Daft Property - Irish Property News

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

House building crash helped spark sudden rise in jobless figures... HOUSE building crashed after the Christmas holidays last year, new CSO figures show -- helping to explain the sudden rise in unemployment during 2008. Output in house construction was at the lowest level since the current statistics began in 2000. It was also 20pc less than the previous low point eight years before. House building slumped more than l30pc on the previous quarter, as builders left sites closed after the New Year break. This left the volume of output down 38pc on the same period of 2007. The value of houses built was down 35pc, suggesting little change in prices over the 12 months. Non-residential building was up almost 9pc compared with 2007, and the value of the buildings was 14pc greater. This gain left total construction down almost 22pc on the previous year. But Rossa White, economist at Davy Research, said the figures seemed to be saying that non-house building was already slowing fast in 2007. &quo

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

The Irish Times has a report from Stephen Collins, (Political Editor,)on the deteriorating state of Ireland's finances... "Tax Returns expected to show tax shortfall of at least €1.5bn... THE SCALE of the financial crisis facing the country will become clear today with the publication of the exchequer returns, which are expected to show a dramatic shortfall of at least €1.5 billion in tax revenues for the first half of the year. The Cabinet discussed the rapidly deteriorating financial situation yesterday, but final decisions on the strategy to deal with the issue will not be taken until next week's Cabinet meeting after Ministers have considered the official figures. The Taoiseach, Brian Cowen, confirmed in the Dáil yesterday that tax revenues for the first six months were down but he said exact figures would not be available until today. He added that the Minister for Finance Brian Lenihan had briefed the Government in general terms about the figures and would be issuing

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

It's Dire Straits and and new tune called "Time To Tighten Belts In Ireland!" The Irish Independent reports "Double trouble on fuel, house prices... Last night economists warned that consumers will have to "tighten their belts" and avoid all luxury purchases if they want to ride out the economic slowdown. Figures from the latest Permanent tsb/ESRI index revealed that house prices fell by 1.1pc in April, bringing the annual decline in property prices to 9.2pc. And an Irish Independent survey showed that the price of diesel has shot through the €1.40 barrier -- it has now increased by an average of 9c a litre in just two weeks. Friends First chief economist Jim Power said: "I wouldn't be recommending to anybody to be going out there taking debt on board at the moment or living beyond their means. "Definitely we are in a belt-tightening environment for the next couple of years. Anybody who behaves differently is being very naive and foolish."

Latest figures confirm the "softening" in house prices and according to a report from the Irish Independent... " HOUSE prices fell by 9pc in the past year, wiping €27,500 off the value of the average home. National house prices fell by 0.7pc in March, according to yesterday's Permanent TSB/ERSI house price index. But the price decline for first-time buyer houses was greater, at 10pc, as potential buyers have been squeezed hard by banks hiking up interest rates for new customers. A 10pc drop in First-Time Buyer (FTB) house prices will see some 40,000 new buyers go into negative equity by the end of the year, according to Davy Stockbrokers. Negative equity is when the value of the mortgage is greater than the value of the home. Economists also warned that prices will have to fall further if first time buyers are to be enticed back into the market. New buyers have also been hit by the withdrawal of 100pc mortgages, and the need to find deposits of up to 10pc. Over a th

More Fact is Fiction TV Reality or something... "Dodgy Developers, Corrupt politicians, Back Handers and a loss of faith in government, sounds like a normal episode of Law and Order to me! Why not cancel the Mahon Tribunal and let Law and Order sort it in an hour! (allowing for commercials of course!)"

There is growing concern over the new evidence emerging, from the Mahon Tribunal, about large sums of sterling that were lodged into an account that Taoiseach Bertie Ahern had said was for his salary cheques. According to ireland.com today the Labour leader..." Eamon Gilmore said in a statement today that the tribunal hearings "raise yet more issues of profound seriousness for the Taoiseach". "We now know that far from being on his financial uppers in the early 1990s, Mr Ahern's myriad of accounts in various financial institutions were awash with money. It now also seems beyond dispute that, despite repeated denials by Mr Ahern, a number of lodgements to his accounts were in sterling. "It is now time for Brian Cowen and other senior figures to put loyalty to the country ahead of loyalty to their damaged party leader; it is time to bring this sorry saga to a conclusion, so that the Government and the Dáil can now concentrate on dealing with the huge social a

I came accross a report in Business Week Magazine about the Celtic Tiger... "Once the envy of Europe, Ireland's economy is set to grow this year at it slowest rate in two decades. The collapse of a housing bubble coupled with the strong euro is raising unemployment and slowing growth, reducing the Celtic Tiger's roar to a whimper. And the news keeps getting worse. More than $5.5 billion was wiped off the value of Irish stocks on Mar. 17, in what commentators have dubbed the "St. Patrick's Day massacre." "The Irish economy is heading into recession," says Alan Ahearne, an economist at the National University of Ireland, Galway, and a former senior economist at the U.S. Federal Reserve... It's not just about the global credit crunch, weak banks, or bearish stock markets. Rather, Ireland is at the tail end of a housing- and consumer-fueled boom—similar to that of the U.S.—and finds itself at the mercy of global trends such as inflation, wage-scale

"Stagflation" says it all... "Brian Cowen's sloppy economic management has exposed Ireland to the risk of 'stagflation', a lethal combination of a stagnant economy and rising inflation," according to Fine Gael's Richard Bruton.

Taoiseach Bertie Ahern seems to be changing his upbeat outlook for the economy in Ireland. On ireland.com today: " Ahern has warned of a "hard year" ahead for the Irish economy in his most downbeat assessment to date of the repercussions of the sharp economic downturn in the US... Mr Ahern said a huge range of companies in the US were facing serious problems, a situation that would have an inevitable knock-on effect on the world economy. In a specific reference to the effects on Ireland on what many commentators say is a looming recession in the US, the Taoiseach said: "We won't escape that. What we have to try to do is keep up the growth rates... The comments by the Taoiseach, who was speaking to reporters in Dublin, were part of a response to a question about the live register figures for February, published by the Central Statistics Office (CSO) on Friday. The figures show that unemployment had increased to 5.2 per cent, the highest level for eight years. In

Dublin 2008: Ireland's Celtic Tiger(...sink or swim???)!

Following yesterdays reports about tax returns for the start of 2008, being €500m less than expected, plus rising unemployment etc., the Taoiseach has been accused of presiding over, "the worst deterioration in the economy in the history of the State", by Enda Kenny However the Taoiseach, Bertie Ahern, insists the outlook for the Irish economy is postive, and said that the country is doing very well by international standards and that it was still on target(...for what????!) "He knows nothing and he thinks he knows everything. That points clearly to a political career." George Bernard Shaw