Daft Property - Irish Property News

Recession: the bad luck of the Irish... It was once hailed as the best place to live in the world. Now it’s in the grip of a terrifying economic storm. Could Ireland be the first euro country to go bust? In Ireland, the biggest funerals take place in the smallest churches. St Mochta’s, on Dublin’s western fringes, is little bigger than a front room. So many mourners turned up for the funeral of Patrick Rocca that they spilt out onto the pavement. Anyone who is anyone in modern Ireland was there, huddled together under a sky the colour of a day-old bruise. Politicians, pop stars, billionaire developers, horsemen and the sporting elite. Even the paparazzi. Rocca would have liked that. The 42-year-old was the self-styled poster boy for the new, resurgent Ireland, with a glamorous wife, private planes and helicopters, and a property business worth, at its peak in 2007, €450m. But one morning in January, he snapped. The first sign that anything was wrong was when neighbours saw him walking ...

We are a nation of brooding pessimists, research finds... MAYBE IT’S our gloomy weather, 800 years of colonial oppression, or just listening to George Lee for too long. Whichever, it is official: we’re a nation of brooding pessimists. New international research shows Irish people have the darkest outlook on the economy and believe the current crisis will last longer here than anywhere else. That’s according to a poll of 19 countries on economic confidence. The Irish survey of almost 1,000 adults was undertaken by Behaviour Attitudes last month. A majority of Irish adults believe the situation is the worst it has ever been in their lifetime, while about half believe things will get worse in six months. When asked about the inevitable upturn, it seems the Irish habit of finding a dark cloud in every silver lining continues : most feel it will last well beyond two years. In contrast, people in the US are positively upbeat, with a majority expecting their personal circumstances will improv...

Are these the cheapest apartments in Dublin? €159,000 price tag on these apartments in D15 set a new benchmark for starter homes in the city... CAPEL Developments is billing the one-bedroom apartments at its new Waterways scheme in Ashtown, Dublin 15, as the cheapest in the city. Priced at €159,000, the apartments in the canalside scheme are 35 per cent cheaper than when the first phase of the large development was launched by Capel back in 2005. In 2006, one-beds at the scheme were priced around €300,000, 47 per cent more expensive than today’s price. In a bid to clear overhanging stock, Capel Developments is offering deep discounts and now claims to be offering the cheapest one-bed apartments in the capital. The €159,000 one-bed units have 47–50sq m (505–543sq ft) of space. Also on sale from this weekend through Savills are 73–80sq m (790–860sq ft) two-bed apartments which are priced from €248,000. Three-bed top floor apartments have 85–105sq m (918–1,135sq ft) and are priced from €2...

St Patrick's Day revellers paint the town green... IT is the time of year again to don green garb, tune your fiddle and dance a merry jig. St Patrick's Day is upon us, and never mind if you aren't Irish. Don't think it's only Australians who go slightly mad in their celebrations. Practically the whole world claims Irish ancestry on March 17, all in the name of a good party. Besides, St Patrick himself wasn't Irish. What is St Patrick's Day? You could do worse than celebrate St Patrick's Day in Ireland, although traditionally the holy day was marked only by church and charity functions. In Dublin, there's now a week-long festival that includes street performances, a fun fair, treasure hunts, exhibitions and fireworks. In recent years celebrations have also been promoted in towns such as Cork, Limerick and Killarney. And in Galway, a St Patrick's Day parade meanders through the narrow cobbled streets and the town is filled with pipe bands, perform...

If you want to escape, it will cost you... Not so long ago, emigrants were paid to go to Australia -- today, it could cost a few grand to get into Oz...beating the downturn...the hidden cost emigrating to find work. WITH up to 300 jobs a day being lost in Ireland, anyone would be tempted to hop on a plane out of here. Although no country is likely to escape, Canada is expected to avoid the worst blows. Small wonder then that Canada is becoming a more popular place to emigrate to than in the past. Other favourites include Australia and New Zealand. Although the US and Britain have their fair share of recession blues, the traditional links between both countries and Ireland continues to draw Irish emigrants there. However, the cost of emigrating could burn a deep hole in your pockets. CANADA Home to the Rockies, the grizzly bear and the awkward moose, anyone emigrating to Canada certainly won't be hungry for the great outdoors -- but you could need almost €18,000 to enter the countr...

All set for an April Fool's Budget, but the joke is on us... IT'S a bit like throwing water into a bucket of sand. No matter how many fistfuls of euros the Government fling into the financial black hole, it just keeps on getting bigger, deeper and darker. No-one was expecting the Exchequer returns for the first two months of this year to make pleasant reading, but the sheer speed at which the country is sliding further into the red is nothing short of hair-raising. In the same two months last year, when few people had a clue that the Celtic Tiger had been placed on the endangered species list, the Exchequer posted a Budget deficit of €125m. What a trifle that is, a mere bagatelle compared to frightful figures unleashed yesterday which revealed that the Budget deficit for the first two months of this year stands at €2bn. The economy is staggering all over the place like a drunken sailor, and nobody seems to know how to straighten it out. The Exchequer figures were due to be rele...

Record increase in families fighting to save home... REPOSSESSION orders sought by banks and mortgage lenders soared by more than 100pc last year in the wake of the downturn. According to figures complied by the Courts Service, 758 new applications for possession orders were brought to the High Court in 2008 -- compared to 374 the previous year. The increase is the largest ever recorded by the courts and points to aggressive tactics deployed by some lenders to recover their debts. Many of the applications were from subprime lenders, such as Start Mortgages, but there were also from major banks such as AIB and Bank of Ireland. In the past six months of 2008 the High Court received 505 applications -- compared with 253 at the start of the year. However it was the final quarter of last year, when the country was hit by massive job losses, which saw applications gain momentum. Between October and December 294 applications were brought by lenders -- compared to just 96 during the same perio...