New Offers for Social Housing at Staggering Prices

A developer by the name of Pat Crean has offered 36 apartment for social housing to a local Dublin authority. Pat Crean’s Marlet development group offered to construct the apartments for the Dundrum area of Dublin. The Marlet group comprises of one of two fast-track housing applications for the Dundrum area of Dublin. The other part of the fast track housing application is formed by the Crekav Trading GP. Crekav Trading GP has proposed to sell 25 apartments from its overall planned 253 apartments in Greenacres, Longacre and Drumahill house. These 25 apartments have an estimated cost of €8.346 million.

The 36 apartments have been estimated at a cost to construct of €11.8 million. Meaning that on average the cost per apartment amounts to €327,888. In comparison, the Crekav trading GP’s 25 apartments have an average cost of €333,840.

The median home value in the Republic equates to €237,000. In comparison to the united states the median home value is $226,800. Adjusted to euros the median cost of a home in the US amounts to only €200,363.09. While the average price per …

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BPFI Housing Market Monitor Report Explained

The Banking & Payments Federation Ireland released their latest Housing Market Monitor report today. It consisted of many different numbers and statistics that will be explained in this blog.

Ireland has consistently seen a large influx of newcomers recently. In the first quarter of 2019, it was reported that the number of housing commencements increased by 31.6% compared to the first quarter of 2018. Additionally, 5,800 housing commencements were registered during that same time period. These numbers are good signs for the Irish people. An increase of new construction will help out with the shortage of houses available and allow for a continually growing economy.

In response to the increase in number of housing projects, one would also expect the number of mortgages given out to increase as well. Mortgage approvals grew 9.2% in the first quarter, while mortgage drawdowns increased by 8.9%. Increase in the number of mortgage approvals can raise some red flags. Mortgage defaults can be deadly for both parties involved, however, with Ireland’s growing economy, defaults should not be an added worry.

The major increases in …

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Expanding Housing & Development: New Sites

Three new building sites have become available for development. As of early this week, Savills brought three properties to the market that will allow for development. The properties are located near Citywest Business Campus in Dublin, Kilkenny, and north Dublin.

The Citywest property is listed on the market for the price of €5.6 million. The site has been defined as 9.7 acres amounting to a little more than €1.7 million per acre. The property is also available at €3.25 million for one 5 acre plot or 4.7 acre plot. The objective of this property was defined as to “to provide for enterprise and employment-related uses”. This new property listing can be greatly beneficial for Dublin. Introducing a 10 acre plot can be developed and create new jobs and housing.

The second property in North Dublin that has been listed at a starting price of about of €2 million. This lot amount to about three acres. The price per acre is about €1.5 million. The property has planning permission to develop 35 residential units, and may have potential for an additional five homes …

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Is the Housing Gap Increasing?

With an attempt to lift the housing market out of the current crisis it’s in, the Irish government is left to answer one very important question. Is the Help to Buy scheme even helping?

Or…is it worsening the gap of the home hunters who are looking for the ability to buy?

As what is already well known, house prices are soaring. Without the supply of housing increasing at any fast rate, this will continue to be the case.

Therefore, home prices are continuing to rise, much faster than incomes are rising, and the gap between available homes and affordable homes is continuing to worsen.

When looking at reports from CSO, the average wage in Ireland is €45,075 for a full-time employee. That number is, however, much lower as a median, where most of the working class clusters. The median is found at €28,500. A drastic difference and even more of a surprise when finding that, that means, nearly half the population is below that number.

This is where the Help to Buy scheme comes into play.

Introduced just earlier this …

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Newstalk Lunchtime: Fake bids, do they exist? 21st November 2017

We spoke to Ciara Kelly about the issue of ‘fake bids’ and whether they exist or not. We believe they do but not that they are widespread. The more concerning issue is around the bid that gets accepted because the true conflict of interest would be where a buyer pays an agent to ensure they are the ‘winning bid’, again, this is not widespread but there are enough stories in circulation to believe that it has occurred. The best solution around this is to ensure people register their bids publicly, this would stop most of the chicanery (where it exists) and could even be a form of additional income to the property regulator and an estate agent if there was a fee involved for doing so.

 

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McWilliams Ireland: Are we in a property bubble? (2nd November 2017)

David McWilliams’s show ‘Ireland’ looked at the issue of property prices here and asked if we are in a ‘bubble’. He spoke to Karl Deeter from Irish Mortgage Brokers about this who made two points. The first was that we are too late to change the outcome of the property cycle, the second was that the biggest land hoarders in the state is the state itself and that Government should release land to flood the land market and drive down the primary costs of construction.

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12 people become property millionaires each week

On average, a dozen people each week becomes property millionaires in Ireland. There are currently around 4,000 homeowners with property worth more than €1 million, and the rates at which new million euro homes are listed and sold are increasing rapidly.

 

Across the country, house prices have increased by 9.4% in the past year, and 40% in the past five years, turning many homeowners into property millionaires. While the average property value is currently around €230,000 and the average value in Dublin is around €350,000, many districts and counties have average values of 700,000 or more.

 

Sandycove in Dublin has an average property value of close to €800,000. An even more expensive street is Herbert Park in Dublin, where five homes have sold for more than €3 million in the past 2 years. A quick search on myhome.ie will reveal that around Dublin’s Ranelgh area, a couple houses are listed at more than €5 million. Other areas with the most expensive home prices include Foxrock and …

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An opportunity for home owners amidst rising house prices

The average house price in Ireland has risen 11.2% over the past year, and prices in at least 8 counties are currently rising faster than that immediately preceding the market crash. Rapidly rising prices, low interest rates, and insufficient supply are together representative of the current situation in Ireland’s property market. Although this situation has many market watchers worried about possible inflation, and is definitely a hindrance to buyers still seeking for a home at an affordable price, there is a perk that could result for homeowners with an existing mortgage.

 

This blog post will illustrate this hidden opportunity and give homeowners the necessary knowledge if they intend to pursue it.

 

For homeowners with a high standard variable or fixed rate mortgage, your interest rate is most often based directly on your Loan-to-Value  ratio (LTV). The loan to value ratio is ratio of your loan to the value of your property. Each lending institution may have a different way of calculating and determining your interest rate but in general, the higher your LTV, the higher your interest rate. …

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Proportion of buyers with mortgages surpass those who buy in cash in first time since market crash

Recent data reveals that the percentage of home buyers with mortgages have surpassed that of those who buy in cash. This is the first time this has happened since the property bubble and subsequent crash. On July 26th 2016, an Irish Independent/Real Estate Alliance survey reported that 60% of houses are bought with cash, now, roughly a year later, the same survey concluded that less than 30% of homes are purchased by cash buyers.

 

During the years after the housing crash, the high percentages of cash buyers was caused by higher interest rates, stricter restrictions on lending, higher rates of unemployment, and the large amount of speculators purchasing properties as assets after the original home owners have defaulted on their loans. This indicated a general distrust in the market and the squeezing out of mortgage buyers who have defaulted on their homes.

 

Central Bank economist Dermot Coates predicted in 2016 that the proportion of cash buyers was “neither sustainable nor likely to continue into the future”. …

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Vultures are a key part of our housing recovery

When we hear talk of ‘vultures’ and ‘vulture funds’ it’s usually in highly negative overtones. That’s why the name-calling exists in the first place, the idea is to imply you have these groups that feed off the dead bodies of an innocent party.

Put this aside and realize that even if a company does feed off the assets of a failed one, that it doesn’t mean the firm that failed was somehow an innocent bystander. Usually they lost their market share and assets as a result of their own decisions and by definition a liquidator would sell these on to somebody.

Whether that ‘somebody’ is a person, fund or regular company hardly matters. What does matter is that we have a housing crisis and that these same ‘vultures’ will likely be delivering about 75% or more of private new housing in Dublin where the problems are most pronounced.

Take a look at some of the numbers in new developments: * Lone Star own 600 acres of land in Dublin with the potential for 7,000 homes: in Adamstown, where it has …

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