Daft Property - Irish Property News

Revenue table of local property tax bands at a tax rate of 18% for 2013 and 2014: Revenue is to send homeowners an estimated value of their home and property tax due, in letters to be issued in the coming weeks. The local property tax payable on the market value of a property is to come into force from July and will be administered by Revenue. Revenue will write to residential property owners in March including notification of an estimated amount of local property tax, a booklet on the operation of the tax, valuation procedures and payment methods and a form for completion. The completed forms with a self-assessment of property value will have to be sent back to Revenue by May 7th on paper or May 28th electronically. The return will be valid until 2016 unless circumstances change. If Revenue believes the amount of property value declared does not reflect the market value, it may question the declaration. If people refuse to pay or do not send back the form the tax...

The term ghost estates colloquially refers to the list of 2,000 unfinished housing developments  compiled by the Department of the Environment. Dublin doesn’t do too badly in the 2011 rankings with 95 estates identified in the city council area, compared to 149 in neighbouring Fingal. The other two Dublin councils also returned quite positive figures; Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council has 60 unfinished developments and South Dublin County Council 50. It’s clear the capital has escaped lightly when some of the numbers recorded in sparsely populated counties are considered. Sligo has 237 unfinished developments, Roscommon has 235. Dublin also has a low number of estates considered the most problematic. These are the developments where residents’ living conditions are such that they are not required to pay the household charge, generally where the developer has abandoned the unfinished estate. Only 19 estates in the city council area are on this list. Elm Park was on the ...

The legacy of the boom and the subsequent property collapse have come home to roost in 2012. This is the year the Nama deferred payment scheme was launched, a ghost estate was sold at a distressed property auction, and the country’s most expensive property failed to sell despite a 74 per cent price drop. Here are 10 properties that sum up where we are now ... 1. Walford, Shrewsbury Road Now that the madness of the property boom is a distant memory, it has become apparent that not only was Walford on Shrewsbury Road in Dublin 4 never worth the €58 million paid for it in 2005, it has failed to find a buyer for it, even at the radically reduced price of €15 million. The Edwardian house on 1.8 acres went on the market in September 2011 but was recently withdrawn, presumably because it failed to meet the guide price. When it was sold in 2005, the cachet of the road and the development potential drove rich individuals into a frenzy, pushing the price substantially ove...

Building slowdown stalls attempt to complete 2,000 'ghost' estates... WORK TO complete the State’s 2,000 unfinished housing developments has stalled due to a 40 per cent drop in on-site construction activity this year, according to the latest figures from the Department of the Environment. However, the vacancy rate of completed houses on “ghost” estates has fallen by one-fifth since the department published its survey on the extent of the problem last year. In addition, demolition has begun on estates were there is no prospect of completion, the department said. Last October the department published its first national survey of the extent of the ghost estate problem, where developments are left unfinished and only a fraction of homes are occupied. It identified more than 2,800 unfinished or vacant housing estates. A year on, some 700 estates have been completed and a further 100 on which no substantial work had started have been taken out of development, leaving a tot...

Ireland 'needs 30,000 new homes per year'... Ireland will need to build over 30,000 new homes per year over the next 15 years, an economist has claimed. Marian Finnegan of property auctioneer Sherry Fitzgerald told the National Housing Conference today that Ireland’s growing population would require substantial additional housing between now and 2026. “The latest census figures show that Ireland’s population has risen to 4.58 million and it is expected to increase to 5.1 million people by 2026,” Ms Finnegan said. “Based on this population growth we can anticipate that there will be a need for an average of 30,200 new homes to be built per year over the next 15 years.” The conference, organised by the Department of the Environment, Community and Local Government and the Royal Institute of the Architects of Ireland (RIAI), is taking place in Dublin Castle’s Conference Centre. The comments come despite figures which show that there are more than 30,000 properties in th...

Number of 'ghost estates' hits 2,881... THE NUMBER of “ghost estates” has increased, figures to be published next month will show. Colm Ó Ruanaidh, senior adviser on social housing at the Department of the Environment, told the housing policy conference that the count for this year was not yet complete, but semi or unoccupied housing developments showed there had been an increase from 2,846 last year to 2,881 this year. A departmental spokesman said Mr Ó Ruanaidh was working from “raw data” that would be finalised and published next month. “The additional 35 developments constitute an increase in the number of dwellings in ghost estates from 179,230 last year to 179,900,” Mr Ó Ruanaidh said. Some 230 unfinished developments have met the criteria to benefit from a €5 million fund to address immediate safety concerns. A guidebook for residents in unfinished estates is to be published in coming weeks. Marian Finnegan, chief economist with Sherry FitzGerald, said the c...

Beat the recession: get two houses for price of one... THERE was a time when you had to queue around the block to ensure you could buy a house in a new housing estate. But now you can 'Buy One and Get One Free'. An estate agent yesterday launched the novel offer on houses in Co Donegal -- with a price tag for both of €100,000. Two sets of properties went on the market in Letterkenny and Milford at that price with a third set of semi-detached homes being offered for €120,000. The house at No 28 Coopers Crest in Milford is a three-bedroom semi-detached home with a fitted kitchen, fireplace and a garden. And anyone prepared to fork out €100,000 for the home will get No 29 absolutely free. The same deal is on offer for four-bedroom semis No 41 and No 42 Gleann Rua in Letterkenny, with No 37 and No 38 slightly more expensive at €120,000. Unlike other bargain sales of properties around the country in recent times, this sale comes with a good news story. Estate agent...

The hangover of Ireland's property boom: Abandoned ghost estates and lifeless houses stripped of their worth... Anyone against debt forgiveness should read this dispatch from a ghost estate... and thank God it's them instead of you... Rhoda Brogan stands at the front door of her three-bed semi, quietly surveying the abandoned, lifeless houses that surround her. In the centre of the estate there is a green area, wildly overgrown with weeds and nettles and circled by a cracked road and street lights that don't work. It is eerily calm; there are no cars driving around, no children playing - the only sound is the wind. All of a sudden, Rhoda’s eyes narrow and focus on an abandoned home directly across the road and she considers something for a moment before noticing the open windows. ‘Oh my God! Someone has got into that house since I left this morning,’ she says, quickly crossing the street with her four-year-old daughter, Saoirse, in tow. Around the back of the em...

Derelict properties add to Dublin's poor litter rating... A POOR showing for Dublin city has spoiled the latest anti-litter league which shows the best State-wide results since 2002. According to the survey, commissioned by Irish Business Against Litter, much of the capital is “as littered as it has been in many years”. While the State generally achieved the highest level of cleanliness since monitoring by the business group began a decade ago, “derelict and vacant” properties contributed to the capital’s poor showing. Parts of Cork also fared badly in the survey, with the Knocknaheeny area of the city being placed joint bottom of the league with Dublin’s north inner city. The survey named individual stores across the State where it said there was excessive litter. These included Tesco in New Ross and Mallow, and McDonald’s, KFC and Pizza Hut in Sligo. Several public buildings were also heavily littered, including Galway’s Merlin Park Hospital. Sweet wrappers were the m...

Economist reveals appalling vista of bankrupt and beleaguered Republic... THE EURO ZONE debt crisis will be solved “eventually” as it is to Germany’s benefit to remain in the euro, UCD economist Morgan Kelly has said. Delivering the Hubert Butler Lecture at the Kilkenny Arts Festival on Saturday, Kelly predicted very large European Central Bank loans to Ireland, Spain and Italy. Even if the Republic were to receive favourable terms, “deep problems in Ireland remain”, he added. In an hour-long address, Kelly also predicted that Irish debt will approach €250 billion by 2015, €50 billion more than Coalition estimates, and has said there was “no way we can repay that”. He also warned that the losses in the Irish banks would be much greater than predicted, reaching €100 billion rather than the €60 billion estimated. The academic, who has been praised widely for forecasting the depth of the recession, has recently warned of an impending mortgage default crisis and on Saturday descr...

Building ban on rezoned land leaves taxpayer with huge bill... THE taxpayer will be forced to pick up the tab as councils ban housing on massive banks of land -- bought for billions by property speculators at the height of the boom. The value of development sites has plummeted by more than 90pc, after councils rezoned land which is no longer needed for housing. The Irish Independent has learned that 12 of the country's 34 local authorities have already dezoned or banned development on lands. The remainder will do so by the end of the year, under a radical shake-up of planning system countrywide. But the move will have serious implications for taxpayers. Banks lent billions for speculative deals on those lands which have since collapsed -- with the State now forced to pick up the bill. Housing will now no longer be allowed to be built on 8,000 hectares previously earmarked for development in 12 local authorities alone. At the height of the boom, this land could have sold f...

UK firm in talks over ghost estates project... A BRITISH firm that wants to use ghost estates to train unemployed apprentices is to meet with the Minister for Housing and the Housing and Sustainable Communities Agency tomorrow. Equity Share Partnership (ESP) wants to use the unfinished properties to provide training and housing for the unemployed. It has begun negotiations with Nama, Fás and the banks to complete two pilot projects on ghost estates in Bandon, Co Cork, and Kilminchy, Co Laois. The company said it has financial backing to invest €10 million in the schemes and it hopes to begin work in December. The firm plans to buy the unfinished estates and take on apprentices and unemployed skilled and unskilled workers to complete them. Apprentices will continue to claim unemployment assistance, but they will be given the training necessary to complete their apprenticeships. Other workers will continue to claim unemployment assistance but, in return for their labour, they...

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...

Banks 'ignoring their ghost estates'... BANKS are choosing to avoid the legal responsibility for cleaning up hundreds of unfinished housing estates. Some 230 unfinished and dangerous estates have been abandoned by developers -- and banks which funded the projects have decided not to appoint receivers in an attempt to claw back the money. If receivers were appointed the banks would be legally responsible for clearing up the mess. Banks across the board have been blamed for refusing to address the problem. According to Housing Minister Willie Penrose, in some cases efforts by local authorities to meet with banks and developers to discuss the problem had met with no response. Banks also failed to appoint people to deal with the issue. He warned he would consider introducing legislation forcing the banks to take responsibility, or face the prospect of being fined. "I'll be looking to the banks and developers to designate key contacts. I'm also examining t...

National group to oversee efforts to deal with ghost estates... A NATIONAL co-ordination group is to be established within weeks to oversee action by local authorities in dealing with the most problematic ghost housing estates, according to Minister of State for Housing and Planning Willie Penrose. Addressing the Irish Planning Institute’s annual conference in Galway yesterday, he said one of his top priorities was that “clear, decisive and proactive actions are taken to progressively resolve the issues with unfinished housing developments”. It has emerged that the National Asset Management Agency (Nama) has 10 per cent of about 150 of the worst ghost estates that are unfinished and pose health and safety issues. The vast majority of the ghost estates that require the most work were financed by the foreign-owned banks operating in Ireland. About 28 per cent of the loans at Nama relate to land and development and about 16 per cent are in the Dublin area, where there is a great...

Millions wiped off value of land in dezoning... DEVELOPERS have taken massive hits on the value of their land banks, as one-in-three local authorities have dezoned land earmarked for development. The moved has wiped hundreds of millions off the value of land across the country -- with taxpayers facing a massive bill for NAMA loans linked to land returning to agricultural use. Planning Minister Willie Penrose said yesterday that 12 of the State's 34 local authorities had made changes to their development plans which has resulted in thousands of sites now being classed as unsuitable for development. Last year, local authorities were ordered to dezone, rezone or forbid development on massive land banks to comply with tough new planning guidelines which set out where houses and commercial units could be built. The move came because councillors had zoned enough land during the boom years to build more than a million homes that were not needed. Councils had previously zoned m...

We're surrounded by empty houses - so why did council give go-ahead for even more homes? RESIDENTS in an area of north Dublin awash with empty homes are objecting to plans to build even more new properties. Homeowners in Brackenwood, Balbriggan, Co Dublin, say there is no need for a new development of 18 units, since they are already flanked by empty homes in surrounding estates. The developers, Parkway Partnership, were last week granted planning permission for the units, which will be located adjacent to Brackenwood, after they modified their original application. CRAMMED But local resident Rose Allen said: "We don't need any more houses. Who has the money to buy houses now? "Now we have a developer coming in who wants to build 18 houses and it's the only green that we have in our estate. They're all going to be crammed in because the site is no bigger than a football pitch. "It's in our own green area. We've no field, no trees in ...

British housing associations may buy ghost estates... HOUSING ASSOCIATIONS in Britain are considering buying ghost estates in Ireland after meeting former minister for housing Michael Finneran last month before he left office. Mr Finneran travelled to Britain with representatives of the Housing and Sustainable Communities Agency in a bid to get them involved in his social housing leasing initiative. The initiative was introduced by Mr Finneran in 2009 as a solution to the lack of funds available to local authorities to build social housing. But take-up by Irish organisations has been slow. Under the scheme, British associations would buy ghost estates in Ireland from developers or from Nama and they would rent the properties out to provide social housing in Ireland for the estimated 130,000 households on waiting lists. In return, local authorities would pay the associations 92 per cent of market rent for the property and they would also receive a rent from the tenant. Histo...

Once among the richest people in Europe, the Irish have been laid low by a banking collapse and the euro zone’s debt crisis. What now? “THERE’S a craze for land everywhere!” The line draws wry laughs from audiences in Dublin’s Olympia Theatre at a revival of “The Field”, John B. Keane’s play about a land dispute in south-west Ireland. Their country has been transformed since the play was first staged 45 years ago. But Mr Keane’s lines also belong to a more recent time in Irish history. Consider St Michael’s Green, an abandoned half-built housing estate near the village of Lixnaw, in north Kerry. “Look at what’s coming soon to Lixnaw”, proclaims a sign at the entrance. Visitors who take up the offer are met with an apocalyptic sight. Four finished houses, complete with driveways, stand in line. Windows are broken; shards of glass are strewn on the ground. Peer (carefully) through the window-frames and you can see doors hanging from hinges and semi-carpeted floors. Opposite the house...

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...