With NAMA set to swing into operation, this post outlines the elephant in the room for NAMA: yields on Irish property. It also discusses how NAMA could still work for taxpayers – if those working for NAMA ensure that they make themselves fully aware of the true yields on various types of Irish property and how those yields may correct themselves over coming years.
Has the new year brought a change in the property market headwinds? Will first-time buyers waiting in the wings find themselves missing out if they don’t move soon? This post looks at trends in the total stock sitting on the market in both apartments and houses, across Dublin, in the other major cities and in the rest of the country. It also estimates the percentage of all properties currently listed for sale in each segment
The latest Daft report, reviewing house prices in 2009, was published today. This post reviews its main findings and updates the estimate of the total value of residential property in the country, before outlining the likely developments in the Irish property market over the course of 2010.
This post examines three key assumptions underpinning the assertion that NAMA only requires a 10% rebound in property values in 10 years to ‘wash its face’. It looks at the importance of measuring the fall right, questions the yield given for NAMA’s loan book and raises the possibility of any yield correction coming through downward rent adjustment, not a rebound.
This post sets out the key facts about NAMA, as per the Department of Finance’s supplementary information, published on Wednesday. It goes through the amount lent, the number of deals, the loan-to-value, the estimated fall from peak so far and NAMA’s proposed ‘plateau’ level, before raising some issues to be dealt with in later posts.
The latest Daft report was released this morning. It shows rents falling all around the country, good news no doubt for new and returning students. This post reviews some of the latest trends in the rental market, including the growing urban-rural divergence, the relative importance of confidence and affordability as factors determining rents, and the potential impact of over-construction on rents beyond the short term.
The latest daft report shows that asking prices are now almost 25% below their 2007 peak but also shows regional differences, with prices in some areas falling twice as much as in others. This post explores the typical time a property spends on the market across the different parts of the country and the share of properties coming off the market in a particular month. Interesting regional trends emerge.
The latest daft.ie House Price report was released this morning. It shows that asking prices have fallen 5.7% in the last three months and by almost one quarter since their 2007 peak. New figures on time-on-market are showing a growing gap between urban and rural markets, with properties in Dublin in particular falling more and moving faster and in greater numbers.
Simple economic models often beat complicated ones. Figures from the last 25 years show a very strong relationship between the change in the unemployment rate and the change in house prices. This gives hope for those anticipating house prices to level off in late 2010 or 2011 – assuming oversupply has been priced in by then.
The volume of transactions may be a good indicator of how overheated a property market is. Figures on completions, housing stock and mortgage approvals allow an estimate of the number of transactions by county. The figures for 2005-2008 show a set of counties – including Laois and a mid-west corridor – where almost 30% of properties were traded in that period. Sure enough, these figures correlate very highly with the percentage of properties currently for sale in each county.
