Daft Property - Irish Property News

Developers cut prices of new homes in Dublin... Developers have sharply reduced prices at some of Dublin’s bigger housing schemes this weekend, in a bid to stimulate sales of vacant units and entice first-time buyers into the market. Price reductions of up to €150,000 are being offered at the latest releases of apartments and houses for sale. P Elliott & Co has put a total of 80 units at four of its apartment schemes, on to the market through Hooke & MacDonald, at substantially reduced prices. Prices now start at €169,000 for a one-bedroom apartment at Arena in west Dublin, while a two-bedroom apartments at Mellowes Quay in Dublin 8 now costs €269,000, down from a high of €415,000 in spring 2007. Jackson Homes, Kingscroft Developments and Durkan New Homes have also reduced prices at their schemes by about €100,000, or up to 30 per cent on peak levels. Estate agents reported strong enquiries ahead of this weekend’s releases. ‘‘Based on the level of enquiries we’ve had, we expect

Best to ignore the cheerleaders for the property sector... HAPPY new year? Not really. The banks are at death’s door. Unemployment is rocketing. Cuts much more severe than those proposed in the recent budget are inevitable. The recession is deepening, with fears that Ireland is on the verge of a so-called ‘lost decade’ growing increasingly realistic. We’re up the creek. Auctioneers and developers, however, have a different vision for 2009, one where ever more affordable homes will be snapped up by a willing populace. After all, construction firms cannot cut prices further as they are “down to their bottom line” on prices, according to one builder recently. Indeed, those who are “stupidly waiting” for prices to fall further should cop themselves on and realise that prices are bottoming. This stupidity has been disappointing developers for some time now. In August, property tycoon Derek Quinlan noted that first-time buyers must be given the confidence to buy as “negative media comm

Trophy seaside home tells story of the boom... IF A SINGLE house could tell the story of the property boom then it might be Sorrento Villa on Vico Road in Dalkey, Co Dublin. The Victorian detached house, facing the sea, slumbered up on the hill for decades, its interior divided into two spacious units that would have been described as flats rather than apartments. The house dates from the 1860s when it was built by a provost of Trinity College as a summer villa: and he chose one of the finest sites on the hill with a sunny east-to-south exposure. Two years ago when property prices reached fever pitch, it came on the market with an Advised Minimum Value (AMV) of €4.5 million. However, after intense bidding at auction it sold for €5.6 million. Stamp duty at 9 per cent added an additional €500,000. The new owners went on to spend many thousands more on redecorating the rooms and making changes to the layout, converting it to a five-bedroom house. They also drew up plans to install an expe

Ireland: Testing Times... How do we cope with recession? Valerie Shanley hears from leading experts and thinkers... In with the old, out with the new. But if we started 2008 as slightly mangy Celtic Tigers, who are we now as we venture a toe into 2009? The collapse in our economy has left an entire section of society feeling much poorer – especially those with big houses and share portfolios in Irish banks. Gone are the days when estate agents could tell you that the first thing new owners of a house should do on moving in was to rip out the designer kitchen the previous owners had only recently installed and replace it with another. Because gone are many of those estate agents. If the masters of no universe are having to re-evaluate the way they look at themselves, what about the rest of us? Even though most people were observers, as opposed to participants, in the ostentatious wealth of 'the boom', there was a positive, knock-on effect in confidence generally. Looking around,

More price cuts as season starts... There will be a drop in the supply of houses new to the market in 2009, but sellers are still having to cut prices - again... THE DUBLIN property market has opened with price cuts at all levels of the market, as sellers digest news of the country's deteriorating finances and economists' gloomy forecasts. Estate agents are taking a fresh look at their stock and advising sellers to reconsider prices. The reassessment is going on at all levels of the market, according to Peter Kenny of Colliers, where notable price cuts include €130,000 off a three-bedroom penthouse in a development at Old Conna, Riverdale, on Dargle Road, Bray, Co Wicklow. The 130sq m (1,400 sq ft) apartment with river views has has been reduced from €560,000 to €430,000. Colliers has also dropped the price of a four-bedroom semi at Burnaby Mill in Greystones from €720,000 to €580,000 in an effort to attract buyers, while in Dún Laoghaire, Gunne has just dropped the price of an

2008 Review: Buyers haven't gone away, you know, says Ronan O'Driscoll - but selling the 30,000 empty new homes will be a challenge... THANKFULLY, WE are coming to the end of the GUBU year for new homes in Ireland. It was unquestionably grotesque, unbelievable, bizarre and unprecedented. Whilst we entered 2008 with some degree of nervousness, we were hopeful that it would be a better year than the annus horribilis that was 2007. Sadly, the market went from bad to very much worse. Savills started the year in spectacular style, selling over 650 new homes between January and Easter, with very successful new launches virtually every week. This demand had been triggered by some of our leading developers who reduced prices significantly in the early part of the year. The market responded very positively to the value, with reductions of up to 25 per cent on some new Dublin projects. In January, we even had queues at three of our new developments for Manor Park Homebuilders, Capel Deve

...echoes of the 1930s Midwest in the sorry mortgage belt tales of our estate agents... "And there on the Texas plains right in the dead centre of the dust bowl, with the oil boom over and the wheat blowed out and the hard-working people just stumbling about, bothered with mortgages, debts, bills, sickness, worries of every blowing kind, I seen there was plenty to make up songs about. . ." Woody Guthrie IRELAND is increasingly becoming a 21st century mirror of America's Midwest in the 1930s , a region that became known as the Dust Bowl after a series of devastating droughts, windstorms and economic depression tore out its very soul. In Ireland today, however, we have no Woody Guthrie, no one to sing us through this mess, no one who can somehow lift us out of the worst of times. And who tells these tales of sorrow better than those in the Irish property market? Once the jewel in the Irish economic crown, it now lies forlorn, a victim not only of its own success but of the