Sellers are having to dangle 'property lollipops' such as plasma screens and holidays in front of prospective buyers. Is this a sign that the sweet times are over, asks Kathy Sheridan.
Nostalgia haunts the halls of the property industry. "Ah Gerry, d'ye remember when we launched the Titwillow scheme on a Saturday and they were queuing up the road from the Wednesday? Those were the days, my friend, we thought they'd never end, we'd sing and dance forever and a [ etc etc] . . ."
Gerry, sadly, has no time to linger on memory lane. He is far too busy ordering up a truckload of plasma televisions with which to entice the swaggering, malingering, demanding ingrates they call homebuyers nowadays, and dreaming up new euphemisms for a handkerchief-sized square of grass. "City garden" is the current front-runner.
My, but eight or nine months is a long time in this business, although most are reluctant to say it out loud. Rick Larkin of Twinlite Developments is one of the braver ones. This week, in a big marketing push, Twinlite announced a free six-month mortgage offer to those who sign a contract before March 16th at their Tyrrelstown scheme in north-west Dublin.
"That's right, we will pay your mortgage so you'll have extra cash and won't have to work five jobs to have a house in Dublin!" says the ad. The on-site mortgage brokers are also offering to pay the bank valuation costs and mortgage protection cover for a year. And Twinlite are chucking in high-end Whirlpool kitchen appliances to seal the 21-day deal.
Over in Dublin 13, Gannon Homes are throwing in free kitchen appliances, timber floors, carpets and landscaped gardens at its Clongriffen scheme to encourage quick turnarounds. In Athlone, ERA Oates is raffling a holiday prize worth €5,000 between the buyers of certain house numbers in a local scheme. Others are installing House of Tomorrow energy systems, including solar panels, with the promise of big savings on heating bills. Special cabling for surround sound and plasma TV screen home entertainment systems is another popular enticement.
Meanwhile, estate agency students at Senior College Dun Laoghaire (SCD), are being told that while the high times are over, their skills will be even more valuable in the low times. "We're told that the property market is slowing down and that qualifications are going to be more beneficial than they were previously," says Castleknock student Brian O'Connor. "We know that we're going to be more closely scrutinised and that it's going to be a tougher selling environment."
Rick Larkin, interestingly, welcomes the new reality - up to a point. The hyperbole routinely engaged in by the copy-writers finally exhausted him when he spotted an ex-local authority house in Marino being eulogised as "art deco with contemporary features such as concrete skirting boards". "The days of fooling the general public are gone. The purchaser has choice now."
He talks affectingly about Twinlite's efforts to create a real village landscape and a vibrant community in the vast Tyrrelstown development, but he also admits to the greater challenge. "Supply is beginning to catch up with demand. Instead of queues for houses as you had last year, we now have phone calls. Two years ago, we had 60 houses on the golf course and there was a woman in tears here begging to buy one NOW; she had the cheque in her pocket . . . Last March, we had a launch of 85 units here at around €330,000, and the day before people were parking their cars and staying overnight. We offered them numbered tickets to allow them to go home but they wouldn't leave. The next day we opened at noon and all 85 went in 25 minutes."
Within the commuter belt, an estate agent recalls a scheme that was due to be launched at 2pm on a Saturday last year. "The first customer arrived at 6pm on the previous Wednesday. It was commonplace for people to turn up at least a day early. But it's now turned into a buyer's market," he says. "There's real choice out there . . . It's good times for the consumer and - you did say you weren't going to use my name, didn't you?"
When Gunne's launched a tranche of houses at Adamstown (Lucan) for Castlethorn last weekend, they lifted ailing hearts throughout the sector by selling 116 of them. Significantly, though, it happened without the overnight queuing, tears and pathos that attended similar launches in the past. Though keen to emphasise that there was a queue, Owen Reilly, director of Gunne New Homes, concedes that no one had to line up for more than 20 minutes.
Castlethorn is offering no incentives, according to Reilly, because "we're very confident in the product we have . . . We always include all appliances anyway. Normally if a contract is signed within 21 days, appliances are included and we've been offering that for five years."
At the launch of Castlethorn's first 700 units at Adamstown last year (at the height of the builders' good times), buyers were offered a choice of four kitchens, choice of tiling and of interior paint finish, as well as Smart Home technology including broadband. "So it's not a case of developers reacting to a slower market," he insists. "What is happening is that it's a more competitive marketplace, and developers are looking to differentiate themselves. So design is going to get better. It will be about excellence of finish and excellent specifications. You are going to see bigger, functional balconies, more floor area, more storage, kitchens that are very slick and very contemporary . . . At the Parkview scheme in Poppintree, you'll find things like a creche on site. Townhouses there are bigger than the average three-bed semi, some have city gardens - small functional gardens - and all have their own hall door. That's how the consumer is going to be a big winner."
Buyers who are shopping around should begin to notice that the fitted kitchen is now boasting a granite - or at least, a walnut - worktop, that all the bedrooms (not just two) have built-in wardrobes, that the front and back gardens are seeded and the driveway cobble-locked. They might begin to discern where builders have used - in the words of one agent - "Dunnes Stores doors rather than Marks & Spencer doors", where "a nice brick finish" is offered instead of "a sand and cement finish with a bit of paint" or "a wrought-iron railing will be used between two houses instead of a bit of oul' timber".
They are subtle things, says the agent, "the kind of thing that Mammy and Daddy buying the house on behalf of their little darling daughter will notice . . . They're things that might cost from €5,000 to €10,000 more per unit to the builder but their margin is" - his voice drops for emphasis - "quite large."
Out in the prettily landscaped new scheme in Tyrrelstown, where Rick Larkin is pretty proud of the design and finish of their houses and apartments, the challenge is not only to get the houses sold but to get the new town firmly on the map.
For the Larkins, this is a long-term project in tandem with a shopping centre, retail park and hotel, thus the mortgage incentive. So is the mortgage deal a real deal, Rick? "We've done our sums and the average mortgage in Tyrrelstown is about €295,000. That works out at around €1,200 per month in capital and interest, on a 30-year basis, so it will cost us €7,200 for each of the 120 units in the scheme." If all 120 buyers bite, that will add up to a marketing cost of €876,000 for Twinlite.
"Of course, it's costed into the price. We always work the budget so that we can give marketing incentives. You'd rather not have to, obviously, but it's not as simple here as just putting the houses in place. We're not going to appear as philanthropists but we've made a lot of money here and don't need to have to absolutely tear it out of it. We're here for the long term."
As for the market trend, the estate agent reckons that "buyers are sitting on their hands a little bit" and that "a couple of good launches, an overnight queue or two, is all that's needed to get them going again". Another insider reckons that growth will meander along at around 3 per cent. Meanwhile, certain folks are waiting in the city-garden grass for Michael McDowell, who is given the "credit" for putting the brakes on this particular merry sprint, by putting question marks around stamp duty. "He wouldn't want to walk into a roomful of builders and estate agents, that's for sure," says one, darkly. Which, when you think about it, is hardly a black mark against him.