Daft Property - Irish Property News

Nama might prove 'laboratory' for EU, leaked cable said... THE FIANNA Fáil-Green government considered the National Asset Management Agency (Nama) “might prove to be a laboratory” for other European Union states faced with banks on the brink of collapse, according to the latest batch of diplomatic communications published by Wikileaks. Ireland’s permanent Ambassador to the EU, Rory Montgomery, made the comment to the US ambassador to Ireland, Dan Rooney, at a meeting in Brussels in September 2009. Mr Montgomery revealed the EU “was watching closely” the establishment of Nama. At the same meeting he said that year’s budget would focus on cuts in public sector pay. The cable reports Mr Montgomery’s view was that “Ireland [was] paying too many civil servants too much to provide public services that could be provided for much less.” Mr Rooney met EU commissioner Charlie McCreevy on the same trip. Mr McCreevy had advised the Fianna Fáil-Green coalition to act quickly in es...

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...

First-time buyers are still not tempted by cheaper houses... HOUSES are now more affordable than they have been in a generation -- but few first-time buyers are tempted to buy, new figures show. House prices have fallen so sharply that it takes just more than 12pc of an average first-time-buyer couple's income to repay a mortgage, the EBS/DMK housing-affordability index shows. But despite the continuing drop in affordability, the number of new buyers jumping on the property ladder is a fraction of the level it was during the housing boom. National average house prices are still falling and are predicted to drop below €140,000 over the next year. A major reason for the lack of demand in the housing market is the continuing falls in rents. Another set of figures released by Daft.ie yesterday showed that rents fell again in the past few months, as there is a glut of rental properties. The latest housing-affordability index found that the average first-time house-buyer couple are payin...

Ireland's Property Market: A Fallen Star? Ronan Lyons, Daft's in-house economist, commenting on the latest Daft research on the Irish property market... When we look back at 2008 in a few years' time, I think it's fair to say we will regard it as the annus horribilis for Ireland's property market. In late 2006, we issued a report which was the first to spot a slowdown in the property market. At the time, it was our view - unpopular though it was - that rising interest rates and high levels of supply would lead to a levelling off in house prices. This turns out to only have been the start of the story. Bursting onto the world stage at the end of the 1990s, Ireland was heralded as an economic phenomenon and rapidly became a global superstar and poster-child for economic development. But recently it looks like it's all just falling apart. Nowhere is this more evident than in Ireland's housing market - until recently the engine of Ireland's economic growth. ...

Irish Property Prices are dropping but, unfortunately, the cost of living in Ireland for 2008 looks set to rise! Below are the average annual inflation rates: 1997 +1.5% 1998 +2.4% 1999 +1.6% 2000 +5.6% 2001 +4.9% 2002 +4.6% 2003 +3.5% 2004 +2.2% 2005 +2.5% 2006 +4.0% 2007 +4.9% 2008 (forecast) +3.5% (Source: CSO. Forecast from Central Bank Q1 2008 bulletin.)