The ECB has effectively dropped its threat to raise interest rates." Skip the Champagne... Don't start celebrating yet - most of top analysts believe there will be no rate drops until the second half of 2008 (at the earliest)!

Just browsing through the Irish Newspapers this morning while enjoying my coffee... Plenty Property News for Ireland...Typical headlines today are: "What's your house worth now?" "Prices drop as buyers wait it out" "Southside sales don’t escape downturn" "Price of Limerick homes drop" "Reduced price to spark interest in D6 home" (A bargain now at only €5.5 million - was €6 million!) "Property price rises wiped out by 10pc fall in market" "House prices down €18,000 on average" "Price cuts may trigger domino effect" "Finding affordable townhouse is mission impossible" "Homebuyers opting out of sales now face losing deposits"