Daft Property - Irish Property News

Writing Ireland's wrongs... Like buzzards picking over a carcass, foreign media is delighting in writing in-depth analysis pieces on our economic tribulations...The way they see us: we were once the landlords of the world; now ghost estates is where we're at. Ireland may not be ablaze, but it is all the rage. Last Tuesday, the UK Guardian newspaper did a major feature on the once mighty, but now much lamented, Emerald Isle. The week before that both the Financial Times and the New York Times produced long articles on Ireland and the state it's in. The headlines said it all. "Ireland's miracle – or mirage?"; "Ireland's shattered dreams"; "How bankers brought Ireland to its knees". It immediately becomes obvious that these esteemed organs are not in pursuit of clues as to how the country produced Jedward or Crystal Swing. Ireland has now become something of a laboratory for chin-stroking international journalists. Profiling the place is a...

Nama: the truth it's a bailout for developers... The National Asset Management Agency (Nama), which was set up to cleanse the banking system of toxic debts, has been revealed to be solely a bailout for builders and developers. The stark truth of the agency's core objective emerged this weekend as the Government's banking strategy lurched towards outright nationalisation. The deepening crisis in European stock and currency markets forced the Educational Building Society (EBS) into state control as it failed to find private investors, and now market analysts say that AIB, the country's largest bank, will be effectively nationalised by the end of the year. The unravelling of the Government's banking strategy -- which was designed to avoid nationalisation -- came as Frank Daly, the chairman of Nama, announced that its "core objective will be to recover for the taxpayers whatever it has paid for the loans in addition to whatever it has invested to enhance property a...

Burden of Irish debt could yet eclipse that of Greece... OPINION: What will sink us, unfortunately but inevitably, are the huge costs of the September 2008 bank bailout... IT IS no longer a question of whether Ireland will go bust, but when. Unlike Greece, our woes do not stem from government debt, but instead from the government’s open-ended guarantee to cover the losses of the banking system out of its citizens’ wallets. Even under the most optimistic assumptions about government spending cuts and bank losses, by 2012 Ireland will have a worse ratio of debt to national income than the one that is sinking Greece. On the face of it, Ireland’s debt position does not appear catastrophic. At the start of the year, Ireland’s government debt was two- thirds of GDP: only half the Greek level. (The State also has financial assets equal to a quarter of GDP, but so do most governments, so we will focus on the total debt.) Because of the economic collapse here, the Government is adding to this d...

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...

Struggling homeowners turn to SVP... Under-pressure homeowners are using every last cent to pay their mortgage bills, leaving them so short of cash they are turning to the Society of St Vincent de Paul for extra money to buy food and pay utility bills. In the capital, St Vincent de Paul volunteers dealt with a massive 10,000 calls in the first four months of this year -- up 30 per cent on 2009. Now they fear there will be a further raft of people in trouble with their mortgages when redundancy payments given to people who lost their jobs last year run out. According to ratings agency Moody's, the number of Irish people who have fallen behind in their mortgage repayments has come close to doubling in the last 12 months. The rate of delinquency in mortgage repayments -- those with more than 90 days of mortgage arrears -- rose to 3.8 per cent in March up from 2.1 per cent during the same month last year. According to John Monaghan of the St Vincent de Paul Society, more and more peopl...

Too many estates in the capital have been left in a mess after developers pulled out... THE Government is being called on to change derelict site legislation to prevent vacant Nama land turning into a new generation of eyesores. The call comes as it emerged that there are over 3,700 unfinished houses in developments in south Co Dublin alone. Councillors have backed a motion seeking a review of the laws and a redress of the balance "between the interests of developers and local communities". It was brought before a meeting of the council by Cllr Dermot Looney (Lab), who said the existing legislation favoured developers who had been allowed to leave behind ghost estates and "other kips" after the property crash. Derelict At the same meeting it emerged that South Dublin County Council has 3,789 houses in 23 developments that have not been completed. The council will now write to the Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government, John Gormley, to carry out...

House prices must drop 40pc to restore investor confidence... PROPERTY prices need to fall by about 40pc or by around €100,000 before it would make sense to consider investing in houses, a report from Irish Mortgage Brokers and an academic indicates. House prices in Dublin need to fall from €283,800 to around €179,000 for property to be a good investment. Similar percentage falls are needed in Cork and Galway, the report by financial adviser Karl Deeter and lecturer Frank Quinn says. "Our calculations indicate that from an investor perspective the time has not yet arrived for a confident return to property for investment," the 'Residential Property Investor Report' says. Asking prices for a house in Cork of €248,000 need to fall to €141,000, while prices in Galway need to drop from €235,000 to around €141,000. The report concludes that "over-valuation is still the dominant characteristic of the Irish residential property market" . The report adds: "Fall...