Daft Property - Irish Property News

The new property reality... Like many things these days, the chances of selling a property seems to boil down to one factor: putting a realistic price tag on it and then being willing to take less than that. For estate agents around the country the last six months have been their worst nightmare. The younger generation of property professionals has never encountered the frustrations of the kind of market in which they are now operating. In the last six months there has been a growing body of buyers who are ready with mortgage approval or cash in the bank. These potential buyers have been tentatively viewing properties, and some even made offers. Then the daily diet of bad news increased and they evaporated back to the arms of the rental market - or their parents spare rooms - to sit it out. So what properties have sold in the last six months, the toughest months in a generation? The answer seems to be those that are 30 to 40 per cent cheaper than houses were on the same streets and ro

Cowen's call to arms in time of need... The nation is demanding an Obama-esque state of the nation address from the Taoiseach. Here, Frank McNally offers his take on what Brian Cowen might say... ‘FRIENDS, CITIZENS, COUNTRYMEN: lend me your ears! And not just your ears. If there’s anything else you can lend me, all pledges would be gratefully accepted. We have people ready to take your call now at the number showing on screen. But I’ll come back to that later. Sixty-five years ago, in the midst of another national emergency, Éamon de Valera addressed the people, much as I am doing this evening, and chose the occasion to outline his vision of the ideal Ireland. He said the country of which he dreamed was one whose people would be satisfied with frugal comforts, and who devoted their leisure time to things of the spirit. It was a land in which material wealth would be valued only as the basis for right living; a land whose countryside was bright with cosy homesteads; whose fields wer

Best to ignore the cheerleaders for the property sector... HAPPY new year? Not really. The banks are at death’s door. Unemployment is rocketing. Cuts much more severe than those proposed in the recent budget are inevitable. The recession is deepening, with fears that Ireland is on the verge of a so-called ‘lost decade’ growing increasingly realistic. We’re up the creek. Auctioneers and developers, however, have a different vision for 2009, one where ever more affordable homes will be snapped up by a willing populace. After all, construction firms cannot cut prices further as they are “down to their bottom line” on prices, according to one builder recently. Indeed, those who are “stupidly waiting” for prices to fall further should cop themselves on and realise that prices are bottoming. This stupidity has been disappointing developers for some time now. In August, property tycoon Derek Quinlan noted that first-time buyers must be given the confidence to buy as “negative media comm

‘Wrong-Headed’ RBS, Danske, HBOS Lose in Irish Bubble... Jan. 28 (Bloomberg) -- It’s not just the Irish who are being stung by the collapse of the property market in what was once Western Europe’s most dynamic economy. Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc, which bought Dublin-based First Active in 2004 in what was the largest overseas takeover of an Irish bank, said on Jan. 26 it will cut 750 jobs. Danske Bank A/S said provisions for impaired Irish loans rose by more than 10 times in the third quarter. “They were chasing the bubble, and now they are paying the price for it,” said Alex Potter, an analyst at Collins Stewart in London. “Their timing was absolutely wrong-headed.” Ireland’s economy is shrinking at the fastest pace in the euro area as the real estate market dives. The demise of the “Celtic Tiger” forced the government to seize control of Anglo Irish Bank Corp., which lends mainly to property developers, and to promise Allied Irish Banks Plc and Bank of Ireland Plc, the two bigg

Property crisis has moved from slump to crash... ...price guide reveals desperate state of the housing market and its negative effect on the value of homes all across Ireland: First, we need to get our terminology right. To date, Ireland’s property crisis has been described as a slowdown, a downturn and a slump. But today the Sunday Times Property Price Guide 2009 shows that we’re in the grip of nothing less than a full-blown crash — and, by world standards, a severe one at that. In recent months, property agents have claimed that successive price surveys have not come close to reflecting the grim reality they have been experiencing on the ground. Now, with the help of our guide, you can realistically assess for the first time how the crash has affected the value of your home. This survey is more accurate than any other; to put it simply, no rival survey is as specific as the Sunday Times Property Price Guide. Here we examine the performance of more than 20 types of property in more th

Trophy seaside home tells story of the boom... IF A SINGLE house could tell the story of the property boom then it might be Sorrento Villa on Vico Road in Dalkey, Co Dublin. The Victorian detached house, facing the sea, slumbered up on the hill for decades, its interior divided into two spacious units that would have been described as flats rather than apartments. The house dates from the 1860s when it was built by a provost of Trinity College as a summer villa: and he chose one of the finest sites on the hill with a sunny east-to-south exposure. Two years ago when property prices reached fever pitch, it came on the market with an Advised Minimum Value (AMV) of €4.5 million. However, after intense bidding at auction it sold for €5.6 million. Stamp duty at 9 per cent added an additional €500,000. The new owners went on to spend many thousands more on redecorating the rooms and making changes to the layout, converting it to a five-bedroom house. They also drew up plans to install an expe

Developers are offering substantially lower prices in the hope of shifting remaining units at schemes built in the last two to three years... PRICE CUTS of up to 40 per cent are being offered by builders in an attempt to get the stalled new homes market moving again and to clear unsold units. While price reductions are bringing many new homes back to pre-2006 prices and interest rate cuts have gone a long way towards improving affordability, lack of finance and negative sentiment remain as the big hurdles for potential buyers. A raft of new homes developers are hoping to shift remaining units at developments built in the last two to three years and are pitching prices at substantially less than the original asking prices. For many builders it is not a case of making a profit any more, it’s simply making some sales to cover the cost of building and paying off some of the debt on sites. Price cuts will be most prominent in large schemes on the edge of the city where developers have stru