Daft Property - Irish Property News

Doomsday media coverage and the matter of the truth... A bit like the rain in a Frank McCourt novel, the bad news on the economy never stops pouring down on us. That picture of Ireland now seems firmly set in the opinion of the international media. Once the sick patient of Europe dutifully taking its medicine to help it get better, we are now, as the doctors might say, experiencing an adverse clinical event that is threatening our very life. The cure might be killing us. Last week's extremely disappointing news that the economy had contracted again by 1.2% in the second quarter added yet another symptom to the many more that erupted within just a few days: international bond market rates at record levels upping the price of government debt and therefore necessitating an even worse budget; long-term unemployment up; emigration up; 110,000 households in arrears on electricity and gas bills. The list of damaging symptoms was endless. All last week, international commentary from the Wa

The new property reality... Like many things these days, the chances of selling a property seems to boil down to one factor: putting a realistic price tag on it and then being willing to take less than that. For estate agents around the country the last six months have been their worst nightmare. The younger generation of property professionals has never encountered the frustrations of the kind of market in which they are now operating. In the last six months there has been a growing body of buyers who are ready with mortgage approval or cash in the bank. These potential buyers have been tentatively viewing properties, and some even made offers. Then the daily diet of bad news increased and they evaporated back to the arms of the rental market - or their parents spare rooms - to sit it out. So what properties have sold in the last six months, the toughest months in a generation? The answer seems to be those that are 30 to 40 per cent cheaper than houses were on the same streets and ro

Falling prices represent new reality... At the end of last year, estate agents and vendors alike were reeling from the price drops that the market had experienced during 2007. But although they were shell-shocked, many industry experts were predicting that the rate at which prices were dropping would slow during 2008, and that prices would stabilise. Twelvemonths on, that now seems like nothing more than wishful thinking. The banking crisis, soaring unemployment and extremely poor consumer confidence have all resulted in the market having one of its worst years in living memory, a fact underlined last week by a survey which found that 80 per cent of estate agents were selling less than three properties a month. Even those potential buyers who are interested in buying are finding funding increasingly difficult to source, although observers are hopeful that the European Central Bank’s (ECB) policy of aggressive rate cuts will go some way towards alleviating that problem. With asking pric