Friday, April 13, 2007

Donegal property frenzy will make you green


Just talking to an agent in Donegal and discovered that property is selling so fast there they have trouble actually getting it up on the websites!!

There's a frenzy of buying both by investors (aware that it is THE? cheapest county for property) and by people moving from Northern Ireland where the cost of living is so much higher in terms of property taxes.

JEALOUS? Bet you are.


Pic by toasty5 via www.sxc.hu

Thursday, April 12, 2007

Even artists are willing to lend a hand to the property market

Celebrated abstract painter, Felim Egan, goes along with the idea of using his public persona to promote the best possible sale terms for his home in Sandymount - as featured in the Irish Times property supplement today. And why wouldn't he!

Wednesday, April 11, 2007

Property websites multiplying


You've surely noticed the battle on for domination of the online property advertising market. Propertynews.com announced last week that it "has captured over 65 per cent market share of all property for sale on the island of Ireland"; it called itself "the leading and fastest growing property portal in the Republic of Ireland and in Northern Ireland" (presumably combining the two markets, in which case it might as well have said "only property portal"!!), and "number one website"; and it claimed to carry "listings from over 1,000 estate agents and auctioneers" (again, presumably combining North & South).

No sooner has a claim been made, but a counter-claim follows. In a recent radio campaign, MyHome.ie was quite dismissive of these kinds of claims. Daft.ie use its website to show the figures for their claim to be "Ireland's busiest website". And both Daft.ie & Propertynews.com are now themselves advertising on radio; Funda is on television (with snails, ducks & so on); and MyHome.ie is fighting back with all its indignant might (including the property pages of the Irish Times). There must be much to protect.

And indeed, property advertising attracts an incredible amount of entrepreneurial interest. There are so many Irish property websites out there now it is becoming hard to keep track, so we're going to do so here.

This item will be added to as we come across them, and we have a feature in the pipeline on how the main ones compare to one another:

Advertising Portals -
MyHome.ie
Daft.ie
Propertynews.com
Funda.ie
Baile.ie
Sherlockhomes.ie
Findahome.ie
Propertyfile.net
Newgaff.ie
Huntforproperty.ie
Property.ie
Mychoice.ie
Yourchoice.ie
Firsthome.ie
Propertyselector.com
(Irishpropertymoves.ie)
(Propertyplace.ie)
(Moving.ie)
(Houses.ie)

Cork - epropertygold.com
Mayo - Goinggoing.net

In the meantime, here's what MyChoice.ie has to say about their offering:

"Mychoice.ie is the better property website to deal with the properties in ." At least they didn't claim to be the "best"!!!!


(Pic by James Wilsher via www.sxc.hu)

Tuesday, April 10, 2007

Construction or development?

According to the Business Post's analysis of the top 50 construction companies list (Business Pro), "The figures highlight the high profit margins being achieved by some property developers. ... By contrast, profit margins are much tighter for building contractors."

The analysis mentions Liam Carroll's success in the office market: "Carroll is also planning an office development in the Dublin docklands, which has attracted Anglo Irish Bank and O'Donnell Sweeney solicitors as tenants even before planning permission is granted." and suggests that "Those deals may stem from Carroll's remarkable ability to undercut the rents on offer from other developers in order to secure tenants."

Another tactic is mentioned in relation to Sean Mulryan's Ballymore: "Mulryan has made millions from high-rise apartment schemes in London's docklands, often timing the launches to coincide with the payment of bonuses by financial firms in the city."

There is speculation about Gerry Gannon of Gannon Homes:
"In recent months he is understood to have bought a significant parcel of land next to Hazelhatch train station near Celbridge in Co Kildare."


Wednesday, April 4, 2007

Measuring effort


Austin Hughes told Property Partners that "Once growth is sustained, declines in property values are fairly unusual, occurring with only a 1 in 4 probability." But if they were your odds of surviving a storm you'd be worried, wouldn't you.

With such increased volumes of houses on the market (up 50% in Dublin this quarter on Q1 2006 according to our data), and such reduced numbers of buyers apparently putting their money down on the table, there's a whole new dynamic in the market.

In new homes, marketing services providers can expect to be asked to go to even greater lengths to promote their clients' developments. A grand piano was brought into the showhouse in Cairnbrook at the weekend release & a pianist hired to play for gathered hunters.

In the second-hand market, things are a little more difficult because most of the marketing tactics that new developments can utilise are not appropriate.

Agents are certainly having to work a lot harder to find and hook buyers right across the residential board, to be more careful about leads and follow-through. The question is will some start to think they could do better in some other sector of business, with the same or even less effort.

The bottom line is, if the fees are not paying the bills, cutbacks will ensue and people will start to (or be forced to) look elsewhere for a decent living.

Having written ourselves recently about the time agents put into each sale, we were pleased to see Mr Day in Lisney saying something similar to the Business Post at the weekend: "it was more a case of agents turning away work, based on the fact they didn’t believe the fee justified the amount of work involved. Day said the saleability of the property, coupled with the amount of time an agent expects to devote to a property, dictated the fee."

But is it amazing that a statement like this can end up in the same article: "
Currently, people have to pay on average 1 per cent, which means an agent earns about €3,000 when he or she sells a house for €300,000. That’s a lot of money for little effort, especially in recent years."

"Little effort"? What does that mean? Where's the footnote for the research indicating how "effort" was measured? Does it take into consideration time? Attention to detail? Thoroughness of follow-up? Market knowledge & expertise? Skill at reading people, at negotiating?

How much "effort" has gone into creating companies & brands like Lisney, like Sherry FitzGerald that can sell homes in style? Does the Business Post's defintion of "effort" here include any aspect of how much over the vendor's ideal price the agent achieved for them? How much over the price they'd have been able to get for themselves? How much over the price another agent would get?

Or what about how much less stress the vendor experiences by not having to deal with all kinds of buyers themselves, from nosy neighbours to professional tyre-kickers to hard-nosed investors to nit-picking innocents? Or how much less stress one agent causes than another?


Art by Porter Mason at http://bassistwanted.com/