Daft Property - Irish Property News

140,000 homeowners 'have fallen into negative equity'... Jim Power, chief economist with Friends First, said: "I reckon the majority of first-time buyers who bought into the market over the last three years are in negative equity." Analysing the gains made up to the peak of the housing boom, and the losses since, Mr Power said negative equity was affecting "at least 140,000 people and that's rising by the day". He warned that, in terms of the recession, "we haven't seen anything yet" and predicted the numbers in negative equity could reach 200,000 by the end of 2009. Latest Census figures show there were 570,000 residential mortgage holders in 2006, with tens of thousands of new mortgages taken out since. So the continuing decline in house prices means that one in three mortgage holders are likely find themselves trapped in a home worth less than the loan they took out to pay for it. With €125bn owed on Irish mortgages, homeowners facing r...

Changing times for " 21st-century Ireland, where people are looking for ways to reduce both their spending and their negative impact on the environment"... Recycling the good old days... WHAT'S THE STORY WITH WARTIME NOSTALGIA BOOKS? 'Knickers renewed - one good pair from two old pairs; here's how to manage it," begins one snappy article from a collection of pamphlets originally published by the British government during the second World War and which have recently appeared in book form. The trick, apparently, is to cut a new gusset from the back of one pair and neatly sew it into place on the other pair and off you go, good as new. Make Do and Mend contains dozens of original facsimile leaflets offering hundreds of tips on how to make everything from carpets and gloves to saucepans and blinds last a whole lot longer. There are details on how to darn deftly and instructions on how best to convert a tired pair of men's pyjamas into a reinvigorated summer f...

The Irish Examiner mentions in a report today: SURGING unemployment and sliding tax returns helped blow a €5.6bn black hole in Government finances last night... The opposition’s ire focused on Mr Cowen, who had been Finance Minister up to May, rather than Mr Lenihan. Labour leader Eamon Gilmore accused Mr Cowen of “walking the country into the red”. Fine Gael finance spokesman Richard Bruton said Mr Cowen had to take personal responsibility for the scale of downturn as he had introduced four inflationary budgets designed to meet the needs of the “electoral cycle, not the economic cycle”. These budgets had used the unsustainable revenues from the property boom to “ramp up spending increases” at twice the rate of growth of the economy, Mr Bruton said. The Irish Independent paints a similar gloomy black hole picture... MINISTERS will have to cut €500m from their spending plans to pay for increased dole payments, as the property slump blows a €3bn black hole in their tax take. Departmen...