The Noughties

The property decade in review

ON THE WAY UP...

Give us a tax break

THE PROPERTY market stalled in 2001 after several years of rapid growth, with the events of 9/11 casting a pall of gloom across the world. Builders said they would have to shut down sites and lay off workers if the Government didn't give them a dig-out. The then minister for finance Charlie McCreevey obliged in the Budget, bringing back interest relief on investment properties. It worked. By January of 2002 the market was back in business.

High density on the rise

HIGH DENSITY was the buzzword of the early noughties, and nowhere was more dense than Spencer Dock, a vast scheme of apartments and offices built around the National Conference Centre in Dublin's Docklands. In 2003 people queued overnight to book apartments from plans, a trend repeated on many other sites around the city. Buyers had scant information about what they were buying. Four years would pass before they would finally move into the scheme.

Say goodbye to semi-ds

THE THREE-BEDROOM semi is dead, we were told in 2003, by developers, architects and planners intent on building high in the city. However, we might get our semis back, as thousands of apartments remain unsold and buyers continue to ask for their own front door.

THE PEAK...

Glitzy launches

ANOTHER HIGH profile launch had different results. Belmayne, a large scheme of apartments and houses on the Malahide Road, hit the headlines because of its racy billboards of semi-naked women lounging in the sumptuous interiors. Hundreds flocked to the champagne launch with footballer Jamie Redknapp and his wife Louise, and while the event got lots of column inches, sales ran out as the slowdown began to bite. Lead developer Donal Caulfield was one of the first developers to admit he was in trouble. He is now thought to be working in Spain.

€412m site

IN SUMMER 2006 an all-time record price of €412m was paid for the 25-acre Irish Glass Bottle site at Ringsend. The current value stands at €60m and the fallout from the sale has serious implications for the nationalised Anglo Irish Bank and the Dublin Docklands Development Authority, (DDDA). The site was bought by a consortium that included financier Derek Quinlan (now relocated to Switzerland), property developer Bernard McNamara, the DDDA and a group of private investors assembled by Davy Stockbrokers. All the issues are to be thrashed out shortly in the High Court.

No to €2.6bn

SEPTEMBER 2006: The market comes to a halt after the then tanaiste Michael McDowell said his party, the PDs, were considering the end of stamp duty. Amazingly, he claimed the €2.6bn raised through the tax was not needed. His intervention stopped sales as buyers anticipated a reform of the tax. While there has been some tweaking, punitive rates remain.

Watchdog set up

THE PUBLIC had gotten so fed up with auctioneers’ greedy ways by 2004 that the Government was forced to look into practices such as gazumping, and misleading guide prices. In 2006 it set up the National Property Services Regulatory Authority and gave it splendid new offices in Navan. Headed up by public servant Tom Lynch it quickly established a voluntary code of conduct. However, the Government seems to have forgotten about the quango and still has not passed legislation to give it legal footing. Meantime, the property market has solved some of the original problems.Gazumping is no more and buyers are tending to pay less than the guide prices, not more.

Dunne's D4 deal

FOUR YEARS after developer Sean Dunne paid a record price of €260 million for the Jurys Doyle hotel sites in Ballsbridge, he is still no closer to getting planning permission. In 2007, he lodged an ambitious planning application for a 37-storey tower block and additional buildings that he said would bring Knightsbridge to Ballsbridge. It remains an unfulfilled dream and the value of the site continues to drop.

Spire spiked

THE MOST ambitious property project of the decade has to be Garrett Kelleher’s famously unbuilt Spire in Chicago. The 150-storey building that was to have twisted 2,000 meters up into the sky, had its launch in October 2007, with starchitect Santiago Calatrava wowing the crowds and the media. The timing could not have been worse with the world’s millionaires about to lose a fortune. Work ceased in 2008 due to lack of interest.

Since then Kelleher’s company has been sued by Calatrava who claims his company is owed around $11 million in fees.

New town is born

EARLY 2006 saw the launch of homes in the first new town for decades - Adamstown in west Dublin. Around 300 homes were sold in the first weekend after ads promised residents new schools, a railway station, shopping centre, etc. Eventually the plan was to build 10,000 houses over a 15-year period but that timetable is slipping fast. But sales continue to tick over and the area has generated praise and prizes for its design, landscaping and the delivery of public amenities.

In the rough

IT WAS the decade of golf course living as homes sprung up at The K Club, Mount Juliet, the Carton estate, and so on. The 2006 Ryder Cup boosted sales at the K Club where apartments sold for between €1.2m and €1.3m. But as soon as the tournament was over, a rash of homes came up for sale but were difficult to shift. Some highly valued apartments have changed hands at around a third of their original prices.

ON THE WAY DOWN...

French miss the boat - and €60m

JANUARY 2008 and the property slowdown is well underway but the French government thinks there is still a chance to make €60 million from the sale of its embassy on Ailesbury Road and the offices nearby.

All the usual names were trotted out as likely purchasers, but as the campaign advanced, the big shots dropped out one by one. While the ambassador complained that the house was so big that he needed to call his wife on her mobile to locate her, it turned out that even the richest business folk didn’t want to be identified with the address. Both properties were withdrawn but undoubtedly will reappear when the market improves.

Collapse of Liam Carroll companies

THE BIGGEST single loser in the property crash, Liam Carroll, made his money from city centre apartments, but had to watch his Zoe group of companies collapse owing over €1bn, after a lengthy court battle. Carroll’s problems were not entirely centred in property since he had invested heavily in several plcs including Greencore, Aer Lingus and Irish Ferries.

The break-up of his empire is likely to lead to a fire sale of over 1,000 apartments in Tallaght and the Docklands.

Receiver sales prove a sell-out

THE EFFECTS from the worst recession in living memory have pushed many developers and small builders into the hands of receivers and liquidators.

Fire sales are now commonplace, with building societies and banks desperate to recover hard cash. The typical fire sale is a small scale development of nearly-finished apartments or houses with prices set below cost.

Several of these are due to be offered early in the new year. Recent sales have included a sell-out of two-bed apartments in Newbridge at a record low price of €110,000, and large houses in Kilmacanogue halved in price to around €800,000, again a virtual sellout.

Squeeze on investors

AFTER ALMOST two decades of tax breaks and mortgage interest relief for residential investors, the Government is pulling back. It has already reduced mortgage interest relief by 25 per cent, and has imposed a new €200 levy on holiday homes and rentals. Landlords are also facing a sharp decline in rents – now at their lowest level in 10 years according to the Daft.ie website – and increased competition from developers who can’t sell flooding the market with apartments.

With banks also saying no to lending on investments, it looks as though the landlord class is on the wane.

Homes alone

A building frenzy mid-decade resulted in thousands of unsold apartments in the Dublin suburbs. In late 2007 The Irish Timescalculated that there were no less than 10,000 unsold units.Today that figure for the greater Dublin are has grown to around 12,500 – an estimated 20-year supply. The term "ghost estates" entered our vocabulary.