Major Irish Property Auction - will true value of property there be established?

vivatifosi

Surprised nobody has run with this yet. There's an auction of housing going ahead in Ireland today. It will be the country's biggest ever housing auction. Those discussing it on Sky News this am (yes, I know, they're involved so VI) are saying that it will finally start to establish a baseline for prices in Ireland, for which the floor is not currently known:

Article re auction:
http://www.independent.ie/business/personal-finance/property-mortgages/the-property-auction-that-will-show-us-just-how-bad-the-crash-is-2606455.html

Link to auctioneers:
http://www.auction.co.uk/irish/onlineCatalogue.asp
Live link will appear from 11.45 for anyone who wants to watch.

Not really my bag, but I'm sure it's someone's on here so thought I'd flag it. Estimates appear to be about 30-35% of the market high price from those that I've seen on TV.

WhiteChristmas

Fancy something with a bit of a buzz? Head into the lively district of Temple Bar where the city centre's cheapest apartment is on offer at a refreshing €80,000. Granted, cat-swinging is out of the question in this snug studio but it's a perfect starter flat for those desperate for a place of their own.
Local estate agents, whose properties have yet to venture below the six-figure mark, are aghast at the figure, which is expected to force values down in the cultural hub.

The cynic in me says that, if a single property is really going to set the bar for all the others in the area, those with a vested interest are going to engineer an inflated price. Cue CRISIS? WHAT CRISIS? headlines and another short-term boom...

PasturesNew

I've got £5, where do I buy one?

PasturesNew

Somebody on the "how old were you" thread, (how old were you when you bought your first house/how much) has posted their information (about £37k from memory), then added that they sold it in 2004 for £120k and have now seen it for sale again with an asking price of £80k.

property.advert

On TV yesterday there was a flat which was sold in Sunderland for £170k and which went through auction for £50k although it did have a little bit of water damage.

worldtraveller

For reference, the latest figures, including Q4 2010, in the permanent tsb/ESRI House Price Index are as follows:

DUBLIN: -44.4% PEAK (END 2006) TO DATE
OUTSIDE DUBLIN: -34.5% PEAK (END 2006) TO DATE
NATIONAL: -38.3% PEAK (END 2006) TO DATE

permanent tsb/ESRI House Price Index

HAMISH_MCTAVISH

Ireland has a property vacancy rate of 17%.

In a country of just a few million people, around a third of a million houses sit empty in "ghost estates".

There are 621 ghost estates across the Irish Republic now, a legacy of those hopeful years. One in five Irish homes is unoccupied.

If the country immediately used them to house every person on the social housing list, there would still be hundreds of thousands left over.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/8653949.stm

Even the man in the street in Ireland now realises the problem....... And the only solution.

Ireland needs to bulldoze it's empty stock, or there can be no recovery. Not of the property market, not of their financial system, and not of their wider economy.

From the Irish Independent letters page:

In all the talk about the banks, bank debt, NAMA, etc, we have lost sight of the core problem.

The elephant in the room is not so much the state of the banks, it's the 325,000 empty houses and apartments lying all over the country. We need to get it straight in our heads that Ireland's property bust is unique.

The degree of oversupply is unprecedented. There has never been a property bust with such a huge overhang. Not in Japan, not in Scandinavia, not even in Spain. We have enough supply for 10-and-a-half years at normal demand.

These houses and apartment blocks look at us every day and tell us that there can be no floor in Irish house prices. We may even find houses transacted for sums as low as €20,000/€30,000 in the next few years.

The only reason that residential house prices have held up at all is that banks have supplied a co-ordinated trickle of mortgages into the market.

Without this, house prices would reach their true market value very fast and the rate of mortgage default would shoot up, as those in severe negative equity would realise the game was up.

Those thinking of buying now should bear this in mind. Property can't be picked up and moved to another market.

This is the reality that we have not faced up to. NAMA was the first attempt at denial. The latest bank bailout is a continuation of that denial.

As long as the surplus house and apartments stay standing, we will be forced to put further monies into the banks.

http://www.independent.ie/opinion/letters/we-wont-recover-until-we-home-in-and-tackle-the-ghost-estates-2617803.html

HAMISH_MCTAVISH

PasturesNew wrote: »

I've got £5, where do I buy one?

That's about the floor price you're talking for some of them, if they stay standing.

Exactly the same situation as Detroit, too many houses, not enough people. Although at least in Detroit, they realised the problem, and are now bulldozing whole suburbs and returning them to farmland.

worldtraveller

You can check out some current listings HERE.

julieq

A significant tranche of empty houses in Ireland are going to be essentially valueless at the levels of oversupply there. You have a potentially triple whammy of a depressed economy and low buyer confidence, increasing euro rates, and the worry that houses will be bulldozed around whatever you buy.

Leprechaun gold comes to mind.

HAMISH_MCTAVISH

julieq wrote: »

A significant tranche of empty houses in Ireland are going to be essentially valueless at the levels of oversupply there. You have a potentially triple whammy of a depressed economy and low buyer confidence, increasing euro rates, and the worry that houses will be bulldozed around whatever you buy.

Leprechaun gold comes to mind.

Say what you like about the UK planning system being overly tight.... At least it's saved us from a disaster of Irish proportions.

Granted, undersupply causes it's own set of problems, but given the choice between the two evils, it's better by far than oversupply.