Daft Property - Irish Property News

€1 million price drop for well located property... DONNYBROOK €2.25m This four-bedroom house on Nutley Lane, which was extensively and expensively refurbished, has seen its price fall by more than €1 million EXACTLY ONE YEAR ago we carried a review of a house at 18 Nutley Lane in Donnybrook that had been bought as an investment with the intention of doing it up and sellling it on at a profit. The owners of the four-bedroom house purchased it in 2006, paid stamp duty at nine per cent, and spent several hundred thousand on renovations. In all, they probably spent in the region of €3.5 million. It went back on the market last November at €3.25 million, to snorts of disbelief from rival agents who were finding it difficult to shift property in the area for a good deal less. The price has been gradually dropping ever since, but the latest discount has landed number 18 at €2.25 million, a full million below its 2007 price. Selling agent Felicity Fox hopes this latest cut might tempt buyers w...

Latest round of cuts as vendors move to sell... Prices are tumbling at all levels of the market as homeowners accept that this is what's needed to tempt buyers ...four with deep price cuts: BAGGOT STREET FROM €5M TO €3.8M NUMBER 72 LOWER Baggot Street was priced at €5 million when it first came to the market in August 2006. Since then this price has been revised down to €3.8 million by selling agent Lisney, a cut of €120,000 or 24 per cent. One of the last inhabited houses on Lower Baggot Street, the four-storey over garden level terraced house has been used as a home and dental practice for many years. The 392sq m (4,200sq ft) of living space includes a self-contained flat in the basement. It is also one of the few houses on that part of Baggot Street to still retain its full garden and mews - a two-storey mews house with three small bedrooms, and rear access onto a laneway. The house was put up for auction back in September 2006, but failed to sell. It has been on the market quie...

Budget will 'turn recession into depression' ... POLITICAL REACTION: Fine Gael deputy leader and spokesman on finance Richard Bruton said this evening the Budget announced by Brian Lenihan today will "threaten to turn a recession into a depression". “This is a Budget that is all about extra taxes for ordinary families, about extra charges for people, and about cutting capital spending,’’ said Mr Bruton. “You are looking to make it tougher for people who are struggling to get by,’’ he added. “There is no sign that you are aware of the pressure on people from fuel bills, the pressure on people who have lost their jobs.’ Labour leader Eamon Gilmore said it "mercilessly targets middle income families". Speaking shortly after the Minister for Finance presented the Budget in the Dáil, Mr Gilmore said Mr Lenihan had failed to take any significant steps to protect the poor and vulnerable in the face of the worst recession facing the country for decades. “Despite ...

Towns feel pain as jobs vanish... Ireland's towns, once noisy with the sounds of construction, are ominously quiet, as people get to grips with a new reality and the prospect of emigration, writes Ronan McGreevy . A WEEK AFTER Leitrim were knocked out of the Connacht championship by Galway, the county captain, Gary McCloskey, emigrated to London. McCloskey, who was Leitrim player of the year in 2007, had been out of work for five weeks, having been made redundant by Shine Construction, based in Athlone. Shine, which had been involved in several projects in the midlands including the development of Athlone town's new stadium, blamed the downturn in the building sector for its closure in May. The firm had debts of €3.5 million and assets of just €990,000. Twenty others lost their jobs. "I had no work for five weeks," says McCloskey, a Trinity College graduate in civil engineering. "It came to a crunch and that's it - hop on a plane to London. It was easy, given...

Sunday Tribune's Ken Griffin reports today that... ONE OF the country's leading property magazines has become the latest victim of the construction slowdown, having ceased trading due to deteriorating advertising revenues. Publication of 'Irish Property Buyer' was suspended on Wednesday after a last-ditch attempt to save the magazine collapsed. The title was established four years ago by publisher Joan Fitzpatrick and a former senior editor with the 'Irish Times', Don Buckley, at the height of the property boom. At one stage, the monthly title sold over 7,500 copies per issue but this had fallen to nearer 6,000 in recent times. Buckley told the Sunday Tribune the title had been running at a loss since the end of 2007. "The slide began towards the end of 2006. Last year, we pumped our reserves from previous years into the title to maintain its position but things continued tailing off," he said. He said even advertising for over­seas properties, which h...

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...

Down, Down, Get On Down... So just how low can it get? Irish Times Property News: "Deep price cuts in end-of-season sales. WITH summer holidays looming and a glut of €1 millon plus homes on the market, and the realisation is finally setting in that a drastic price cut could be required to secure a buyer. While the property market has seen price "adjustments" across the board, heavy discounts are now offer in some cases. In the six properties listed here, the average price cut is 33.4 per cent. The slowdown has been particularly tough on high-end properties, which have a smaller pool of potential buyers. Price drops of over 30 per cent can mean upwards of €1 million being shaved off the asking price. KILLINEY: -31% EIRENE ON Marino Avenue East in Killiney, Co Dublin, came on the market in March at €6 million. Now three months later Savills HOK has cut the asking price to €4.15 million for the two acre property which is a stone's throw from the Dart and beach and may h...

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...

Ariel View of Dublin's Stephens Green: Story from www. ireland.com - Saturday, 26th April, 2008: " Plans for the Metro North line entail excavating a large section of St Stephen's Green at huge cost. But some are questioning the wisdom of using the Green as a transport hub, and worry that the work will forever alter the character of the park. Frank McDonald Environment Editor reports. On November 1st, 2005, at the Government's fanfare launch of its €34 billion Transport 21 investment programme, then minister for transport Martin Cullen announced that St Stephen's Green would become the capital's key transport hub. "It will be to Dublin what Grand Central is to New York," he said. A discreet veil was drawn over the environmental impact of this radical proposal, particularly on the much-loved park that was given to the people of Dublin in 1880 by Sir Arthur Edward Guinness, Lord Ardilaun, under an Act of Parliament entrusting its long-term care to the C...

Another look at Ireland's daft Property Market In 2008... Property "bargains" in the news today: The Ivory Building Apartments, Dublin 2 prices cut... 1 Bedroom: 2007 €390,000 - now €299,500 2 Bedroom: 2007 €489,000 - now €429,500 3 Bedroom: 2007 €650,000 - now €525,000 Dunboyne Castle in Co Meath prices cut... Apartments 1 Bedroom: 2007 €285,000 - now €210,000 Apartments 2 Bedroom: 2007 €325,000 - now €249,000 Apartments 3 Bedroom: 2007 €365,000 - now €285,000 Houses: 4 Bedroom: 2007 €600,000 - now €499,000 According the Irish Times Newspaper, lower priced homes are selling, and "THE STRATEGY of dropping prices for new homes is increasingly paying off, proving that buyers love a bargain." ...They add that the price reductions have made property, in Ireland, "accessible for first-time buyers who until now have been holding off. Sure enough the bargains have come along, and at a greater discount than most people had expected. Expect to see even more develope...

Just reading the Irish Times this morning and found some tasty "bargains" (well they are a bit cheaper than they were anyway!) Butterfield, Rathfarnham, Dublin 16, prices cut by up to €800,000... Largest house: 2007 €2.8 million - now €2 million Detached houses: 2007 €1.95 million - now €1.45 million Semi-detached: 2007 €1.2 million - now €990,000 Dalriada, Knocklyon "starter scheme", prices cut by up to €100,000... Houses: 2006 €610,000 - now €510,000 Duplex: 2006 €450,000 - now €399,000 Apartments: 2006 €399,000 - now €355,000 Firview Close Apartments, Dublin 3, prices cut by up to €55,000... 1 Bed: 2007 €325,000 - now €295,000 2 Bed: 2007 €450,000 - now €395,000 3 Bed: 2007 €520,000 - now €480,000