Daft Property - Irish Property News

Emigration set to hit one-in-four city households... POLL: Quarter of young people want to leave. MORE than one in four Dublin households will experience emigration within the next 12 months. The scourge of forced emigration has yet to peak, a new poll of over 1,000 people has found. A major brain-drain is on the horizon as 23pc of young people aged 18-24 say that they intend to leave Ireland by early 2012. An analysis of the Millward Brown Lansdowne poll for the Herald shows that the exodus will include tradesmen, college graduates and other newly unemployed young people. Almost one in ten (9pc) people interviewed said they personally intend to emigrate within the year. And 20pc said another member of their household planned to move away to places like Australia, Canada or the US. More men than woman are ready to move overseas but those leaving are spread across all social classes. Around one in six are unemployed while one in eight are self-employed. The poll found ...

Cowen on rack over 'homemade meltdown'... THE banking meltdown that cost taxpayers billions of euro was a result of "homemade" decisions and a government that thought "the party could last forever", two official reports revealed yesterday. In hugely damning findings, one report by two international banking experts pointed the finger of blame squarely at Taoiseach Brian Cowen for economic policies when he was Finance Minister. The reports will now be used by a commission of inquiry and an Oireachtas committee to look at what triggered the crash. But the inquiry will not be looking at a string of calamitous government budgetary policies to which Mr Cowen was central and it is not clear if the Taoiseach will be called before the committee. Former International Monetary Fund officials Klaus Regling and Max Watson said alarm bells should have sounded when the property boom and lending trends in the banking sector expanded -- as far back as 2003. They added that v...

Take a long look at the chart below. Digest it. Maybe look again if you have to. This happened in the most sophisticated economy in the world. This is what happened to the price of development land in Japan. Prices roared upwards and then collapsed, ending up below where they started at the beginning at the boom. This is likely to happen here; development land is likely to settle back to 1996 prices. We haven’t seen the half of it yet . When we hear some property lads talking about green shoots, this chart should be enough to tell them to snap out of it. But we can’t seem to snap out of it. We are still caught in the trap. We seem to believe that the price of houses and land will miraculously rise again some time soon. This will not happen. It can’t and shouldn’t. In fact, houses prices are likely to fall another 50 per cent from here before we see anything like the bottom. International comparisons bear out these forecasts. Until now, many Irish people have clung to the myth of what ...

Bubble bubble toil and trouble...

THE average house has lost almost €46,000 of its property-boom value. Prices fell in October for the 20th month in a row. House prices are now down 15pc from their peak of January/February 2007, according to the latest figures from the Permanent TSB/ESRI house price index. Over the past year prices are down 10.2pc after average prices nationally showed a fall of 0.8pc in October, a marginally smaller drop than in the previous two months. However, many economists feel that price declines have been more severe, with a number of estate agencies estimating that prices are already 30pc off their peak. And new figures out yesterday from the Central Bank seemed to back this up. They showed that residential mortgage lending is at its lowest level in 22 years. Permanent TSB executive Niall O'Grady yesterday defended the accuracy of the house price index. "The index remains as valid as it was when house prices were rising," he said. However, he admitted that there was a three-month...

Property spend plunges €40bn... Irish spend on property has crashed by 60pc in 2008 compared to last year, with expenditure down by a crushing 73pc -- or around €40bn -- since the market peaked in 2006. Our property spend is forecast to fall to €15bn this year -- down from €45bn in 2007 and a heady €54.4bn in 2006, according to the latest 'Property Outlook' from Savills. Joan Henry, head of Research at Savills Ireland says that all sectors of the property market have been affected -- most obviously the new homes area. The total spend on new homes is expected to fall from an estimated €23bn in 2007 to just €6bn this year. Spend in the Irish investment market is expected to be down as much as 75pc from last year's €2bn. Spend on domestic land is expected to fall by a staggering 80pc. In the new homes as in the second hand market, prices have fallen by as much as 30pc this year and maybe more if looked at on an individual basis. "Successive price reductions this year, cou...

Building sector to lose 40,000 jobs next year... Many leaving to seek work in the Middle East. THE Irish economy is dead on its feet and as many as 40,000 construction workers could lose their jobs next year as housing starts have slumped to pre-1993 levels, according to latest figures obtained by the Sunday Independent. So bad are things here that a number of leading Irish building companies are leading an exodus of our most skilled and talented workers to foreign lands in the search for work. It has emerged that Irish firms are now lining up work in places like Dubai and Iran, both of which are experiencing building booms. In what is further bad news for the Irish economy, the number of housing completions this year will be just 45,000 compared to the 93,000 at its peak two years ago, and next year it is reckoned that the number of completions will be less than 20,000. This year, not one county in Ireland has managed to match or better the number of housing starts last year. In a sh...