Daft Property - Irish Property News

Fiscal ruin of the Western world beckons... For a glimpse of what awaits Britain, Europe, and America as budget deficits spiral to war-time levels, look at what is happening to the Irish welfare state... Events have already forced Premier Brian Cowen to carry out the harshest assault yet seen on the public services of a modern Western state. He has passed two emergency budgets to stop the deficit soaring to 15pc of GDP. They have not been enough. The expert An Bord Snip report said last week that Dublin must cut deeper, or risk a disastrous debt compound trap. A further 17,000 state jobs must go (equal to 1.25m in the US), though unemployment is already 12pc and heading for 16pc next year. Education must be cut 8pc. Scores of rural schools must close, and 6,900 teachers must go. "The attacks outlined in this report would represent an education disaster and light a short fuse on a social timebomb", said the Teachers Union of Ireland. Nobody is spared. Social welfare payments m

Collapse in house prices will be good for economy... Many people in recent weeks have tried to explain what is happening to the economy. How can we visualise why credit has dried up? How do we rationalise the fact that we went from a situation of so much money we didn't know what to do with it, to a situation of no cash at all? Where did it all go? One interesting way to look at this, and this column has used it before, is to think of events in the natural world. Think of the aerial photos of the Serengeti at the beginning of the annual rainy season. What was a parched arid climate where nothing grows suddenly become florid, verdant and full of life. Animals, flowers insects flourish and the place is abuzz. We see migrating wildebeest, crocs and birds and then, at the height of the season, the whole plain is crackling with energy, fuelled by that most precious of commodities, water. Then as the seasons change, the water begins to evaporate. Life disappears from the edges of the pla

Dublin Property Market Draws Low Marks for European Investment... Feb. 2 (Bloomberg) -- Dublin, capital of the first euro-region country to report an economic recession, offers the worst real estate investment prospects among Europe’s major urban markets, Pricewaterhouse Coopers LLP said. The Irish capital ranked last among 27 European cities judged for their property investment and development opportunities, according to the annual survey of 520 real estate professionals. Dublin also came second to last, after Moscow, as the riskiest market. Irish commercial real estate values declined almost 24 percent in the 12 months ended Sept. 30, according to London- based researcher Investment Property Databank. The collapse of the housing market and restricted lending by banks contributed to Ireland’s slower economic growth, which in turn curtailed demand for commercial space. The Irish “were the longest at the party and now have the biggest hangover,” John Forbes, PwC’s head of real estate, s

European journalists deliver the last rites to Celtic Tiger... EUROPEAN DIARY : European media outlets have been scathing in their criticism of a ‘Wild West’ financial culture ... THE CRISIS gripping the Irish economy is clearly the big news at home this week. But it is also hard to avoid the topic in Brussels, where journalists and diplomats are busy reading the last rites to the Celtic Tiger and rethinking their past praise for the Irish economic miracle. In the European Commission press room, colleagues from other EU states tend to broach the subject in one of two ways. Over a cup of coffee some ask concerned questions about what went wrong, who is to blame and what impact it will have on a second referendum on the Lisbon Treaty. Others invoke gallows humour, telling the in-joke: “What’s the difference between Iceland and Ireland? Answer: One letter and about six months.” The BBC’s daily current affairs programme Europe Today repeated this – by now hackneyed – joke on air on Friday

Can we remake Ireland's future? The year ended with the certainty that the global crisis is not a short-term glitch, and that Ireland is suffering more than most. Will 2009 bring the shift in Irish political culture needed to bring us back from the brink? LATE LAST YEAR, when the rock band Tindersticks played in Dublin, they finished their set with The Not Knowing , a haunting ballad of love and denial. The words seemed especially apt and particularly poignant: "The not knowing is easy/ The suspecting, that's okay/ Just don't tell me for certain/ That our love has gone away." Replace "love" with "boom" and the sad song would be a three-hankie job. This time last year, the not knowing still came easy and even the strong suspicion that the good times were definitively over could be drowned in denial, excess or the mellow lullabies of "soft landings". Now we know for certain, and if there is to be comfort in 2009, we have to find it in t

IT’S 3 a.m. at Doheny & Nesbitt, a favorite watering hole of Dublin’s political and business elite, and the property tycoon Sean Dunne stoops to retrieve a penny from the pub’s grimy floor. One would think that Mr. Dunne, Ireland’s best-known building developer, would be in bed at this hour. It’s a weeknight, after all, and he has meetings that begin before first light. What’s more, the Irish economy, pummeled by the most severe housing bust in Europe, has collapsed. And the gossip around town is that Mr. Dunne, whose brazen deal-making and Donald Trump-like lifestyle epitomized the country’s euphoric boom, might be going bankrupt. But, no matter, a penny is a penny. “I am never, never too proud to pick a penny up from the floor,” Mr. Dunne said. He is on perhaps his fifth pint of Guinness, capping a rollicking night of Champagne cocktails, followed by a wine-soaked dinner — yet his thick brogue is clear of even the faintest slurring. “I grew up with nothing and I know the value of

The grand house of cards comes tumbling down... The engine of the economic boom came grinding to a halt this year, but optimists hope the housing collapse is near bottom... MAYBE, JUST maybe, people will look back on 2008 as the year in which they should have bought property. A few years from now, when the economic gloom has lifted, today's prices - down as much as 40 per cent from the peak of 2006 - might seem like so many missed opportunities for first-time buyers and trader-uppers. If that sounds like something that a property journalist would say, then consider Warren Buffet's oft-quoted advice to investors: "Be fearful when others are greedy, and be greedy when others are fearful." Right now, people in the Irish property market are very fearful. A combination of tumbling prices, banks refusing to lend and fast-eroding job security has created an atmosphere in which people are afraid to commit to buying even a sofa, never mind a home. "It's carnage out th

Buy my house and get me free - sellers turn to novel ways of enticing customers... 2008 Review: HARD SELL: Want a Lamborghini? A pad in Cape Verde? A wife? These days vendors are getting increasingly desperate, says Paul O'Doherty... SO, IT'S come to this. You're sitting on your stack of blocks that someone in risk management - the irony of it - said would make a great investment five years ago, and now, your Polish long-term tenants have gone home and you can't sell, rent or live in it for love nor money. Or, the bachelor pad has just become a fashion accessory too much - read, I can't afford it - and you're going to move back in with poor Mum and Dad. You can take your pick from any number of examples. Meanwhile, the bank wants to know whether, having missed last month's repayment, you would mind calling in for some financial advice? But how to shift that one-time prime piece of real estate that just won't budge? What you know for certain is that you&#

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

A new survey by the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) has found that not only are current property prices in Ireland the worst in the world, but the outlook for Irish commercial property values is also dire ... After a decade of phenomenal rises, Irish property has hit its lowest level yet. It's a far cry from those halcyon days when five of the ten counties with the highest house-price growth in the UK over the past decade were in Northern Ireland, with County Armagh's prices more than trebling. Commercial property Irish commercial property prices fell for the first time in five years during the first quarter of this year in what has been termed as an ‘unprecedented reversal' of the once buoyant market. Returns in the quarter were the worst since 1995. Since the beginning of the year, the Irish property investment market has been characterised by a lack of transactional activity, with only £322 million of Irish investment deals signed in the six months to the e

Poles flee ailing Irish economy... When the European Union expanded eastward in 2004, Ireland opened its doors to workers entering from former communist states to help maintain record economic growth. Now, immigrants are heading for the exit. The number of people leaving Ireland next year will outstrip those moving to the country for the first time in 14 years, according to Economic and Social Research Institute in Dublin. The biggest exodus will be among the 170,000 workers who arrived the past four years from Poland and other east European states. ''It's a very hard situation,'' said Artur Kawczynski, 30, who lost his factory job in Galway on Ireland's west coast 10 days ago. ''I rang my friends in Poland to ask what job opportunities there are like.'' Immigrants like Kawczynski fed the manufacturing and building booms that helped double the size of Ireland's economy during the past 10 years and made it the most dynamic in western Europe. N

Cowen has left this rudderless nation adrift on a sea of incompetency... It took a while to fully comprehend what was actually going on. This was, perhaps, because it seemed so unlikely. Of course, the more we learn about these things, the more we know it is not that unlikely at all. But those were more innocent times. Those were times when we had that cosy assumption that the people in charge vaguely knew what they were doing. Even if we have no respect for them or their intelligence, even if we disagree with their politics, in this country we generally assume that someone up there in government is vaguely managing things at some level of competence. If we don't think it's the actual Taoiseach or minister, we suspect that there are civil servants who've been running things for years and know what has to be done. After all, this is not some third-worldy banana republic. This is a well-turned-out, internationally accepted, sophisticated 21st century country. Someone must kno

Classic song by the spitting image TV show to the tune of the Madness song - Our House. Based on the financial situation of the time, rather like that of today..... Lyrics: Dad believed what Maggie said Get a mortgage buy a home So dad took out a great big loan For a while there we were chuffed Now the market has collapsed And we're absolutely stuffed Our house, in the middle of a slump Our house, no one wants to buy this dump Dad is desperate to sell But now our homes worth even less Than a pension from Maxwell Our living room's a mess Full of magistrates and bailiffs Trying to repossess Our house, in the middle of the boom Our house, it was worth a small fortune Our house, left us in a dreadful state Our house, why the hell'd we decorate We really caught a cold Nowhere we can go to now All the council houses have been sold Our dads taken some stick He's still voting Tory though By God he must be thick Our house, didn't work out like we planned Our house, prices dr

Ireland's decision to guarantee all bank deposits will contribute to the demise of the single European currency, because it will erode the euro's credibility ...Hugh Hendry, chief investment officer and Partner at Eclectica Fund, told CNBC on Thursday... Watch the video: Promises of lavish spending such as this and others being discussed in Europe will erode investors' confidence, Hendry warned. The plan pledges to guarantee the liabilities of six Irish-owned banks totaling some 400 billion euros ($565 billion), more than twice the country's annual gross domestic product . "The decision, if left to stand … my prophecy is it will bring down the currency. The euro is not a tenable currency if you have politicians making such decisions. The reality is there is no such thing as a free lunch "... Irish lawmakers backed the plan and the government said it may be extended to foreign banks with retail units in Ireland, but it has raised questions in Brussels and Londo

So why are we in this international economic crisis - it's no accident - it's been planned for some time. Meet the money masters... "The powers of financial capitalism had a far-reaching plan, nothing less than to create a world system of financial control in private ... all » hands able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole...Their secret is that they have annexed from governments, monarchies, and republics the power to create the world's money..." THE MONEY MASTERS is a non-fiction, historical documentary that traces the origins of the political power structure that rules our nation and the world today. The modern political power structure has its roots in the hidden manipulation and accumulation of gold and other forms of money. The development of fractional reserve banking practices in the 17th century brought to a cunning sophistication the secret techniques initially used by goldsmiths fraudulently to accumu

BBC panel discuss the ramifications of the passing of the $700 billion 'Bailout Bill' in the US, and the impact that will be felt in Europe and the Middle East...

State of emergency... BRIAN COWEN last night tried to get a grip on the country’s escalating economic crisis by calling an emergency October budget that looks primed to inflict deep spending cuts. The unprecedented decision to advance the budget — the centrepiece of the Dáil year — by almost two months to October 14 was sparked by shock in government circles at the collapse in tax revenues over the summer that has left the country heading for a €6 billion deficit by the year-end. The cabinet made the dramatic move as unemployment surged to a 10-year high as dole queues swelled by record amounts for the fourth month in succession. Finance Minister Brian Lenihan said the Government’s priority was to “curb spending” and this would be achieved through a “balance” of taxation, borrowing and cuts as he warned the country faced the worst economic conditions since the late 1980s. “We cannot let our state to drift into fiscal unsustainability. We have to take corrective action,” said Mr Lenihan