Thursday 22 January 2009

Property supplement returns to Irish Times





Thursday 22nd January and the first Property supplement in The Irish Times for 2009.


As a regular reader of the Thursday edition, I know that traditionally the property pages supplement often stopped in August and in December. Last week there was just one page in the main paper, mostly editorial.


This is certainly a sign of the bad Irish Property market, that is is suffering with many agents closing branches and cutting staff.


You can normally find approximately 5 pages of estate agents advertisements in this section. This week in the eight page supplement there is a half page ad for Sherry FitzGerald who are Ireland's largest group of estate agents.

There is an article entitled "Vendors should be wary about doing costly revamps" - They are advising that gone are the days when a home owner could spend a lot of money on their home doing it up, knowing they would get it all back (and more) when they sold. Instead they include a list on a check list saying if the decor is suspect, keep it simple, stark crisp and clean, a couple of coats of white paint will neutralise .

In another news report there is a property for sale in Sandycove (coastal area very close to Dublin itself) that was for sale at €2.25 million and has been reduced to €1.95 million.

It will be interesting to see in the coming weeks, whether this supplement continues and if more agents start advertising again. Agents these days will market propertis via the web, however there are still those people who prefer to see properties in a newspaper, be it a national like the Irish Times or a local paper.

With the fall of the £ sterling against the euro € and US dollar $, anyone selling in Ireland and moving to the UK to buy will find their euro will stretch much further, but despite a drop in Irish property prices, anyone moving from the UK with a weak £ will still find it expensive there.



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