Daft Property - Irish Property News

The legacy of the boom and the subsequent property collapse have come home to roost in 2012. This is the year the Nama deferred payment scheme was launched, a ghost estate was sold at a distressed property auction, and the country’s most expensive property failed to sell despite a 74 per cent price drop. Here are 10 properties that sum up where we are now ... 1. Walford, Shrewsbury Road Now that the madness of the property boom is a distant memory, it has become apparent that not only was Walford on Shrewsbury Road in Dublin 4 never worth the €58 million paid for it in 2005, it has failed to find a buyer for it, even at the radically reduced price of €15 million. The Edwardian house on 1.8 acres went on the market in September 2011 but was recently withdrawn, presumably because it failed to meet the guide price. When it was sold in 2005, the cachet of the road and the development potential drove rich individuals into a frenzy, pushing the price substantially ove...

No magic bullet for banks' property crisis... It is going to take more than a decade to unwind the excess property assets financed by the banks during the noughties THE BANKS in Ireland, including IBRC and Nama, have more than €30 billion of Irish loans relating to property which they need to unwind over the next five to seven years in order to meet the Basel capital adequacy requirements and also repay the temporary ECB loan support. This unwinding process has started by the sale of overseas assets and loan books but is mainly outstanding in Ireland. Can this deleverage be achieved? What will be the timescale and what will be the nature of the property market during the process? Should the Government provide further help to the industry? These are key questions for all close to the banking and property industries. In a comprehensive discussion note* I have tried to join the dots of the many intertwining factors. I have drawn on two recent studies on the overall European property ...

HOME buyers get mortgage approval from either Bank of Ireland, Permanent TSB or EBS. The buyers then find a property they want that is part of the NAMA scheme. They will need a deposit of at least 10pc of the value of the property. If they are buying a €200,000 house, this means the buyer will need a deposit of €20,000. So the house hunter borrows €180,000 from the bank and repays the mortgage based on this amount for five years. The scheme works by NAMA deferring 20pc of the value of the property, which works out at €40,000 in this case. But for the first five years the homeowner makes payments on the full €180,000 they have borrowed. If, after five years, when the property is revalued under the scheme, the property value has fallen, then the homeowner will end up not having to pay the full amount of the mortgage. This is because NAMA has deferred up to 20pc of the property purchase price. If the property falls in value by 20pc, then the €40,000 will be written off by NAMA. If it fal...

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...

LAST WEEKEND estate agents cheerfully reported that the “top end” of the residential market was showing signs of improvement, as, since the beginning of the year, they had sold 50 houses at €1 million plus and a certain percentage of those sales had even exceeded the €2 million mark. Given that, a mere five or six years ago, well-located but modest three-bed terraced houses were selling for that amount and considerably more, they hardly expected us to jump up and down with excitement at the news. And considering that a certain percentage of these properties would have been purchased within the last decade for approximately three times the figure they have recently achieved, their vendors are unlikely to be thrilled either, since despite selling their home many are probably still up to their necks in debt. But the estate agents did at least confirm that many of the trophy properties are being snapped up by ex-pats, who are now returning to the Irish property market a...

Dublin apartment prices now down 62pc, says CSO THE house prices freefall has worsened, with some properties now up to 62pc cheaper than at the height of the boom five years ago. February alone saw one of the largest single monthly falls on record - 2.2pc, a figure surpassed only during two months in spring 2009. Apartments in Dublin are worst hit by the crash, while the overall fall in the value of all properties in the capital is now up to 57pc. The Central Statistics Office also warned that in the last 12 months prices have come down by 17.8pc. That is compared to a 10.8% fall in the year to February 2011. A breakdown of the Residential Property Price Index since the slump hit exactly five years ago showed: - Nationally, the crash has wiped 49pc off values; - Houses in Dublin are down 56pc but apartments 62pc - Outside of the capital, prices are down 45pc on average. Although the CSO does not give actual prices, houses in Dublin were believed to be worth about €43...

NCB Stockbrokers said the price of buying a home will fall by at least a fifth in the years ahead as Ireland recovers "from the largest credit and housing bubble in OECD history". The Dublin-based broker calculated that the eventual national decline from peak to trough will be 60pc. Average prices have fallen 47pc so far which implies that prices must fall by at least another 20pc before hitting rock bottom. "The boost from domestic demand will not be material until 2013. Unemployment, currently 14.3pc, will remain above 10pc until 2016," NCB economist Brian Devine warned. "As such, there should be no surprise that property prices continue to decline, mortgage arrears continue to rise and retail sales remain weak," he said. Prices in Dublin have already fallen close to this amount with apartment prices in Dublin down 58pc and house prices in Dublin down 54pc. Mr Devine said he remains worried about the fundamentals underpinning the Irish economy but kept ...