Daft Property - Irish Property News

92% of lots sold by Allsop... THE BIDDING was brisk at the Allsop Space auction of mostly distressed property in Dublin’s Shelbourne Hotel yesterday, as 1,600 people packed into the auction room and spilled out into the bar and lobby of the hotel. A total of 97 of the 108 properties sold under the hammer with a further two selling after auction, raising a total of €11.4 million. Around half were cash buyers – 30 per cent less than at previous auctions. A small group of protesters from a group calling themselves the Anti-Eviction Taskforce held a low-key protest outside the hotel. However proceedings came to a brief halt when one protester stood up in front of the auctioneer and warned about the “ill will” that could affect buyers of distressed property in communities. “Don’t bid then,” replied auctioneer Gary Murphy from UK-based Allsop, before thanking the protestor for his “kind words”. Around a third of the lots are apartments, and one of the bargains of the auction was a ...

COUNTRY buyers with cash in their pockets have been trawling Dublin for homes for their college-bound children in the past few weeks – and many will be closing on deals next week, when CAO offers come out. But with the property market in the state it’s in, there’s a lot on offer that could interest investors, ranging from a city centre two-bedroom apartment in the appropriately named College Gate development near Trinity for €190,000 to an eight-bedroom guest-house in Ranelagh for €735,000. Buying a house or apartment to house one or more third-level offspring is cheaper than paying rents – if you don’t have to borrow – especially as prices continue to fall in the city while rents have stabilised, according to the latest Daft report. However, Moneycoach.ie’s Frank Conway sounds a cautionary note about investing in property for your student children: if you don’t have the cash to pay for it “the chances of securing finance is very, very low” he says. “This will rule the majority...

Nama proposes negative equity scheme... Nama is proposing a deferred payment scheme to protect property buyers against the risk of negative equity in an attempt to kick-start the property market. The agency wants to introduce a scheme where Nama would waive 20 per cent of the purchase price on one of its 8,000 Irish residential properties after five years if the property were to fall further in value. Customers will deal with the banks on the scheme and will have no engagement with Nama. Chairman Frank Daly said the agency was in talks with the Minister for Finance and the Department of the Environment about the agency’s proposals. “We are teasing this through. We want to analyse the full impact of it and we would hope to make an announcement early after the summer,” he said at the launch of the agency's 010 annual report. The State loans agency, set up to take the most toxic assets out of the banking system, has loans on its books linked to 12,000 houses and apartments...

Web jam as 10,000 download list of NAMA properties... NAMA'S list of property for sale was downloaded by 10,000 people in just a day and a half as bargain hunters scoured the list for cheap deals. A spokesman for toxic debt agency NAMA revealed last night that it was forced to make emergency changes to its website in order to cope with the unprecedented web traffic. It came after NAMA made a list of 850 properties it is selling through receivers available for the first time. The list features property in 25 of the 26 counties as well as Northern Ireland and the UK. The assets listed include everything from car park spaces and bedsits, through to family homes and significant commercial and industrial assets. NAMA is not directly selling any of the property but its 150 staff have been inundated with enquiries since the list went live, sources at the agency said. NAMA is now looking at ways to make the property list easier for the public to access. It also intends to u...

NAMA fire sales aim to breathe life back into market... Thousands chase property at knockdown prices as NAMA puts houses, farms, pubs and apartments up for sale. BARGAIN hunters came out in force yesterday after bad bank NAMA put nearly 1,000 properties up for sale in the largest single sell-off in the history of the State. The prospect of picking up a farm, pub, quarry, three-bed semi, hotel, apartment -- even an airport -- sparked an unprecedented wave of interest within hours of the list being published. NAMA chiefs even promised to finance some of the sales as the agency announced losses of €1.18bn on dealings for last year. It also revealed the extent to which NAMA is to recover money from reluctant debtors. In one case -- and as late as this week -- it seized jewellery worth €200,000 that had been given to a developer's partner. NAMA bosses insisted they were not running a fire sale and kept asking prices and bids received a closely guarded secret last night. Bu...

Auction Results for the 87 Lots sorted by Lot Number Lots: 1-87 1 Vacant Flat Dublin 1 Sold €148,000 2 Investment Flat Blackrock Sold €270,000 3 Investment Freehold Building Clondalkin Sold €139,000 4 Investment Freehold House Stepaside Sold €146,000 5 Investment Flat Dublin 7 Sold €177,000 6 Vacant Freehold House Castlebar Sold €87,000 7 Vacant Leasehold House Dublin 3 Sold €67,000 8 Investment Flat Dublin 1 Sold €145,000 9 Investment Freehold Building Bray Sold €220,000 10 Vacant Freehold House Stillorgan Sold €280,000 11 Vacant Freehold House Tyrrelstown Sold €129,000 12 Land/Site Blackrock Sold €66,000 13 Vacant Freehold House Thomastown Sold €50,000 14 Investment Freehold House Kilkenny City Sold €440,000 15 Investment Flat Blackrock Sold €285,000 16 Investment Flat Dublin 9 Sold €55,000 17 Investment Freehold Building Drogheda Available €290,000 18 Vacant Flat Arklow Sold €71,000 19 Vacant Flat Dublin 1 Sold €132,000 20 Vacant Freehold House Dublin 4 Sold ...

Ballsbridge home for under €400,000 in distressed auction... Developer and landlord David Grant will see his former home on Haddington Road in Ballsbridge, Dublin 4 go under the hammer for less than €400,000, a quarter of its original asking price, at the Allsop/Space auction of distressed properties next month. Number 61 Haddington Road failed to sell at auction in 2006 with an advised minimum value of €1.6 million, but now it’s likely to be sold for about a quarter of the price next month. The mid-terrace building is being auctioned ‘‘on the instructions of the mortgagee in possession’’ with a reserve not to exceed €395,000, according to the auction catalogue. Grant’s former home is situated on the south side of Haddington Road, just off Baggot Street. The accommodation is arranged over lower ground, raised ground and first floors beneath a pitched roof. Internally it’s arranged as two-self contained residential units. It is being sold with vacant possession. In October 200...

NOTHING BETTER encapsulates Ireland’s property crash than bleak images of “ghost estates”, which is why they have featured alongside the concrete skeleton of Anglo Irish Bank’s putative future headquarters in Dublin’s docklands in so much of the international media coverage of our current travails. What we must not forget, however, is that thousands of people are still suffering from the inevitable consequences of the crash, none more so than the residents of half-built housing estates abandoned by their once gung-ho developers when the bubble finally burst. Yet the feedback from many local authorities to the Department of the Environment indicated that “getting positive engagement from developers, site owners and financial institutions responsible for the loans on such developments was proving very difficult”, according to Minister of State for Housing and Planning Willie Penrose. As the final report of an advisory group set up to deal with this widespread problem made clear, “the...

Ailesbury Road pad for sale at 6th of price... A PERIOD house on Dublin's Ailesbury Road will be offered for sale next month at €1.45m -- just a sixth of its boomtime value. The large residence, with one of the city's most desirable addresses, would have been valued at over €10m at the height of the property market. It is being priced at €1.45m in a sale of distressed properties on July 7 next. Another impressive Rathgar property, which is now divided into five self-contained flats, could have reached anything close to €2m at one stage, but has had its reserve set at €495,000. And a home at the foothills of the Dublin Mountains with almost an acre of land has been listed as one with offers from €450,000 -- slashed from more than €1m in 2006. The sales are part of three further auctions of distressed properties lined up for Dublin after the massive run on discounted houses earlier this year. Banks eager to get more properties off their books have turned to auctione...

For sale: the post-bubble rubble. €4,000 or nearest offer... SMALL PRINT: ON TUESDAY, an intriguing notice appeared in the small ads section on the back page of this newspaper. It read: “Arch for sale. This arch was built by artist Emma Houlihan. It was part of a Nama-related art project and built from the reconstituted rubble of a destroyed Leitrim house. Custom built. Perfect for gardens and spaces. Can function as a sculpture or a functional object.” There was a number listed to call, for queries about “cost and shipping”. Emma Houlihan was in Stockholm this week, where a number of interested parties had already called her number, although no solid offers of purchase had so far been made. What is this “arch” she is selling? “It’s a project I undertook while artist-in-residence for the Leitrim Sculpture Centre last summer,” she says. “It struck me that Leitrim was the ghost estate capital of Ireland, and I wanted to make a piece of art connected with that fact. I was mostly i...

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: 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,...

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...

Dublin 4 property market to float — with houseboats... The Docklands Development Authority says the vessels would ‘contribute to life along the water’s edge’... THE DUBLIN 4 property market could soon get an injection of liquidity. The Dublin Docklands Development Authority (DDDA) has recommended that houseboats be allowed to moor at Pigeon House Harbour in Ringsend. The DDDA’s draft master plan has advised that houseboats would “contribute to life along the water’s edge” and should be “actively encouraged” to set up at the disused harbour. The Inland Waterways Association of Ireland (IWAI) has welcomed the proposal, calling for the DDDA to adopt specific policies encouraging the establishment of a “live aboard” community in Dublin 4. Derek Whelan, a spokesman for the IWAI, said: “The harbour is an ideal location as it’s sheltered and near the city centre.” Although there are about 10,000 privately owned coastal and inland vessels in Ireland, it is estimated that fewer than 100 people ...

Try it, and if you like it, then buy it... Could a rent-to-buy housing scheme that helps first-time buyers get on the ladder help stabilise the new homes market, asks Róisín Carabine... A rent-to-buy scheme that allows prospective buyers to lease a new home with the option to buy later, using part of the rent towards the purchase, is growing in popularity with first-time buyers and developers as the credit crunch worsens and residential sales stagnate. Seán Power of Rent2Buy in Ballincollig, who first introduced the scheme to Ireland three years ago, says interest has more than doubled in the last few weeks, with 1,200 first-time buyers now registered on its database. "Of those who have recently signed up, the majority – around one in six – want to buy and live in and around Dublin. We've a number of buyers particularly interested in the Swords area," says Power, who plans to match 1,000 prospective buyers with homes in 2009. The scheme was first launched at The Beeches, ...

2008 Review: AGENT SPEAK: Jargon busting guide - revised for the recession... BROWSING ON the internet, I came across a very helpful guide to property and financial jargon which was thoughtfully provided by Sherry FitzGerald. I felt obliged, however, to write up a revised version, which might be more suited to today's virtually non-existent property market. Approval in principle : valid for no longer than 14 days from date of issue. Appreciation : no longer applicable to Irish property. Arrears : the term most frequently used this year. Asking price : well, you can always ask, but don't expect to receive. Auction : an extraordinary event where people actually competed with each other in order to buy a property. No longer necessary. Auctioneer/estate agent : a dying breed (from starvation). Arrangement fee : another bank scam. Best and final offer : that's all you're getting. Actually, no, cut that by €50,000. Bidding : a reckless act. Booking deposit : the money the dev...

Latest round of cuts as vendors move to sell... Prices are tumbling at all levels of the market as homeowners accept that this is what's needed to tempt buyers ...four with deep price cuts: BAGGOT STREET FROM €5M TO €3.8M NUMBER 72 LOWER Baggot Street was priced at €5 million when it first came to the market in August 2006. Since then this price has been revised down to €3.8 million by selling agent Lisney, a cut of €120,000 or 24 per cent. One of the last inhabited houses on Lower Baggot Street, the four-storey over garden level terraced house has been used as a home and dental practice for many years. The 392sq m (4,200sq ft) of living space includes a self-contained flat in the basement. It is also one of the few houses on that part of Baggot Street to still retain its full garden and mews - a two-storey mews house with three small bedrooms, and rear access onto a laneway. The house was put up for auction back in September 2006, but failed to sell. It has been on the market quie...

One of my favourite sites about what's happening with the Irish Property scene is The Property Pin - thepropertypin.com. "... thepropertypin.com was established to discuss the existence of a damaging speculative price bubble in the Irish housing market" ... The Property Pin is " not here to cheerlead the crash but rather to illuminate, to provide balanced discussion and to help prevent another property bubble from occurring in the future." A great forum - well worth a visit!

Bubble, bubble, toil & trouble... With the major slow down in house sales, in Ireland, sellers are starting to get a bit creative: I see that houses in the Alderwood development at Hollystown, in Dublin 15, come with a free Volvo C30 Car! The houses, priced from a mere €480,000, are being promoted by McPeake Auctioneers who say: ..."we are delighted to announce that purchasers will receive a brand new stylish C30 Volvo car with their new home. The Volvo C30 is a flexi-fuel luxury car and is the smarter choice for the environment making it the perfect inclusion in a new life style choice..." Makes you wonder what's being promoted - the houses or the car? So what if everyone in the development has the same type of car, might look a bit odd alright, but would anyone buy a house in the first place just because they were getting a free car thrown in???!

Bargain time again... This time it's in Smithfield, Dublin City Centre, where Chief O'Neill's is up for sale at €18 million - that's a whopping €3m price reduction from the previous price tag of €21 million in 2007! The modern 77-room hotel is well situated overlooking Smithfield Square, (or Plaza as it's now know,) in the heart of Dublin City. The Jameson Distillery tower is included in the sale. It was originally used to distill Ireland’s famous Jameson Whiskey (from 1895), the chimney, with its 360°panoramic views is now a popular tourist attraction. It has some spectacular views over Dublin city, port and surrounding Dublin & Wicklow Mountains. A nice buy!