Daft Property - Irish Property News

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

Sign of times as Lidl eyes Habitat store... Upmarket furniture store Habitat could be replaced in the city centre by a discount supermarket. German retail giant Lidl is one of only two businesses -- the other an overseas bank -- pitching for the lease of the massive store, located off the bottom of Grafton Street on College Green. Crunch Lidl and fellow discount chain Aldi have seen a significant increase in business since the effects of the credit crunch. They have also been helped by a recent National Consumer Agency survey. The research found that a basket of 28 own-brand goods was more than 50pc cheaper in Lidl than in Tesco or Dunnes Stores. Several leases available on Grafton Street have been slow to sell because of the deterioration in consumer spending. Property adviser CB Richard Ellis has predicted that business premises on the high street will only sell when values have been cut by 50pc. Lidl is not the only big-name trader to have checked out the former Habitat store. Nearb

Homeowners left reeling as 30pc price fall predicted... HOME owners are reeling from a double-whammy of bad news, after both an international broker and one of Ireland's leading economists warned house prices could plummet even further over the coming months. In a statement announcing the predictions, international broker Credit Suisse said that Ireland's property market is continuing to tumble, with house prices potentially falling by another 30pc over the coming months. The internationally-respected firm has made the comments because it says the market is only reacting to the credit crunch now. The upshot is that the impact of the credit crunch has yet to filter through to the Irish housing market, with any weakness already experienced down to a drop in demand rather than tighter credit. "As a result, we see mortgage affordability decreasing and house price declines accelerating. What is more, the housing market has been underpinned by strong immigration and rental deman

Plan to redevelop Clarence Hotel approved... An ambitious plan to redevelop the Clarence Hotel on Dublin’s Wellington Quay has been approved by An Bord Pleanála. The scheme, devised by architect Norman Fosteer, involves demolishing the hotel and adjoining buildings on the quay, retaining their façades and constructing a much larger hotel arranged around a dramatic atrium and topped by a flying saucer-style roof . The owners of the hotel, who include U2's Bono and the Edge , welcomed the Bord’s decision in a statement this afternoon. “We are delighted that An Bord Pleanala has given us the green light for Norman Foster's design for The Clarence. …We believe it's great news for Dublin and for Temple Bar in particular, where we've been working for over 20 years and where a hotel has been trading on The Clarence site for 177 years," it said. The Department of the Environment, Local Government and Heritage had objected to the scheme, saying it could set a precedent for

..."Does Brian Cowen really know what he is doing? ...The Lisbon Treaty defeat was a fiasco for the government. Not that it matters even a tiny bit in the real world, but in the world of political perceptions and of the neurotic EU, it means everything and Cowen did not have the stature - yet - to tell the EU to cop on. ...Cowen seems to have been unnerved by the Lisbon defeat. He has seemed unsure, vacillating and unsettled since then. His performances over the last few days have been his worst, aided and abetted by Lenihan. ...The announced cuts in public expenditure are risible. Given the constraints that the prevailing hegemony has imposed on our political culture, tax increases of any sort are out of the question. There is no question that the people who made fortunes during the boom years should now bear the burden of a few bad years. Also no question about borrowing, beyond the constraints imposed by the EU. ...So the only way to deal with a sharp fall in tax revenues is to

"Asking prices on Daft.ie down 8% in past 12 months... The asking prices for houses advertised on Daft.ie have fallen back to the same levels as May 2006, according to the latest figures from the property website. Average asking prices are down almost 8% over the past 12 months, with the sharpest falls recorded in Monaghan, Sligo, Offaly, Louth and Cavan. Daft.ie says it expects prices to fall even further as there is an oversupply of houses in certain areas of the country. However, it says many people, particularly in south Co Dublin, are still posting unrealistic house prices." ... Report from the Belfast Telegraph.