Daft Property - Irish Property News

Looser Central Bank rules, generous Help to Buy grants for first-time buyers - but trader uppers are being left out in the cold... They paid too much for their home during the boom; their wages are stagnant; their mortgage is still underwater; they may have a cheap tracker but have ended up renting their own home and leasing another family friendly property at a hefty rent themselves. They’re the negative equity generation and now they want to trade up – but any help form the Government is going towards first-time buyers and not them. Why? It’s a question many people of a certain age may be asking themselves following last month’s revisions to the Central Bank’s mortgage rules. For first-time buyers, the requirement to have a deposit of just 10 per cent – or as low as 5 per cent on a new build thanks to the help-to-buy scheme – means getting the funds together to buy a first property, particularly in Dublin, has become a good deal easier. But what about second-time buyers looking to...

Number of mortgages in arrears hits new peak of 14pc... ONE in seven mortgage holders is now in arrears, according to calculations by a leading ratings agency. Large numbers of these homeowners are understood to be avoiding getting into talks with their banks on restructuring their mortgages. Moody's also said house prices would fall another 20pc. The rating agency said its calculations show 14pc of residential mortgage holders are now in arrears, which works out at 107,000 households. This is a new peak, it said. Figures released by the Central Bank last month showed 10.2pc of mortgage holders were three months or more behind on their payments. "The steep decline in house prices since 2007 has placed the majority of borrowers deep into negative equity," it said. "Irish house prices have already fallen by 49.9pc between September 2007 and April 2012, and Moody's expects that house prices will fall a further 20pc from today's levels." Central Bank figu...

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

FIRST, some good news. The fall in house prices might be accelerating, but vacancy rates in Dublin are falling. Estate agents Savills have published figures claiming that the number of unoccupied houses in the capital had fallen from 11,000 in March 2010 to just 5,400. According to Savills, people who are unable to sell their houses are successfully renting them instead. The Savills' figures support the findings of last April's census which showed that the proportion of vacant houses in Dublin and the surrounding counties, at 10pc or less, is much lower than elsewhere in the country -- for example over 30pc in Co Leitrim. Despite this chink of positive news, it's back to business as usual for our stricken property market. The latest house-price figures from the CSO weren't bad, they were catastrophic. After a few months during which it seemed as if the worst might be over, house prices plunged by 1.6pc in August and by 13.9pc over the past 12 month. The situ...

Noonan: no lottery style payout for mortgage debt crisis... FINANCE Minister Michael Noonan yesterday promised that the Government will act swiftly to deal with the mortgage-debt crisis -- but insisted the solution will not be a "big pool of money in substitute for the lottery". The comments came as Mr Noonan insisted it was "not realistic" to expect the Government to sanction universal "debt forgiveness" for borrowers who bought at the peak of the market or have run into trouble with their mortgages. At a meeting of the Finance Committee yesterday, Mr Noonan repeatedly stressed that he would not second-guess the work of an interdepartmental group due to report on solutions to the mortgage crisis at the end of September. But he categorically ruled out any role for universal debt forgiveness, insisting it was "not possible" and that "nobody should think there's going to be some big pool of money to be handed out as a substitute fo...

Insurer refuses to pay for pyrite damage in buildings... HomeBond leaves owners facing bills of €70,000. Thousands face bills of up to €70,000 to repair pyrite damage to their homes after a leading building insurer refused to meet claims. HomeBond, the building insurance agent, has contacted the owners of affected properties to tell them they will not accept liability or pay out on claims. Some homeowners who had already been offered compensation have now been told that these offers no longer stand. Junior Minister and Meath East TD Shane McEntee, who has represented many of the affected families, described the move as "shameful". It follows a High Court case in which it was ruled that a quarry from which pyrite-infected material was sourced was culpable for the condition of the buildings it supplied. Last year it was estimated that around 20,000 claims had been made to HomeBond in relation to pyrite -- a mineral that expands in the presence of moisture and oxygen...

Write-offs and negative-equity loans already on offer -- just don't tell everyone The debate about debt forgiveness has raged across the nation, polarising public opinion. Laura Noonan investigates what banks are really doing to help struggling homeowners. It might surprise people to know that some banks have been embarking on forms of mortgage write-offs for quite some time. And that's not all that's been going on -- some of the other new-fangled "solutions" expected to be recommended by the Government's latest mortgage expert group, like negative-equity mortgages, are already in action, too. The reason the public don't know about these developments is simple -- the banks don't want the masses to know. Because as soon as you admit things like this are happening, you run the risk that everyone will want a piece of the action. The action so far has largely been limited to borrowers who've actually left their home by way of "volu...

Prices could fall by a further 15% if rate of decline continues into next year... ANALYSIS: Oversupply, the lack of mortgage financing and the cost of borrowing are all playing a part as property prices continue to decline THE GOOD news on the property market: July’s monthly fall in homes prices was the second smallest this year. The bad news: a single month is not enough to suggest that the deteriorating trend over the course of 2011 has been arrested. The average monthly fall in prices over the first seven months of this year was 1.4 per cent. The average of the 12 months of 2010 was 0.9 per cent. The accelerating underlying rate of price declines up to the middle of this year is cause for concern. And delving deeper into yesterday’s figures gives no reason to believe any segment of the market has been immune. The chart shows declines in prices from January to July ranged from 6-11 per cent. That has added to the already massive declines registered among every market segmen...

House prices ‘could fall by 67% from peak’... INTERNATIONAL credit ratings agency, Fitch Ratings has warned of "further downside risks" to Irish house prices; adding that prices could ultimately fall by 67% from peak levels in a worst-case scenario. In a new report on the Irish housing market, Fitch said it realistically expects prices to show a total drop of 50% from their peak around four years ago. However, it added that while that rate of decline forms "the most likely scenario", a worst-case scenario would result in a full-term 67% drop in house prices. "Irish house prices continued declining during 2010 and now are approximately 42% below the peak. "In light of the oversupply of properties and continued restricted credit availability, the agency sees further downside risks to Irish house prices and as a result, Fitch now expects a peak-to-trough house price decline of approximately 50% as the most likely scenario," said Ketan Thaker, sen...

Nama proposes negative equity scheme... Nama is proposing a deferred payment scheme to protect property buyers against the risk of negative equity in an attempt to kick-start the property market. The agency wants to introduce a scheme where Nama would waive 20 per cent of the purchase price on one of its 8,000 Irish residential properties after five years if the property were to fall further in value. Customers will deal with the banks on the scheme and will have no engagement with Nama. Chairman Frank Daly said the agency was in talks with the Minister for Finance and the Department of the Environment about the agency’s proposals. “We are teasing this through. We want to analyse the full impact of it and we would hope to make an announcement early after the summer,” he said at the launch of the agency's 010 annual report. The State loans agency, set up to take the most toxic assets out of the banking system, has loans on its books linked to 12,000 houses and apartments...

In Oscar Wilde's Importance of Being Earnest, Lady Bracknell memorably remarks that: "To lose one parent… may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness." The Euro-zone's need to rescue three of its members (Greece, Ireland and Portugal) with three others (Spain, Belgium and Italy) increasingly eyed with varying degrees of concern smacks of institutionalised incompetence. Executed with Northern European creativity, charm, flexibility and humility and Mediterranean organisation, leadership diligence and appetite for hard work, the European rescue plan – "the grand compact" - is failing. European Debt Crisis returns In little over a year since the announcement of Greece's debt problems, the European debt crisis has ebbed and flowed with markets oscillating between euphoria (resolution) and despair (default or restructuring). The European Union's (EU) "confidence-boosting", short-term "liquidity enhancement...

Struggling families flock to care centre for meals... ENTIRE families are going to homeless centres for their dinner every evening. Before the recession, the Capuchin Day Centre for the homeless in Dublin would rarely have seen children coming through its doors -- but now up to 10 families a day are coming coming in to get fed. Many of the families are struggling to pay large mortgages taken out during the boom. They are worried about losing their homes and literally do not have enough money to put bread on the table, says Brother Kevin Crowley, who runs the shelter. He says that there are four times the amount of people arriving today compared with a few years ago. Some of those now seeking help are professionals such as engineers and architects who would have been earning a very good wage during the boom years. "It's not just homeless people who come to us, its anyone who is in need. We are getting lots of families with children coming in," he says. "...

More than 60,000 homeowners fall 90 days behind on repayments... THE number of homeowners who are three months or more behind on their mortgage repayments has jumped to 60,000. Ratings agency Moody's released statistics yesterday showing 7.62pc of the home loans that have been sold off to investors are now 90 days or more in arrears. If this figure is applied across the entire 782,427 mortgages in the market, it means just short of 60,000 homeowners are now three or more months behind on their repayments. Figures from the Central Bank last month put the number of homeowners in arrears in the three months to March at just shy of 50,000, or 6.3pc of all mortgages. Now Moody's has produced figures for April showing the percentage in arrears has gone up from 6.65pc in February. This means an additional 8,000 mortgage holders fell behind on their payments between February and April. However, the Central Bank pointed out that the number of repossessions remained low at ...

NOTHING BETTER encapsulates Ireland’s property crash than bleak images of “ghost estates”, which is why they have featured alongside the concrete skeleton of Anglo Irish Bank’s putative future headquarters in Dublin’s docklands in so much of the international media coverage of our current travails. What we must not forget, however, is that thousands of people are still suffering from the inevitable consequences of the crash, none more so than the residents of half-built housing estates abandoned by their once gung-ho developers when the bubble finally burst. Yet the feedback from many local authorities to the Department of the Environment indicated that “getting positive engagement from developers, site owners and financial institutions responsible for the loans on such developments was proving very difficult”, according to Minister of State for Housing and Planning Willie Penrose. As the final report of an advisory group set up to deal with this widespread problem made clear, “the...

Rates wipe out benefits of decline in house prices... BENEFITS to first-time buyers from drastic falls in property prices are wiped out by sharp increases in mortgage costs, new research shows. House prices have dived by 40pc since 2007, which means potential buyers would need a much smaller mortgage. But a series of mortgage-rate hikes by all lenders mean that the cost of servicing even a small mortgage has shot up. Mortgage expert Karl Deeter accused banks of capturing most of the gains for potential buyers of lower prices by pushing up mortgage costs. Mr Deeter of Irish Mortgage Brokers looked at the cost of a 30-year mortgage for a €350,000 house at the top of the housing bubble in 2007. At that time buyers would have been able to get a good value tracker set at 1pc above the ECB rate. This would mean a borrowing rate of 2.25pc. The monthly repayments for this mortgage at the moment work out at €1,337, without factoring in mortgage tax relief. Mr Deeter said that th...

Banks 'ignoring their ghost estates'... BANKS are choosing to avoid the legal responsibility for cleaning up hundreds of unfinished housing estates. Some 230 unfinished and dangerous estates have been abandoned by developers -- and banks which funded the projects have decided not to appoint receivers in an attempt to claw back the money. If receivers were appointed the banks would be legally responsible for clearing up the mess. Banks across the board have been blamed for refusing to address the problem. According to Housing Minister Willie Penrose, in some cases efforts by local authorities to meet with banks and developers to discuss the problem had met with no response. Banks also failed to appoint people to deal with the issue. He warned he would consider introducing legislation forcing the banks to take responsibility, or face the prospect of being fined. "I'll be looking to the banks and developers to designate key contacts. I'm also examining t...

Property prices continue to slide... House prices in Dublin have fallen nearly 50 per cent since their peak in 2007, the Central Statistics Office has said. According to the CSO’s Residential Property Price Index, house prices in the capital are 46 per cent lower than 2007, while apartment prices have fallen 53 per cent since their high in February 2007. Nationally, residential property prices fell by 1 per cent in the month of April. This compares with a decline of 1.7 per cent recorded in March. The index, which looks at property on a national level, shows residential property prices throughout the rest of the country are 36 per cent lower than their highest level in 2007. Overall, the national index is 40 per cent lower than its highest level in 2007. Dublin apartment prices fell by 1.8 per cent in the month of April and were 14.1 per cent lower when compared with the same month of 2010, while house prices fell 0.7 per cent and were 12.6 per cent lower compared to a year e...

Scramble to stem panic after new bailout gaffe... Alarm after Varadkar claims State will need further loans. THE Government last night scrambled to allay fears that a second bailout is on the cards, following damaging comments by a cabinet minister. Transport Minister Leo Varadkar sparked alarm and confusion when he said the Government may need to get new loans from the European Union and IMF next year. Ahead of an anticipated backlash from investors this morning, Finance Minister Michael Noonan's officials insisted the Coalition's firm plan was still to return to borrowing on the bond markets in 2012. The Department of Finance stressed there was no change in the Government's plans, as Mr Varadkar's comments were reported around the world. Mr Varadkar was also left backpedalling after he was reported as saying: "I think it's very unlikely we'll be able to go back (to borrowing on the bond markets) next year. I think it might take a bit longer......

Nama's equity plan 'is doomed by ECB rates'... Hobbs rubbishes scheme to protect homeowners, insisting any progress would be wiped out by a few interest hikes. A proposal by Nama to protect homebuyers from negative equity has been dismissed as an attempt to "manipulate property prices" and will not work in the face of rising interest rates imposed by the ECB, leading economic adviser Eddie Hobbs says. "They're trying to put a floor on the market. You would have to say that it's a positive attempt, but the history of economics is littered with various attempts to manipulate property prices. If interest rates rise, it doesn't matter what kind of floor you try to put on the market, because you'll be overwhelmed by it. "I'm in Germany at the moment and the place is absolutely hopping. The German economy is booming and inflation is rising in Europe. The Central Bank in Frankfurt is going to raise interest rates to protect the Germa...

Property prices now down 51pc from peak of boom... HOUSE prices across the country are now worth less than half of their value during the property boom, according to the latest price survey. The Sherry FitzGerald price index shows that average prices for second-hand homes nationally have fallen to 51.1pc of their highest value during the peak of the housing boom in 2006. Prices have dropped even further in the capital with the average second-hand home in Dublin now worth almost 56pc less than in 2006. The stark figures released yesterday reveal that the value of houses across Ireland is now back at early 2002 levels. At a comparative level it means prices -- especially in the Dublin market -- are now the same as they were 20 years ago. The grim news comes on the same day that banking stress tests released by the Central Bank yesterday predict the four leading banks will need an injection of €24bn in capital to offset future losses. Among the predictions are that they stan...