Daft Property - Irish Property News

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

Thousands of 'ghost estate' residents will now fall into tax net... THOUSANDS of homeowners living in unfinished developments will be hit with property tax bills from the summer. People living in estates which were classed as "seriously problematic" just four months ago will be forced to pay the tax after the Department of the Environment decided they did not qualify for a waiver. Last year, some 1,322 housing estates containing 43,000 homes were considered exempt from the household charge because essential works needed to be carried out. The Government has now decided that just 421 estates, with about 5,100 households, will not have to pay the property tax. Housing Minister Jan O'Sullivan defended the move, saying that essential works, including public lighting, water treatment systems, roads and open spaces, had been provided in many estates since last summer. The reduction in those qualifying for a waiver showed that progress was being made in ta

Homeowners' guide to calculating and paying the new tax... From next week 1.9 million homeowners will start getting letters from the Revenue outlining how they are to pay a new local property tax which is to replace the household charge that was introduced two budgets ago. Property tax? But I paid a fortune in stamp duty when I bought my house at the height of the boom. Surely I can’t owe more money on a property that is now worth half of what I paid for it? Yes you can. The Government, has decided to ignore the massive amounts of money it collected from us in property-related stamp duty over the last decade or so and start on a blank page when it comes to property tax. The good news (for the Government) is that it should raise €500 million a year from the new tax. How much will this one cost me?  Well it depends on where you live, but the good news is that the majority of people will be expected to pay less than €500 a year thanks to the all but total collapse of th

THE taxman will use GPS-style technology to help work out your property tax bill. Sophisticated aerial mapping will be used to measure a home's proximity to shops, transport links, schools and other amenities that have a bearing on a property's value. A 'deprivation index' will also be used to measure the affluence or poverty of an area, which will also have a bearing on the value and the amount of tax that should be paid. Homeowners will receive letters in the coming weeks telling them how much the Revenue thinks their home is worth and the tax band the property falls into. The revelations show the hi-tech lengths the Revenue is going to in order to clamp down on those who knowingly undervalue their home for the new charge. It is employing a sophisticated database which calculates a property's location in relation to facilities that increase its value. Aerial maps and GPS-style systems will measure "the distance from each property to a series of