Daft Property - Irish Property News

Charlie Haughey's beloved Kinsealy estate on the market for a knockdown €7.5m... FORMER Taoiseach Charlie Haughey's Abbeville mansion has gone on the market for a fraction of the €45m he sold it for a decade ago. Abbeville, in north Dublin, now has an asking price of just over €7m - after the company that owns it went into receivership. The former Taoiseach sold the property with stud farm in 2003, and was believed to be under pressure to sell as he negotiated a €5m settlement with the Revenue Commissioners at the time. The new asking price is 16.7 pc of what Haughey sold it for a decade ago. However, the purchaser, Joe Moran's Manor Park Homes, subsequently went into receivership after Bank of Scotland Ireland sought to recover outstanding debts. Receiver Tom Kavanagh selected estate agents Savills from a number of agents whom he asked to advise on the sale of Abbeville. The estate appears in today’s Irish Times property section and is described as: “A magnificent Gando...

Distressed property auction by Savills... AROUND 100 distressed investment properties, mainly in the greater Dublin area, are to be auctioned on a single day in September. The move by Savills Ireland to kick-start both the residential and commercial investment markets is expected to generate sales of over €20 million. Ronan O’Driscoll, of Savills Ireland, said most buyers at the September 29th auction were likely to be cash-rich investors happy to put their money into property now that values had fallen sharply. In the past, investors banked on capital appreciation but it was now all about rental return and in many cases buyers could expect yields of 9 to 10 per cent compared to 3.5 per cent on bank deposits. The announcement that Savills will be staging Ireland’s “biggest ever property auction” comes after last month’s successful auction of distressed properties in Dublin by British auctioneer Allsops and its Irish affiliate Space. They sold 80 of the 81 lots in a packed Shelb...

Up to 300,000 homeowners in negative equity Further 30,000 will struggle with mortgage payments after Budget tax increases kick in... THE spectacular fall in property prices is even worse than was stated by a government economic think tank last week -- up to 300,000 homeowners are now in negative equity. Expected interest rate hikes will mean another 30,000 people -- roughly the population of Dundalk -- will struggle to meet their mortgage payments by the end of the year. The recession, joblessness and rising interest rates already mean that 70,000 borrowers have missed payments or renegotiated their mortgages. Now financial institutions are expected to increase their standard variable rates. It is also widely expected that the European Central Bank will increase its interest rate before the end of the year. This would also hit those on tracker mortgages. Michael Dowling, of the Independent Mortgage Advisors Federation (IMAF), said: "With rising unemployment, higher ...

House prices drop to 2002 levels after 14% fall last year... HOUSE PRICES have fallen back to 2002 levels, according to reports released yesterday. The average asking price for a home nationally fell by between 12 and 14 per cent in 2010, according to property reports from websites MyHome.ie, Daft.ie and auctioneers Sherry FitzGerald. All three reports found the rate of decline had slowed, but none predicted that the bottom of the market had yet been reached. However, real estate agents Savills said property in prime locations was unlikely to fall further. Leitrim was the only county in the Republic where property prices did not fall last year, rising by 1.4 per cent in the last three months of 2010. The average home has now dropped by between 35 and 48 per cent since the peak of the property boom, the reports found. MyHome.ie’s latest property barometer found the average home now costs €217,000, over 13 per cent less than this time last year. Sherry FitzGerald put the national price d...

Roll up for the great property giveaway... Agents say an estimated 24% drop in house prices is far too low... There were double-takes all round last Monday when the Permanent tsb /ESRI house price index announced a 24% drop since February 2007 – a figure many believe to be conservative in the extreme. It's difficult to find out exactly what a property sells for as, under the Data Protection Act, publication of selling prices is prohibited and information is therefore based on asking price. Those involved in the business believe a truer estimate of just how far property prices have plummeted is between 40% and 50%. And counting. Ronan O'Driscoll, director of new homes at Savills, points to "the concrete example" of his own home. "I bought it for €1.9m in 2006, but one on the same road sold recently for around €850,000." The new homes landscape has changed radically in ways other than price, he adds, saying that negotiating a deal on a brand-new property is no...

AS CHRISTMAS and 2009 loom some vendors are cutting prices to get buyers off the fence . Number 7 Claremont Road in Howth has a new asking price of €3.75m, down from €4.8m, a drop of €1.05m or 22 per cent. For sale through Savills, the four-bed Georgian-style home first came on the market in August. It ticks all the boxes for a trophy home with 418sq m (4,500sq ft) of space and three large reception rooms. A large basement could be used as a gym, music room or home cinema. Gunne Residential is asking €1.95m for an Edwardian semi - 4 Proby Square off Carysfort Avenue in Blackrock, Co Dublin - which is a 29 per cent drop from the original price of €2.75m. The house has been on the market a number of times in the past five years. In September 2003 it sold for €1.625m with 0.25 acres of rear and side garden with development potential. The following year the house sold with a substantially reduced garden for €1.5m. The six-bed, 300sq m (3,200sq ft) house is in a cul-de-sac. Gunne Residentia...

2008 Review: Buyers haven't gone away, you know, says Ronan O'Driscoll - but selling the 30,000 empty new homes will be a challenge... THANKFULLY, WE are coming to the end of the GUBU year for new homes in Ireland. It was unquestionably grotesque, unbelievable, bizarre and unprecedented. Whilst we entered 2008 with some degree of nervousness, we were hopeful that it would be a better year than the annus horribilis that was 2007. Sadly, the market went from bad to very much worse. Savills started the year in spectacular style, selling over 650 new homes between January and Easter, with very successful new launches virtually every week. This demand had been triggered by some of our leading developers who reduced prices significantly in the early part of the year. The market responded very positively to the value, with reductions of up to 25 per cent on some new Dublin projects. In January, we even had queues at three of our new developments for Manor Park Homebuilders, Capel Deve...

How Low Dare You Go? ...With few property deals being done and prices in freefall , many vendors are wondering what their bottom line should be to get a sale... House prices are sliding – and fast. Yet while most vendors now accept that they have to cut prices in order to tempt buyers, despite all the potential bargains on the market, statistics suggest that buyers are still deterred. Lack of liquidity, the prospect of further price falls, job losses and a worsening economic climate are taking its toll. In 2007, 158,000 people drew down mortgage loans. Frank Conway of the Irish Mortgage Corporation suggests this is down by as much as 36% this year – so far. According to Sherry FitzGerald's latest House Price Index prices have fallen by 26% since their peak in June 2006, with prices down by as much as 32.8% in Dublin. At the lower end of the market, vendors slashing €60,000, €70,000, €80,000 off the price of their property is common. High-end homes have been reduced by hundreds of t...