Even the most bullish agent will readily admit that it has been a slow summer following a difficult spring. However, the market is set to begin again in earnest next week with most auction campaigns starting at around about the same time as the schools reopen - signalling that the summer is definitely over.

This should coincide nicely with some good news from the ECB in the form of interest rate cuts - and there are few things more likely to give a fillip to the market than the promise of reduced monthly repayments. The cut when it comes could be as high as half a percentage point although most economic analysts are predicting that it will more likely be a quarter of 1 per cent. Still, it will encourage buyers - from first timers entering the market to trader uppers.

So househunters will be out looking but agents are saying that vendors are a little reluctant to put their houses on the market until they see the way the wind is blowing. However, the bigger agents are confident that once September arrives the season will swing into action.

There is considerably more optimism in the new homes market with a substantial range of developments due to be launched over the coming two months. Two of the changes which will be quickly noted by the thousands of mostly first-time buyers still waiting to get their foot on the ladder are that virtually all the new units will be sold via snazzy show units instead of off the plans. The other change is that prices will not be rising this autumn - indeed, in some cases developers will be pitching prices lower than they had originally planned because of anxiety about the overall property market. Some of the same developers will be throwing in extras such as electrical appliances and even carpets to pin down sales. These extras will be available in most of the out-of-town apartment schemes where sales have slowed down over the past few months.

Pat Gunne makes a lifelong deal

Not that Around the Block is normally in the business of announcing births, marriages and deaths, but we have to mark the recent nuptials of bachelor around town Pat Gunne to Eimear Fitzpatrick. The timing of the event meant the Gunne boss missed out on the shenanigans at the Galway Races where the agency played host to its most important clients. The couple will live in Sandymount, within handy walking distance of his Ballsbridge office.

CAB seizures lead to house sales

Some vendors don't really have much choice when it comes to the timing of the sale of their houses - particularly if the Criminal Assets Bureau is involved. Earlier this month, Rathmines-based Lowe auctioneers was instructed by the CAB to dispose of two well-used houses - one on Chester Road in leafy Ranelagh and the other on Grattan Street, off Mount Street. Both were owned by Thomas McDonnell and were seized in part settlement over income tax assessed from his earnings as a brothel keeper in Dublin since the late 1980s.

Interest in the two houses has been brisk, with the agents expecting that, given its location, the Mount Street property will be bought for use as a city-centre office. The more modest Ranelagh house, which is being auctioned with a guide of £190,000 will probably go to a first time buyer. It's not the first time the CAB has instructed Lowe. Earlier this year it sold a house on Lower Rathmines Road, which had been operating as a brothel.

property@irish-times.ie