Daft Property - Irish Property News

50,000 new homes lying empty in 'ghost' estates... AT LEAST 50,000 newly-built homes are lying empty in 'ghost' estates across the country because of the economic downturn. Hard-pressed developers and estate agents are being forced to drop their asking prices by as much as 50pc in a desperate effort to shift unwanted homes dotted across the country. An Irish Independent investigation has also found that hundreds of housing estates which should have been completed at least two years ago are still unfinished. Figures from local authorities show that county councils will not take responsibility for maintaining roads and open spaces in at least 300 estates because they have not been finished to the standard required by the planning permission. The glut of empty homes -- many built under tax break schemes -- shows the pressures now being faced by homebuilders in the economic downturn. Warned House completions are at their lowest level in years and builders are putting off st

Poles flee ailing Irish economy... When the European Union expanded eastward in 2004, Ireland opened its doors to workers entering from former communist states to help maintain record economic growth. Now, immigrants are heading for the exit. The number of people leaving Ireland next year will outstrip those moving to the country for the first time in 14 years, according to Economic and Social Research Institute in Dublin. The biggest exodus will be among the 170,000 workers who arrived the past four years from Poland and other east European states. ''It's a very hard situation,'' said Artur Kawczynski, 30, who lost his factory job in Galway on Ireland's west coast 10 days ago. ''I rang my friends in Poland to ask what job opportunities there are like.'' Immigrants like Kawczynski fed the manufacturing and building booms that helped double the size of Ireland's economy during the past 10 years and made it the most dynamic in western Europe. N

...echoes of the 1930s Midwest in the sorry mortgage belt tales of our estate agents... "And there on the Texas plains right in the dead centre of the dust bowl, with the oil boom over and the wheat blowed out and the hard-working people just stumbling about, bothered with mortgages, debts, bills, sickness, worries of every blowing kind, I seen there was plenty to make up songs about. . ." Woody Guthrie IRELAND is increasingly becoming a 21st century mirror of America's Midwest in the 1930s , a region that became known as the Dust Bowl after a series of devastating droughts, windstorms and economic depression tore out its very soul. In Ireland today, however, we have no Woody Guthrie, no one to sing us through this mess, no one who can somehow lift us out of the worst of times. And who tells these tales of sorrow better than those in the Irish property market? Once the jewel in the Irish economic crown, it now lies forlorn, a victim not only of its own success but of the

Cowen has left this rudderless nation adrift on a sea of incompetency... It took a while to fully comprehend what was actually going on. This was, perhaps, because it seemed so unlikely. Of course, the more we learn about these things, the more we know it is not that unlikely at all. But those were more innocent times. Those were times when we had that cosy assumption that the people in charge vaguely knew what they were doing. Even if we have no respect for them or their intelligence, even if we disagree with their politics, in this country we generally assume that someone up there in government is vaguely managing things at some level of competence. If we don't think it's the actual Taoiseach or minister, we suspect that there are civil servants who've been running things for years and know what has to be done. After all, this is not some third-worldy banana republic. This is a well-turned-out, internationally accepted, sophisticated 21st century country. Someone must kno

Desperation as luxury home prices halved... A DEVELOPER of luxury homes just 11km from Dublin Airport has been forced to slash the €1.4m sales price in half in a bid to attract buyers. Detached five-bed houses at Lynnwood in Ballyboughal, in north Co Dublin, originally went on the market for €1.4m. The 3,013-sq-ft (280sq-m) houses were first reduced by €450,000 in a bid to attract purchase-shy buyers. Then on Tuesday, the price was cut back another €100,000 to €850,000. By late yesterday, developers Area Building dropped the price by another €100,000 to €750,000. The move to cut the price in half came days after leading developer Taggart was forced into administration. Selling agent Paul Tobin said the homes were fully fitted out to a high standard. He insisted that the developer had spent €1.1m building each of the houses in the small scheme, once land values and construction costs were added together. Mr Tobin said the developer had been trying to sell the houses for months and was n

'Affordable housing' now more expensive than market... WITH THE downturn in property prices, homes in north and south Dublin and Meath are on the market for the same or lower prices than similar homes under the affordable housing scheme. Buyers can save €10,000 on €245,000 two-bedroom apartments in Phibblestown Wood, Ongar, Dublin 15, and €5,000 on €205,000 three-bedroom homes at Parnell Drive and Parnell Green, Ladyswell, Mulhuddart, by purchasing on the open market instead of through Fingal County Council. Three-bedroom apartments at Bailis Village, Navan, Co Meath, available through the county council's affordable housing scheme for €233,000, are advertised at the same price on the open market, as are two-bedroom properties at Eaton Square, Rathcoole, in south Dublin, available through the county council for €220,000. By purchasing on the open market homeowners avoid the "clawback" aspect of affordable housing schemes. Clawback means that if a home is sold with

The design of the first bridge across the border between the Republic and the North was revealed yesterday... The 280-metre-long cable-stayed bridge will link Narrow Water near Warrenpoint in Co Down with Cornamucklagh in Omeath, Co Louth, and has been designed so it is safe for cyclists and pedestrians. It is nearly 29 years since Narrow Water became synonymous with the single worst loss of life of British soldiers in the Troubles when two IRA bombs killed 18 soldiers. One civilian was also killed. The bridge has a tower at each end. The higher 100-metre-tall one is on the southern side, which will have the Cooley and Mourne mountains as a backdrop; while the lower tower at 30 metres will be on the northern end and will compliment the Drumlin topography there. Tony Dempsey, from consultant engineers Roughan O'Donovan, told councillors at meetings in Dundalk and Newry the criteria for selecting the bridge design included the impact on the environment and ecology as well as on the