Daft Property - Irish Property News

IRISH house prices are expected to fall by another 20pc, according to a new report by Moody’s Investor Services. The report states that house prices have fallen by 49.9pc between September 2007 and April 2012. ''Moody's expects that house prices will fall a further 20pc from today's levels (bringing the aggregate peak-to-trough fall to 60pc)," it added. It added that the majority of Irish homeowners are now “deep into negative equity.” And it also said that he performance of Irish prime residential mortgage-backed securities continued to deteriorate during the three months ended April 2012. Given the current climate, Moody's said the Irish economy would only grow by 0.2pc in 2012. "In this weak economic recovery, it will be difficult for distressed borrowers to significantly increase their debt servicing capabilities and so arrears are likely to continue increasing,'' it warned. Independent.ie reporters

RATHMICHAEL: €2.15M: A LARGE period house set on four acres just off the N11 in Rathmichael, Co Dublin has had its price cut almost 50 per cent Cuilin, on Allies River Road came on the market exactly a year ago priced at €4.15 million. The price has now been dropped to €2.15 million in a bid to sell through joint agents Sherry FitzGerald and Lennox Estates. The 396sq m (4,265sq ft) five-bedroom house has additional space in a coach-house and stables which have been refurbished and now include a games room and office. The grounds have also been restored and landscaped by the current owners who have lived at Cuilin since the late 1990s. A walled garden of just under an acre has also been restored, with traditional divisions and walkways lined with box hedging. The house is elegant and bright with the four large rooms downstairs and a fine curved landing upstairs. The house is located at the end of Allies River Road, well screened from the N11 though you can hear traffic through the trees...

Sales activity continued to increase relative to last April and while this is certainly an encouraging sign, it is not at the same pace as experienced during the first four months of the year. This survey is the most up to date and comprehensive indication of the state of the market, with sales estimates for each type of property ranging from new one bedroom apartments up to second-hand five bedroom detached houses. At a national level the survey reveals that 55pc of agents reported an increase in sales activity since April, while 20pc reported a decrease — this compares to the results recorded in last April's survey that showed 71pc of agents recording an increase in sales activity since the beginning of the year versus 11pc recording a decrease. This trend of a more moderate pace of activity compared to four months earlier is evident across all regions in the country. Most sales activity is taking place in and around the bigger urban centres and is confined, mainly, to first-time...

Gap in asking/selling prices of 'up to 20%'... THE gap between asking prices and selling prices can be as high as 20 per cent says economist Paul Murgatroyd. There is no way for the public to accurately determine selling prices in the absence of a national price database linked to the Land Registry, but Murgatroyd, who analysed MyHome.ie’s price survey published this week, says his view is that the figure is “anywhere between zero and 20 per cent below asking price, depending on the seller, the buyer and the property”. Myhome.ie’s figures indicated that asking prices have fallen in Dublin by 33 per cent since the peak of the property boom at the end of 2006. This followed a price index by Sherry FitzGerald saying that selling prices have plummeted by nearly 50 per cent in Dublin since the peak. Vendors and buyers are being left to figure out current property values for themselves by piecing together information from the few indices available: these include ESRI figures based on...

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...

Economic downturn wipes 50pc off value of homes... LARGE detached family homes in the capital have halved in value in the downturn. Estate agents admit four- and five-bedroom detached properties in Dublin are now only fetching 50pc of their 2007 prices. This means upwardly-mobile couples who shelled out an average of €1m at the height of the boom years are now sitting in a house worth just €500,000. The Irish Auctioneers and Valuers Institute (IAVI), which represents auctioneers around the country, says that houses nationally are now worth 40pc less than at the peak. Connacht has seen the smallest drop in house prices but even these are dramatic. The average two-bedroom townhouse in the region has fallen in value by 27.7pc. Things are much worse in Dublin for struggling homeowners who are seeing themselves plunged further into negative equity as prices have plummeted by half. But this is all good news for buyers with cash today. The IAVI annual property survey released shows that new t...

That 40% drop - it's already happened... Economists have predicted that house prices have to fall by at least 40 per cent from their peak of 2006 but house builders say that’s already a reality... NEW HOMES agents have supported a claim by the Irish Housebuilders’ Association (IHBA) that selling prices for newly built houses and apartments have either bottomed out or are close to that stage in the price cycle. Dominic Doheny, chairman of the IHBA, said earlier this week that prices across the country have dropped by an average of over 40 per cent and that the level of unsold stock was between 35,000 and 40,000. He said that there are 9,000 new homes overhanging the Dublin market – a figure well below other estimates which put unsold properties at 15,000. Ken MacDonald of Hooke MacDonald said yesterday that judging by the magnitude of the price cuts and the increased number of enquiries and viewings in recent months, there was room for a guarded optimism that the market had bottomed...

Roll up for the great property giveaway... Agents say an estimated 24% drop in house prices is far too low... There were double-takes all round last Monday when the Permanent tsb /ESRI house price index announced a 24% drop since February 2007 – a figure many believe to be conservative in the extreme. It's difficult to find out exactly what a property sells for as, under the Data Protection Act, publication of selling prices is prohibited and information is therefore based on asking price. Those involved in the business believe a truer estimate of just how far property prices have plummeted is between 40% and 50%. And counting. Ronan O'Driscoll, director of new homes at Savills, points to "the concrete example" of his own home. "I bought it for €1.9m in 2006, but one on the same road sold recently for around €850,000." The new homes landscape has changed radically in ways other than price, he adds, saying that negotiating a deal on a brand-new property is no...

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...

Price of homes 'to fall 23pc in two years'... HOUSE prices here will fall by 13pc this year and a further 10pc in 2010, international credit ratings agency Standard & Poor's has predicted. After suffering the sharpest price fall in Europe in the four years to 2010, Standard & Poor's (S&P) expects Irish prices to stabilise in 2011. However, some Irish estate agents believe that much of these price fall predictions are already priced into current Irish house prices following a spate of house-price cuts by builders since the start of the year. S&P is using the Permanent TSB (PTSB) house price index as its guide and this has been criticised by many estate agents, including Michael Grehan of Sherry FitzGerald and Keith Lowe of Douglas Newman Good, for being too late with its price trend calculations. These agents reckon that Irish prices have fallen by between 35pc and 40pc from their 2007 peak but the PTSB index, because of the way it is calculated, has so f...

Almost €200m was wiped off the value of houses in price reductions in less than a month by sellers desperate to offload their properties, the Sunday Independent can reveal. In what is being described as the introduction of "a major dose of reality" to the housing market, price drops of over 50 per cent have been reported on many houses, particularly in the Dublin area. Price reductions before last month had slowed, with sellers refusing to budge below their expectations, but the lack of activity has forced them to massively reduce their original prices in order to sell, industry figures have said. IrishPropertyWatch.com, which charts property price falls and increases, in a report on the period March 15 to the April 20, showed that over 3,700 properties dropped their prices, while only a small number raised theirs. The largest drop in price was over €1m, from €2.9m to €1.9m, while the average price drop was €41,989. It's report showed that over 80 per cent of houses had ...

Best to ignore the cheerleaders for the property sector... HAPPY new year? Not really. The banks are at death’s door. Unemployment is rocketing. Cuts much more severe than those proposed in the recent budget are inevitable. The recession is deepening, with fears that Ireland is on the verge of a so-called ‘lost decade’ growing increasingly realistic. We’re up the creek. Auctioneers and developers, however, have a different vision for 2009, one where ever more affordable homes will be snapped up by a willing populace. After all, construction firms cannot cut prices further as they are “down to their bottom line” on prices, according to one builder recently. Indeed, those who are “stupidly waiting” for prices to fall further should cop themselves on and realise that prices are bottoming. This stupidity has been disappointing developers for some time now. In August, property tycoon Derek Quinlan noted that first-time buyers must be given the confidence to buy as “negative media comm...

The crash is now the new porn... Fair play to the Irish, we'll knock a bit of crack out of anything. The property boom, for all that the official line now says it was the worst thing that ever happened to us, we treated as one huge game in which everyone could be a player. Even people who weren't investors as such, but who just happened to own a house because that's where they lived, had a great ride for 10 years as they constantly calculated how much their house was now worth and how much more they had made in the property game last year than they made by actually working. Most people were never going to sell their houses, and if they were they were going to have to buy an equally overpriced one, but people just enjoyed the feeling of getting ever richer on paper. What other nation could come up with a whole new type of porn, based on fully-clothed people standing in their kitchens, often flanked by their cute children? And the sight of a Miele kitchen in a period house ...

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...

Developers cut prices, give interest free loans... Apartments in Elm Park, D4 and The Grange in Stillorgan are among those being offered at cut rates to buyers... TWO OF the country's largest developers are offering financial packages to buyers in an effort to kick-start the new homes market. In Dublin 4, two-bedroom apartments in the Elm Park development on Merrion Road, have dropped at least 20 per cent to €470,000 with developer Radora offering buyers loans at zero interest of between 20 and 30per cent of the selling price. Radora is controlled by Bernard McNamara along with Gerry O'Reilly and David Courtney. Meanwhile Ray Grehan of Glenkerrin Homes is offering buyers a 15 per cent interest-free loan for up to seven years on luxury two-bedroom apartments at The Grange in Stillorgan which are being sold at 2005 prices, of €525,000. The deal, which is backed by the Construction Industry Federation, is being offered across other Glenkerrin-developed properties including Ballint...

The fundamentals of the Irish housing market point to more sharp falls over the next two to three years... WITH HOUSE prices falling fast and likely, come the autumn, to fall even faster, no sane person would currently even think of buying a house. But this immediately raises the question of how long the crash will last. In other words, how long will it be before you can buy a house and not regret the decision for the rest of your life? Looking at past collapses in house prices abroad, we can see that they fall into two broad groups. In the first group, that includes Japan and Switzerland, prices suffered a long, slow decline of a few per cent a year for a decade. The second group, that includes the Netherlands and Finland, saw real prices halve in three to four years, and then fall gently for a few more years. If this second pattern repeats in Ireland, given that we are already one year into the crash, we can expect two to three more years of sharp falls. After that, prices should sta...

Property prices fall further as Dublin second-hand homes drop by 10.4%... THE AVERAGE cost of a new house was just over 3 per cent lower in the first three months of this year than in the same period last year, according to new figures from the Department of the Environment. Prices of second-hand houses suffered a sharper fall of 5.4 per cent, but the greatest decline was in the price of second-hand houses in Dublin which were 10.4 per cent lower in the first quarter of the year than in the same period of 2007. The price of new houses in the capital fell by 4.8 per cent... The department's housing statistics show a steady increase in the provision of social and affordable housing, but very steep declines in the total numbers of houses built and started in the first three months of the year. Just over 14,000 houses were completed, a decline of 30 per cent on the first quarter of 2007. The number of houses on which construction began was even more dramatically reduced. There were jus...

Homeowners left reeling as 30pc price fall predicted... HOME owners are reeling from a double-whammy of bad news, after both an international broker and one of Ireland's leading economists warned house prices could plummet even further over the coming months. In a statement announcing the predictions, international broker Credit Suisse said that Ireland's property market is continuing to tumble, with house prices potentially falling by another 30pc over the coming months. The internationally-respected firm has made the comments because it says the market is only reacting to the credit crunch now. The upshot is that the impact of the credit crunch has yet to filter through to the Irish housing market, with any weakness already experienced down to a drop in demand rather than tighter credit. "As a result, we see mortgage affordability decreasing and house price declines accelerating. What is more, the housing market has been underpinned by strong immigration and rental deman...

"Asking prices on Daft.ie down 8% in past 12 months... The asking prices for houses advertised on Daft.ie have fallen back to the same levels as May 2006, according to the latest figures from the property website. Average asking prices are down almost 8% over the past 12 months, with the sharpest falls recorded in Monaghan, Sligo, Offaly, Louth and Cavan. Daft.ie says it expects prices to fall even further as there is an oversupply of houses in certain areas of the country. However, it says many people, particularly in south Co Dublin, are still posting unrealistic house prices." ... Report from the Belfast Telegraph.

Came across a great article by Shaun Connolly, Political Correspondent, on the Irish Examiner Newspaper: " Clowning around in the doleful economic circus ... ROLL up! Roll up! Marvel at the economic circus act of the Two Brians — Mr Boom and Mr Bust! Thrill as Brian Cowen — Mr Boom — hurtles through the air powered only by the overheating property explosion! Scream as Brian Lenihan — Mr Bust — plunges back down to earth as the housing bubble bursts violently in his face! Quiver as the Two Brians tremble on the high wire together, desperately trying to keep their fiscal balance with no safety net blow them. The recession started precisely four minutes late as the Taoiseach and Finance Minister delayed their entry to what, by the look on their glum little faces, could well have passed for their political funerals. With the stock market collapsing at an even faster rate than the unemployment lines were growing, it was hardly any wonder both men looked sullen as they unveiled their my...