Daft Property - Irish Property News

‘Hope to be bankrupt for Christmas’: Irish mortgage debtors see insolvency as way out... With one in five mortgage payments being overdue in Ireland and families across the country having their homes repossessed, some of the debtors are hoping for bankruptcy to do away with their endless fear of losing their properties. Julia Godsill, a Dubliner, can hardly hold back her tears, when retelling her not uncommon mortgage saga to RT’s Tesa Arcilla. When she bought her house the Irish economy was still the “Celtic Tiger” enjoying its boom time. After the credit crunch of 2008, Julia could only watch as her mortgage became too high for her to be able to pay, while the value of her house itself went down. “I ended up with a cash offer for 500,000. This was in 2011. And I was delighted. But the banks refused to accept the offer because the mortgage was 800,000 climbing with arrears. They preferred to bring me to court, and repossess the house instead.” The Central Bank of Ireland figu...

A Souvineer  of the Irish Property Bubble... Not all of Ireland’s ghost estates are half built and ugly - some have a certain charm...like this scheme in rural Waterford. No attention to detail was spared by developer Pat McCoy whan he built the estate  in the village of Stradbally, Co Waterford.  Tucked away at the top of a hill leading up from the village green are 15 chocolate-box thatched cottages.  Enjoy  this video of Ireland's prettiest Ghost Estate ! See the "Pretty Ghost Estate" story  ! (Thanks to David for sharing this video)

A NEW law allowing banks to repossess homes and investment properties comes into operation today. Thousands of homeowners and investors are expected to be threatened with having their properties seized. Justice Minister Alan Shatter signed a statutory instrument which puts the provisions of the Land and Conveyancing Law Reform Act 2013 into operation. Banks had been unable to threaten repossessions following a ruling in the High Court in 2011. The new legislation overcomes the so-called Dunne judgment that put a block on repossessions. Now many of the more than 54,000 residential homeowners who are more than a year in arrears face the real threat of repossession. Banks are likely to try to take ownership of around 30,000 buy-to-lets that are in arrears. Almost half of these mortgages are having only the interest payments made on them. Davy Stockbrokers has estimated that up to 43,700 letters threatening repossession have been issued by banks, despite their bein...

A surge in the number of home repossessions is on the cards after the Central Bank decided to change the rules. Debt-ravaged homeowners will no longer have one year's protection from having their houses repossessed. The 12-month ban on banks taking back properties from homeowners in arrears is being cut to two months. The move and other changes to regulatory rules for how struggling borrowers should be treated by lenders have been condemned by David Hall, of the Irish Mortgage Holders Organisation, as a "banker's charter" that will lead to a spike in repossession. He claimed: "The banking dogs are set to be unleashed on mortgage holders in arrears." The move to change the Central Bank's code of conduct on mortgage arrears – a rule book for how banks are to treat borrowers behind on their payments – is to be radically changed. The revised code is set to come into operation from next Thursday with a number of changes that banks have lobbied ...

Property prices fall again but pace eases... PROPERTY prices fell again last month, new figures out today show. Prices were down 0.5pc in March but this was a slower fall than in the previous month, according to the Central Statistics Office. In the year to March the fall was 3pc nationally. Dublin prices were 1.4pc higher than a year ago, despite a 0.8pc fall in March. Prices have now halved countrywide since the peak of the housing boom in 2007. Dublin prices are down 56pc, with those in the rest of the country down by 49pc. Although the pace of price falls have eased, the latest figures mean recovery in prices is still some way off. Report by  CHARLIE WESTON - Irish independent

Property crash wipes €257bn off value of homes in six years... IRELAND'S homeowners have collectively lost an estimated €257bn in property value in the six years since the market began to crumble, the Irish Independent can reveal. The 50pc collapse in value since the peak of 2007 also means that by the Central Bank's own estimates, Ireland's crash has now become the worst experienced by any country in the world. The combined loss to the owners of Irish residential properties since the bubble burst equates to almost four times Ireland's total bailout sum of €67.5bn and more than half the total amount of money first set aside in the European Union's €500bn Financial Stability Facility. The PTSB/ESRI Index, Ireland's former national price barometer, showed average house prices standing at €310,632 at the start of 2007. An estimated drop of 50pc in value puts the average loss to an Irish household at €155,316. With 1.6 million households across the co...

We're being seduced by property porn again – will we ever learn? LAST week the "glossy brigade" was out in force. Papers were full of bright, impossibly blue skies, over "imposing" homes many of which "boasted" this feature or that attribute. Yes, the glossy brigade, Ireland's property pornographers, who pedal lifestyle fetishes to the middle classes are back at a newspaper close to you. Amazingly, just six years after a property crash, which destroyed much of the economy, chatter about house prices appears to be back, or at least, out of social quarantine. Any day soon, expect a new TV programme on house hunting, the joys of home makeovers or the allure of trading up. Why do we allow ourselves to be taken in by this nonsense? Every spring since the crash, the estate agents and the property industry have tried to re-launch the property market with puff pieces, hard selling and gimmicks. Yet underneath the hype, the evidence from the hous...