Daft Property - Irish Property News

Dublin apartment prices now down 62pc, says CSO THE house prices freefall has worsened, with some properties now up to 62pc cheaper than at the height of the boom five years ago. February alone saw one of the largest single monthly falls on record - 2.2pc, a figure surpassed only during two months in spring 2009. Apartments in Dublin are worst hit by the crash, while the overall fall in the value of all properties in the capital is now up to 57pc. The Central Statistics Office also warned that in the last 12 months prices have come down by 17.8pc. That is compared to a 10.8% fall in the year to February 2011. A breakdown of the Residential Property Price Index since the slump hit exactly five years ago showed: - Nationally, the crash has wiped 49pc off values; - Houses in Dublin are down 56pc but apartments 62pc - Outside of the capital, prices are down 45pc on average. Although the CSO does not give actual prices, houses in Dublin were believed to be worth about €43...

HOUSE prices in Dublin have gone into a 60pc freefall from their peak and are now at levels last seen in 2002. The cost of buying a home in Dublin fell by 16pc in June compared to the same period last year. In real terms, Dublin house prices have fallen by 60.2pc, from the peak of the market in 2006, according to Sherry FitzGerald estate agents. The national market has corrected by 55.2pc and the average cost of a second-hand house in Ireland dropped by 15.3pc. First-time buyers remain the most active sector in the market, accounting for almost one-third of the properties traded in the year to date. Chief economist Marian Finnegan with Sherry FitzGerald said the falls placed the Irish property recession as one of the most significant recessions in the post-war era. "Accelerating deflation in the property market cycle is somewhat contradictory as the factors underpinning the market have strengthened with improved affordability and relatively tight supply, particularly for...

FORMER Taoiseach Bertie Ahern has pointed the finger of blame firmly at the bankers for the country's economic problems in a new RTE series. The TD is interviewed alongside economic heavy hitters former UK chancellor Alistair Darling, Central Bank Governor Patrick Honohan and Minister for Finance Brian Lenihan in the new series Freefall. The programme investigates the banking system failures and the widespread collapse of the property bubble which fuelled the economic recession. Bubble Coinciding with the second anniversary of the controversial Government bank guarantee, the two-part documentary series tells the story of how a huge property bubble, fuelled by the lending practices of the banking system, brought the economy precariously close to the edge. Former Chancellor for the Exchequer in Britain Alistair Darling said Europe must learn from the mistakes and that every part of society should take a portion of the blame. "If we walk away from it, it will happen again and the...

Mortgage timebomb will cause new banks crisis when it goes off... The recommendation that the moratorium on repossessions should be extended by a further year is another sign that the clock is ticking on our €150bn mortgage time bomb. Last year all of the main banks and building societies agreed not to repossess the homes of people whose mortgages were in arrears for at least 12 months. Now, with the 12-month moratorium about to expire for many of those in arrears, there are fears that the number of homeowners facing repossession could rocket. For some it has already happened. Entertainer Adele King (better known as Twink) revealed that her family home was about to be repossessed by her lender. Twink's statement came on the same day that the Oireachtas Committee on Social and Family Affairs recommended the 12-month moratorium on home repossessions be extended to 24 months. The recommendation comes just 11 days after the Financial Regulator extended the 12-month repossession morator...

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 ...

New-house completions at lowest since 1970s... HOUSE completions are to fall to their lowest level since records began in the 1970s. The number of new homes expected to be finished next year will be 10,000, whereas even during the recession-hit 1980s the lowest number of completions was 15,654 in 1988. A gloomy economic forecast from the Department of the Environment says it will be another two years before we see a return to economic growth. And it says that the estimated 150,000 unsold homes currently on the market will discourage new building activity for the next four years. The Construction Industry Outlook 2009-2011, conducted by DKM Economic Consultants for the department, finds that the current downturn in the industry is the most severe on record and that the number employed in the industry could fall to just 138,000 by the end of the year. This is half the number employed in 2006 at the height of the boom when 267,000 people worked in construction. New figures from the Depart...

Learning from the credit crunch. NEXT MONTH marks the second anniversary of the “credit crunch”, the global financial crisis which has led to the worst economic downturn Ireland has experienced in a century... However, these experiences can be put to good use by informing future investment decisions. While the most obvious lesson to be learnt from the crisis is that nothing is certain and anything is possible – who could have predicted that Anglo would be nationalised – there are basic investment fundamentals that got lost during the boom years that should be borne in mind. 1 Diversify, diversify, diversify: Diversification, whereby you spread your investments across asset types, industries and economies, is a fundamental investment technique aimed at reducing risk and increasing long-term returns. During the celtic tiger, when Irish property prices soared and bank stocks led the Iseq to boom, investors were loath to spread their investments away from the Irish economy. That has resul...

House prices now falling faster than ever... HOUSE prices are falling more steeply than ever, as sellers discount heavily to try to secure a sale. Average prices nationally fell by 1.4pc in January, compared to falls of 0.8pc in October, 0.5pc in November and 0.9pc in December, according to the latest Permanent TSB/ESRI house price index. Prices were down by 9.8pc in the 12 months to January, compared to a fall of 9.1pc in the year to December. The average price paid for a house nationally last month was €258,006, down €3,500 on December 2008, and compared with a peak price of €311,078 in January 2007. The price falls have increased in recent months, said Permanent TSB manager of business strategy Niall O'Grady. "The pace of reductions is clearly accelerating due to deepening price discounting in the market in an attempt to clear existing stock," he said. Dublin house prices were worst hit, falling by 1.4pc in January, whereas there was a reduction of 0.6pc for houses out...

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...