Daft Property - Irish Property News

At last! A plan to kick-start property... Nama's €1bn 'financial muscle' to get sales moving and help balance books. Frank Daly, the chairman of Nama, which has €1bn at its disposal, has said that the State agency intends to use its "financial muscle" to "kickstart the property market". Yesterday, Mr Daly told the Sunday Independent that the provision of "limited financial support" for the purchase of property was a "natural next step" for Nama. He said: "What we're aiming to do is build market confidence at sustainable levels -- to use Nama's financial muscle to kickstart the property market in a way that will benefit the project itself and provide people with an opportunity to own their own home." The disclosure that Nama has up to €1bn to directly intervene in the moribund market comes after an auction of property in Dublin on Friday which has generated a huge level of excitement. A total of €15m was s...

Knock knock? Who's there . . . in the market . . . Ireland’s property market is stuck in a vacuum, with the only stimulus coming from the old reliable triggers: birth, marriage, death and, increasingly, debt ARE WE THERE YET? The trip to the bottom of the property market is taking an awful long time. It’s three years since the jitters took hold with talk of empty apartments and stalled sales, two years since the global economy took a nosedive courtesy of Lehman Bros. Savvier individuals would say that they saw the end coming far earlier, as far back as autumn 2006 when auction rooms suddenly emptied. and demand for investment properties waned. Either way it’s been a long grinding descent to the point we’re at now, with house prices halved and empty homes littered across the landscape. Some estate agents insist that the bottom is now and that people can “smell the value out there”. If only the banks would start lending again, they say. However, would-be buyers have plenty of reason ...

Half of us now in negative equity misery... HUNDREDS of thousands of Irish homeowners could face negative equity as early as June. A report from NCB stockbrokers has outlined that as many as 45pc of householders could owe more on their mortgage than their house is worth. NCB economist Brian Devine says that house prices, as officially measured, are still overvalued. "Our estimate for Ireland suggests the number of homes in negative equity ranges between 29pc and 46pc depending on the price decline assumed," Mr Devine outlined. NCB believes prices are already 35pc below their peak, meaning close to one in three homeowners are already in negative equity. "There is little reason to believe that house prices will not continue to fall as future employment prospects remain bleak, further tax hikes are in the pipeline, confidence remains low, emigration is likely and there remains a large supply of properties for sale," the NCB report claimed. "Affordability may have ...

The mortgage debt crisis in this country is much worse than the banks' official figures would have us believe... A report published two weeks ago by prestigious think tank Organisation for Cooperation and Development (OECD) on the mortgage crisis here was unambiguous. For a dozen years, Irish house prices raced ahead at the fastest rate and for a longer time than anywhere else in the world. When the bubble burst in 2007, it left Irish households facing – along with the Dutch and the Danes – the highest family debts in the world. A bird's eye view of OECD housing markets by Christophe Andre reveals that Irish house prices since the 1970s were many times above the prices in Britain, Netherlands, Spain and France. Some years, several countries experienced house price booms simultaneously, said Andre, who defines a boom as prices having increased by 25% or more over five years. Doubling of household debt But since 1995, 13 countries of his sample of 17 countries simultaneously sho...

Not a single new home registered by Premier in January... THE private housing market could be in danger of grinding to a complete halt with one of the two home-registration firms in the country not registering a single house in January. The Irish Independent has learned that Premier Guarantee did not register a single housing unit in January, with its larger rival Homebond only registering 149 houses, including just 24 in Dublin. At the peak of the property market in 2006, Homebond was registering 6,122 houses a month or about 72,000 in a full year. Premier, the smaller of the two registration services, was registering about 2,117 houses per month, or almost 25,000 per annum. Of the 149 houses registered with Homebond in January, 62 were in Cork, 16 in Kildare and 24 in Dublin. In most of the other counties there were less than three houses registered, with many counties only registering a single house. One of the few things propping up the housing market now is one-off housing which o...

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 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...

Vendors still slow to lose belief in the hype... I WANTED to get away from nasty estate agents, houses containing load bearing dank and breathe the pure, fresh air of New York for a few days. The problem is that fresh air exists here like a Green Party first preference vote and the only other option to going outside and choking to death is sucking in a lungful of legionnaire’s disease in the hotel air conditioning system. Worse still, the search for a new home is stalking me at every given turn. America is the home of the property bubble and ensuing credit crunch. This is, if you will, the San Andreas Fault of finance, to our San Francisco. When I mention we’re living 60 miles from work, group therapy ensues, as people mention their own horror stories, of getting up at stupid o’clock and travelling via Neptune to get to work. House prices pop up in otherwise pleasant chit chat – a topic only slightly cruder than making fart jokes in front of the pope – and someone will describe how ho...

Ireland Cuts Spending As Budget Gap Widens... DUBLIN -- I reland's prime minister announced €2 billion ($2.57 billion) in public-spending cuts on Tuesday, saying the country desperately needs to shore up its battered public finances. Also Tuesday, the Polish government approved a contingency plan to trim public spending by 19.7 billion zlotys ($5.65 billion). The budget cuts come even as other countries are boosting spending to juice their economies. Speaking to the Irish parliament, Prime Minister Brian Cowen said the bulk of this year's cuts -- some €1.4 billion -- would come in the form of increased pension levies on public-sector employees. That is effectively a pay cut for those workers. Mr. Cowen also pressed forward with tax increases for higher-income workers and second-home owners. Though countries around the globe are unwrapping stimulus plans, Ireland is in different straits. Tumbling house prices are gutting property-tax receipts, and Ireland is facing a widening b...

The blame game for the boom is well underway, says Isabel Morton... LAST SEPTEMBER, I rather boldly suggested that we might all consider suing the banks. I am now interested to hear that it is to come to pass. Investors are planning to sue Anglo Irish Bank. Given what we now know about the specific circumstances of that particular bank, it is understandable that investors, who lost a lot of money, are now somewhat sore about it all. However, the idea that property developers are also considering suing Anglo Irish Bank is not quite as easy to fathom, particularly as they are suing based on the grounds that the bank behaved negligently by breaching the guidelines of sensible lending practices. My initial reaction to this news was: that the property developers have some nerve; and that they hadn’t a hope in hell of succeeding. But, having thought about the basis of their argument, I could see that the same argument might actually be applicable to many of the loans and mortgages obtained b...

Ireland plans drastic cuts to prevent debt crisis... Ireland is to demand pay cuts for civil servants and public employees to prevent the budget deficit soaring to 12pc of gross domestic product by next year – becoming the first country in the eurozone to resort to 1930s-style wage deflation to claw back competitiveness. "We will take whatever decisions are necessary," said premier Brian Cowen. The Taoiseach yesterday denied reports that he invoked the spectre of the International Monetary Fund to terrify the trade unions into submission. But the threat – uttered or not – has been picked up nevertheless by labour leaders. "The IMF's normal prescription in such situations involves mass dismissals and pay cuts, along with cuts in pensions," said Dan Murphy, head of the public service union, who accepts the need for draconian retrenchment. The budget deficit will soar to 9.6pc of GDP this year as property tax revenues collapse. It is so far above the EU's Maast...

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...

AS CHRISTMAS and 2009 loom some vendors are cutting prices to get buyers off the fence . Number 7 Claremont Road in Howth has a new asking price of €3.75m, down from €4.8m, a drop of €1.05m or 22 per cent. For sale through Savills, the four-bed Georgian-style home first came on the market in August. It ticks all the boxes for a trophy home with 418sq m (4,500sq ft) of space and three large reception rooms. A large basement could be used as a gym, music room or home cinema. Gunne Residential is asking €1.95m for an Edwardian semi - 4 Proby Square off Carysfort Avenue in Blackrock, Co Dublin - which is a 29 per cent drop from the original price of €2.75m. The house has been on the market a number of times in the past five years. In September 2003 it sold for €1.625m with 0.25 acres of rear and side garden with development potential. The following year the house sold with a substantially reduced garden for €1.5m. The six-bed, 300sq m (3,200sq ft) house is in a cul-de-sac. Gunne Residentia...

50,000 new homes lying empty in 'ghost' estates... AT LEAST 50,000 newly-built homes are lying empty in 'ghost' estates across the country because of the economic downturn. Hard-pressed developers and estate agents are being forced to drop their asking prices by as much as 50pc in a desperate effort to shift unwanted homes dotted across the country. An Irish Independent investigation has also found that hundreds of housing estates which should have been completed at least two years ago are still unfinished. Figures from local authorities show that county councils will not take responsibility for maintaining roads and open spaces in at least 300 estates because they have not been finished to the standard required by the planning permission. The glut of empty homes -- many built under tax break schemes -- shows the pressures now being faced by homebuilders in the economic downturn. Warned House completions are at their lowest level in years and builders are putting off st...

In today's Sunday Buisness Post, Post David Cullen in Belfast reports, on the Property scene in Northern Ireland... "North facing property crisis as house values take a hammering... The deepening crisis in the North’s residential property market is highlighted by figures showing a near 19 per cent slump in values in the year to the end of June. The survey, by Nationwide building society, also showed that prices had dropped by 9 per cent in the second quarter of this year - the steepest correction in property values recorded across Britain and the North. The downturn comes on the back of an unusually sharp jump during 2006 and 2007, when prices grew by almost 80 per cent. ‘‘These increases were clearly not sustainable and left the market particularly vulnerable to external shocks, such as the financial downturn that began last August,” said Fionnuala Earley, chief economist of Nationwide. ‘‘We are now seeing the consequences of that excess vulnerability.” The average price of a...

It's Boom To Bust for Ireland - in fact there are so many reports out that it's hard to keep up with them all! Here's a section of an Irish Times report tôday: "HOUSE PRICES plummeted in April as developers began to offload a glut of unsold houses at knock-down prices. But potential buyers grew more nervous about committing to the plunging property market, new figures show. The drop in the price of new homes was almost twice the national rate, as builders were forced to discount prices in an effort to sell a backlog of houses and apartments rather than wait for a bounce in the market. But figures from the Central Bank show that consumers have so far proved reluctant to take them up on the offer in great numbers, with the growth in mortgage lending last month falling to its slowest rate since 1992. The monthly drop in house prices accelerated from 0.7 per cent in March to 1.1 per cent in April, making it increasingly unlikely that the housing market will turn around thi...

It's Dire Straits and and new tune called "Time To Tighten Belts In Ireland!" The Irish Independent reports "Double trouble on fuel, house prices... Last night economists warned that consumers will have to "tighten their belts" and avoid all luxury purchases if they want to ride out the economic slowdown. Figures from the latest Permanent tsb/ESRI index revealed that house prices fell by 1.1pc in April, bringing the annual decline in property prices to 9.2pc. And an Irish Independent survey showed that the price of diesel has shot through the €1.40 barrier -- it has now increased by an average of 9c a litre in just two weeks. Friends First chief economist Jim Power said: "I wouldn't be recommending to anybody to be going out there taking debt on board at the moment or living beyond their means. "Definitely we are in a belt-tightening environment for the next couple of years. Anybody who behaves differently is being very naive and foolish....

I see on the Irish Times that "THERE'S A NEW realism in the west of Ireland property market, where Galway builders O'Malley Construction dropped prices on a scheme back to 2003 levels, in order to shift completed houses. They offered homes at two schemes, Leargan on the Western Distributor Road, starting at €295,000, and also at Boireann Bheag with a mix of houses and apartments starting at €200,000. The discounts varied between €25,000 and €70,000 and it looks like the gambit paid off with 40 deposits last Saturday, according to agent O'Donnelan & Joyce."