Daft Property - Irish Property News

Property prices fall further as Dublin second-hand homes drop by 10.4%... THE AVERAGE cost of a new house was just over 3 per cent lower in the first three months of this year than in the same period last year, according to new figures from the Department of the Environment. Prices of second-hand houses suffered a sharper fall of 5.4 per cent, but the greatest decline was in the price of second-hand houses in Dublin which were 10.4 per cent lower in the first quarter of the year than in the same period of 2007. The price of new houses in the capital fell by 4.8 per cent... The department's housing statistics show a steady increase in the provision of social and affordable housing, but very steep declines in the total numbers of houses built and started in the first three months of the year. Just over 14,000 houses were completed, a decline of 30 per cent on the first quarter of 2007. The number of houses on which construction began was even more dramatically reduced. There were jus...

The end of July reports show... Number signing on Live Register rises by 10,600 The rise in the number of people claiming unemployment benefits over the last year has increased at the fastest rate since records began over 40 years ago. In July, 10,600 people joined the Live Register bringing the seasonally adjusted total signing on to 226,000, on a seasonally adjusted basis, according to figures released by the Central Statistics Office this morning. The monthly increase is the second highest on record after March of this year. The number on the register is the highest in a decade. Last month’s increase lifted the standardised unemployment rate to 5.9 per cent, the CSO said. Over the last 12 months the number of people seeking unemployment benefits has risen by over a third with 63,647 people joining the register. In July 6,700 males and 3,800 females joined the register. Leo Varadkar, Fine Gael enterprise spokesman accused the Government of losing control of a deteriorating economic...

The Million Euro Man...We can rebuild him... Great to see Irish taxpayers money being spent on essential Dublin city projects! Why not pretend it's still "Celtic Tiger" time and just forget about Ireland's current recession, property crash, 3rd world conditions of public hospitals, spiralling cost of surviving and the debt the country is in etc etc!... Dublin says yes to giant sculpture in the Liffey ... On the Sunday Times... "Dublin city council has granted planning permission for Antony Gormley’s 48-metre statue in the River Liffey. Objectors to the Iron Man wire sculpture had included a group of 96 nearby residents who said it would tower over their houses on the quays. There is a four-week deadline for objections to be submitted to An Bord Pleanala. There were fears that the statue would become a roost for birds and be coated with droppings. One of the conditions set down by the council is that the Dublin Docklands Development Authority (DDDA), which commiss...

House building crash helped spark sudden rise in jobless figures... HOUSE building crashed after the Christmas holidays last year, new CSO figures show -- helping to explain the sudden rise in unemployment during 2008. Output in house construction was at the lowest level since the current statistics began in 2000. It was also 20pc less than the previous low point eight years before. House building slumped more than l30pc on the previous quarter, as builders left sites closed after the New Year break. This left the volume of output down 38pc on the same period of 2007. The value of houses built was down 35pc, suggesting little change in prices over the 12 months. Non-residential building was up almost 9pc compared with 2007, and the value of the buildings was 14pc greater. This gain left total construction down almost 22pc on the previous year. But Rossa White, economist at Davy Research, said the figures seemed to be saying that non-house building was already slowing fast in 2007. ...

Changing times for " 21st-century Ireland, where people are looking for ways to reduce both their spending and their negative impact on the environment"... Recycling the good old days... WHAT'S THE STORY WITH WARTIME NOSTALGIA BOOKS? 'Knickers renewed - one good pair from two old pairs; here's how to manage it," begins one snappy article from a collection of pamphlets originally published by the British government during the second World War and which have recently appeared in book form. The trick, apparently, is to cut a new gusset from the back of one pair and neatly sew it into place on the other pair and off you go, good as new. Make Do and Mend contains dozens of original facsimile leaflets offering hundreds of tips on how to make everything from carpets and gloves to saucepans and blinds last a whole lot longer. There are details on how to darn deftly and instructions on how best to convert a tired pair of men's pyjamas into a reinvigorated summer f...

The 210 apartments in the nine-storey Gasworks building, in Ringsend near Landstown - Dublin 4, have been vacant since they went on sale two years ago. Developer Liam Carroll has since got the OK to convert the Gasworks apartments into a 520-bed hotel. However local residents are saying "no" to the plans and have appealed the proposal. Their main concern seems to be they will have to pay for the upkeep of common areas - hotel guests will not etc. The original promotion of the apartments, 2 years ago, by Hooke & Mac Donald mentioned: ...One of the most interesting and significant residential projects ever to be carried out in Dublin was launched on the market... A familiar feature of the South Dublin skylinehas been transformed. The striking metal cylinder of the former gasholder at Barrow Street creates a frame within which a stunning new nine storey block of large two bedroom apartments has been built. The curves of the building complemented by its dramatic glass fa...

Towns feel pain as jobs vanish... Ireland's towns, once noisy with the sounds of construction, are ominously quiet, as people get to grips with a new reality and the prospect of emigration, writes Ronan McGreevy . A WEEK AFTER Leitrim were knocked out of the Connacht championship by Galway, the county captain, Gary McCloskey, emigrated to London. McCloskey, who was Leitrim player of the year in 2007, had been out of work for five weeks, having been made redundant by Shine Construction, based in Athlone. Shine, which had been involved in several projects in the midlands including the development of Athlone town's new stadium, blamed the downturn in the building sector for its closure in May. The firm had debts of €3.5 million and assets of just €990,000. Twenty others lost their jobs. "I had no work for five weeks," says McCloskey, a Trinity College graduate in civil engineering. "It came to a crunch and that's it - hop on a plane to London. It was easy, given...