Daft Property - Irish Property News

Property crash wipes €257bn off value of homes in six years... IRELAND'S homeowners have collectively lost an estimated €257bn in property value in the six years since the market began to crumble, the Irish Independent can reveal. The 50pc collapse in value since the peak of 2007 also means that by the Central Bank's own estimates, Ireland's crash has now become the worst experienced by any country in the world. The combined loss to the owners of Irish residential properties since the bubble burst equates to almost four times Ireland's total bailout sum of €67.5bn and more than half the total amount of money first set aside in the European Union's €500bn Financial Stability Facility. The PTSB/ESRI Index, Ireland's former national price barometer, showed average house prices standing at €310,632 at the start of 2007. An estimated drop of 50pc in value puts the average loss to an Irish household at €155,316. With 1.6 million households across the co...

The banks' forbearance to customers in arrears may be storing up future trouble as household debt spirals... The banking system is desperately trying to hold back an ever-rising tide of overdue mortgages as high unemployment and increasing mortgage rates play havoc with family finances. Lenders have been ordered by the Financial Regulator to help people stay in their homes, even when they've stopped paying their loans, but how much forbearance can our weak financial system take before buckling? More than one in 10 borrowers is now in distress, according to the latest quarterly figures on residential mortgage arrears from the Financial Regulator and unofficial estimates by the Irish Banking Federation (IBF). Around 36,000 households are now more than 90 days in arrears, with two-thirds of that total more than six months behind on their mortgages, according to the regulator. The IBF is preparing new data on restructured mortgages – loans switched to easier repayment arrangements ...

Just how low can the market go? Research suggests the bottom is still some time away... Ronan Lyons of Daft.ie: 'The pace of the decline in house prices is gradually slowing' Sunnyside, The Burnaby, Greystones, sold at auction last week for €910,000 (€260,000 over the AMV) 65 Swilly Road, Dublin 7, a three-bed terrace with architect-designed rear extension, new to the market through Sherry FitzGerald for €295,000 Judging by the number of comments on the property page of the Sunday Tribune online, nothing gets readers reaching for the keyboard quite like that most contentious of topics – house prices. Then, to really get their goat, along came last week's headline in the Irish Times referring to a report on the European housing market by Standard and Poor...

First-time buyers are still not tempted by cheaper houses... HOUSES are now more affordable than they have been in a generation -- but few first-time buyers are tempted to buy, new figures show. House prices have fallen so sharply that it takes just more than 12pc of an average first-time-buyer couple's income to repay a mortgage, the EBS/DMK housing-affordability index shows. But despite the continuing drop in affordability, the number of new buyers jumping on the property ladder is a fraction of the level it was during the housing boom. National average house prices are still falling and are predicted to drop below €140,000 over the next year. A major reason for the lack of demand in the housing market is the continuing falls in rents. Another set of figures released by Daft.ie yesterday showed that rents fell again in the past few months, as there is a glut of rental properties. The latest housing-affordability index found that the average first-time house-buyer couple are payin...

"For the love of God, and his blessed disciple St Patrick, displace me from this wretched isle"... Mbwana minister! All hail from the Emerald Isle, on this, its patron saint's feast day! It is my 10th year here! Any chance of granting me the posting that I sought after my very first week? To somewhere civilised, like North Korea, or Burma, or dear old Liberia? I liked Liberia. Yes, they sometimes kill children there, but that is in war: the highest men in the land raped children at a time of peace in this country, and got away with it. Big men, Mbwana. Important men, with purple hats, and their crimes were covered up by other men with purple hats. The health ministry here is pioneering new long thin hospital wards called "corridors". There is no money for the patients, because it is all being spent on the staff. Thousands of people are X-rayed here, and then no one bothers to read the X-rays, ho ho ho. In a county called Kerry, they are building a new hospital i...

The lost decade: prices now back to 2001 level... The property industry felt it could walk on water during the first half of the noughties, but after 2006, it all began to go terribly wrong. SO HOW did it all go so wrong in the property market? For a while there, mid-noughties, people in the property business felt they could walk on water. Now, with almost a decade of growth wiped off the value of Irish homes, both buyers and sellers are asking, how low can we go? Are we still in freefall, bumping along the bottom, or seeing the beginnings of recovery? Nobody wants to make the call. Surprisingly, they were asking the same questions back in 2001. “Now that the boom is over, everyone wants to know what is going to happen to property prices. Is now a good time to buy, will values drop even more in the spring? Should sellers wait?” this supplement asked in December 2001. After six consecutive years of growth since the mid-1990s, and the euphoria of the millennium, 2001 proved a tough year ...

Recession wipes €72,250 off value of the average home... HOUSE prices plunged another 1pc in July, bringing the total wiped off the value of the average home since the height of the property market to €72,250. New figures show house prices fell by 1.1pc in July, bringing the drop over the previous 12 months to 12.5pc. The annual fall in prices in June was 11.7pc. The average price for a house nationally in July was €238,828, compared with €311,078 in February 2007, when property prices peaked. Prices are now down 24pc since February 2007, according to the Permanent TSB/ESRI house price index. Permanent TSB's Niall O'Grady admitted that the property market had remained sluggish throughout the summer, with low levels of activity. He said that despite lower interest rates and improved affordability, consumer confidence needed to pick up before there could be any increase in activity. "It will definitely be a buyers' market for the coming months." Permanent TSB admitt...

House prices fall 20pc but owners still battling to sell... THE average asking price of a house in Ireland has plummeted by almost 20pc over the past year, a new survey has revealed. And asking prices for residential property in Dublin's city centre have been slashed by almost a third, compared to the same period 12 months ago. A report by property website Daft.ie reveals that asking prices for residential property fell almost 6pc nationwide in the second quarter of the year, a significantly larger drop than in the first three months and in line with falls in late 2008. Dublin continues to be worst affected by tumbling house prices -- the average price tag on a home in the capital is 27pc lower than the 2007 peak, while prices for city centre houses have fallen by 34pc. During April, May and June of this year, homes in the city centre fell a further 11pc, compared to a 4pc drop for houses in Cork, 6pc in Limerick and a fall of just over 2pc for homes in Galway and Waterford cities...

We will have to pay for excesses of the past... RECENT economic reports have a hint of desperation about them as they struggle to suggest the battered economy will revive in two years time. The bit between 2009 and 2010 is being glossed over, as the economy is expected to plunge to its worst recession ever in modern history . If it’s true, the 9-10% fall in output this year is from a high base and even if growth reverts back to 2005 levels then that would be no bad thing. That was the year before we built a record 96,000 houses and employment doubled towards 2 million over a 10-year period. That’s all positive, but the reality check still has to kick in. One report from West Cork suggests house prices in some areas are in desperate trouble. One source has reported that 10 houses built in 2007, achieved prices of €400,000, some bought with €390,000 mortgages. But as the market tanked, unsold houses were bought for €180,000, leaving many in negative equity territory. It is also a fact th...

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...

Warning that house prices may fall by 80%... HOUSING MARKET: IRELAND WILL see more demolition than construction of houses over the next decade, as the economy struggles to recover from the collapse of the housing market and the emergence of “zombie” banks , UCD economist Morgan Kelly told the conference. In a presentation that drew several collective intakes of breath, Mr Kelly predicted that house prices would fall by 80 per cent from peak to trough in real terms. “Construction, but not demolition, of residential and commercial property will fall to zero for the foreseeable future,” he said. Low levels of education among those employed in construction – where worker numbers peaked at about 280,000 – meant retraining would not be straightforward. Recovery will be slow: “It has taken us 10 years to get into this situation – it will in all likelihood take us 10 years to get out of it.” Mr Kelly said he had been hailed as being extremely prescient as a result of his warnings in relation t...

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...

New York, Hundreds of thousands of revelers rang in 2009 from frigid Times Square as the famous Waterford crystal ball dropped, signaling the end of a historic and troubled year that saw the election of the first black U.S. president and the worst economic crisis in decades. As the clock struck midnight, a ton of confetti rained down while the partygoers hugged and kissed. The wind chill made it feel like 1 degree (-17 Celsius) in the area, but that didn't deter the throngs who were cloaked in fur hats and sleeping bags. "We're worried about the economy but hoping for the best," said Lisa Mills, of Danville, Ohio, visiting Times Square on Wednesday night with her husband, Ken, and 17-year-old daughter, Kara. Former President Bill Clinton and Sen. Hillary Clinton, who will become President-elect Barack Obama's secretary of state on Jan. 21, helped Mayor Michael Bloomberg lower the the famous Waterford crystal ball atop 1 Times Square for the countdown to midnight....

The latest house price figures, which show prices falling by 0.5pc in November, seriously underestimate the true extent by which prices have fallen. And there is almost certainly more bad news to come in the New Year. Every month, mortgage bank Permanent TSB publishes its index of house prices. The index, which is compiled by the ESRI and has shown a decline in house prices for every month since March 2007, is generally regarded as being the most authoritative and up-to-date source of information on the state of the Irish housing market. foolproof Unfortunately, the Permo numbers are not foolproof. They are based on completed house prices during the month. With huge stocks of unsold new and second-hand houses on the market, and up to 18-months supply at current levels of demand by some estimates, sales are taking much longer to close than they used to. What this means is that the Permo numbers reflect sales that were agreed four, five or six months ago, as far back as last May or June,...

How Low Dare You Go? ...With few property deals being done and prices in freefall , many vendors are wondering what their bottom line should be to get a sale... House prices are sliding – and fast. Yet while most vendors now accept that they have to cut prices in order to tempt buyers, despite all the potential bargains on the market, statistics suggest that buyers are still deterred. Lack of liquidity, the prospect of further price falls, job losses and a worsening economic climate are taking its toll. In 2007, 158,000 people drew down mortgage loans. Frank Conway of the Irish Mortgage Corporation suggests this is down by as much as 36% this year – so far. According to Sherry FitzGerald's latest House Price Index prices have fallen by 26% since their peak in June 2006, with prices down by as much as 32.8% in Dublin. At the lower end of the market, vendors slashing €60,000, €70,000, €80,000 off the price of their property is common. High-end homes have been reduced by hundreds of t...

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 had the fourth biggest fall in house prices in the world this year ... Only Estonia, the US and Latvia have been harder hit by the drop in property values, a study by research group Global Property Guide shows. House prices in Ireland fell by 9.6pc in the year to June, according to the index. But when the level of inflation is taken into account, the drop was 13.9pc . The compilers of the index point out that "in Ireland, the 2009 Budget will include a 'stimulus package' helping first-time homebuyers". Latvia recorded the biggest fall in prices, after inflation was taken into account, with a 33pc drop. In the US, the inflation-adjusted fall for the year to June was 19pc. A host of European countries have recorded much smaller falls in house prices than Ireland. In Britain, the inflation-adjusted drop was nearly 10pc and Portugal recorded a fall of 8pc. Spain, which is now experiencing a sharp construction slowdown, recorded an inflation-adjusted decline of 2....

THE GOVERNMENT has no plan to deal with the biggest economic crisis in a quarter of a century and lacks the conviction to win public confidence, Fine Gael leader Enda Kenny told an opening session of a two-day special conference of his parliamentary party in Co Clare yesterday. Warning that the next general election "may come a lot sooner than expected", he told his colleagues that if they were "united, disciplined and tough" they would win power in the next Dáil. Focusing on the Government's approach to the economy, Mr Kenny said people were frightened because nobody seemed to be in charge. "In response to the biggest economic crisis in a quarter century, the Government first denied, then dithered, then went on holidays ." He added: "All the Government seems to be able to do is congratulate itself - in advance - for tough actions they haven't yet taken, and they'd never have needed to take if they'd done their job well enough in ...

With the market at its lowest point for many years, it's difficult to establish the right price for a property. Orna Mulcahy asked agents to nominate homes that represent good value. Simon Carswell suggests who might buy them, and how the purchase could be financed... FALLING PROPERTY prices may make it appear that there are bargains to be found out there but the tightening on mortgages means that borrowers will be fighting for higher loans. The credit crunch has forced lenders to seek larger cash deposits and higher borrowing costs from their new mortgage customers. The maximum mortgage to first-time buyers has been capped at 92 per cent by most lenders and standard variable rates have risen by an average of half a percentage point over the last year as the banks' own funding costs have risen. However, prices on many houses have reduced substantially to sell and banks are still open to lend mortgages to customers with large lump sums and a strong ability to repay. AIB, the lar...