Daft Property - Irish Property News

GHOSTS WITH A CHANCE: Not all of Ireland’s ghost estates are half built and hopeless. Some of them have charm, such as this scheme in rural Waterford... THE IMAGES broadcast to the world of Ireland’s ghost estates invariably feature bleak unfinished construction sites under glowering skies, half-built shells of terraced housing or ugly apartment blocks, surrounded by rusting scaffolding, open manholes and wasteland. However among the 2,800 plus empty estates that blight the country’s landscape are a handful of high-end developments – a strange mixture of vanity projects and architectural follies – that stand out not just for their extravagance but because (unlike the bulk of abandoned developments) they are complete, and are situated in stunning, if sometimes remote, locations. Several have ocean views, others are in exclusive suburbs, most push boundaries in terms of design, but all remained unsold when originally launched. In this series we look at luxurious estates that are l

Developers are offering substantially lower prices in the hope of shifting remaining units at schemes built in the last two to three years... PRICE CUTS of up to 40 per cent are being offered by builders in an attempt to get the stalled new homes market moving again and to clear unsold units. While price reductions are bringing many new homes back to pre-2006 prices and interest rate cuts have gone a long way towards improving affordability, lack of finance and negative sentiment remain as the big hurdles for potential buyers. A raft of new homes developers are hoping to shift remaining units at developments built in the last two to three years and are pitching prices at substantially less than the original asking prices. For many builders it is not a case of making a profit any more, it’s simply making some sales to cover the cost of building and paying off some of the debt on sites. Price cuts will be most prominent in large schemes on the edge of the city where developers have stru