Nama: the truth it’s a bailout for developers…

The National Asset Management Agency (Nama), which was set up to cleanse the banking system of toxic debts, has been revealed to be solely a bailout for builders and developers.

The stark truth of the agency’s core objective emerged this weekend as the Government’s banking strategy lurched towards outright nationalisation.

The deepening crisis in European stock and currency markets forced the Educational Building Society (EBS) into state control as it failed to find private investors, and now market analysts say that AIB, the country’s largest bank, will be effectively nationalised by the end of the year.

The unravelling of the Government’s banking strategy — which was designed to avoid nationalisation — came as Frank Daly, the chairman of Nama, announced that its “core objective will be to recover for the taxpayers whatever it has paid for the loans in addition to whatever it has invested to enhance property assets underlying those loans. It is expected that Nama will have a lifespan of seven to ten years and when it has achieved its core objective, it will be wound up”.

Nama will buy loans worth €81bn from Ireland’s main banks, but will pay just over €43bn for those loans. Mr Daly’s comments suggest that the borrowers — including the 10 largest property developers who owe a staggering €16bn — will be expected to repay half of what they owe.

Mr Daly said that due diligence by his staff had discovered remarkable flaws in the legal agreements that developers had signed to secure their loans. He said that “much of this lending was carried out in haste and inadequately secured and documented”, making it difficult to pursue developers for the personal guarantees that many had offered to secure their loans.

In effect, Nama has become the bailout for developers that the Government always claimed that it would not be.

The creeping nationalisation of Ireland’s banking also represents a major reversal of government policy. The latest bailout of the struggling EBS will cost taxpayers €875m — €100m for a controlling stake in the company and a further €775m to cover its losses and repair its balance sheet.

The move follows the nationalisation of Anglo Irish Bank last year and the effective nationalisation of the Irish Nationwide Building Society this year. The State also holds large minority stakes in AIB and BoI, plus warrants that could convert into a further 25 per cent holding in both banks, and is expected to increase its holdings further if they also fail to secure outside financing to meet rules on the reserves that they must hold against future losses.

While market analysts expect BoI to keep the State at arm’s length, AIB is likely to be majority State-owned by the end of the year. Of the six independent banks guaranteed by the State in September 2008, only Irish Life & Permanent is now free of State investment or control.

BoI managed to raise €1.5bn by issuing new shares at a deep discount to its existing shareholders this month and got the deal away just before the markets crashed. AIB faces the prospect of raising €7bn, but the total value of the bank on Friday was just over €900m.

“It just can’t be done in these conditions,” said one investment manager yesterday. “AIB will be nationalised unless there is a dramatic and unlikely recovery in the stock markets this summer.”

EBS’s failure to secure outside investment was not unexpected as its hopes of staying independent were effectively dashed by the chaos in the financial markets caused by the collapse of confidence in the euro and the failure of a Spanish regional bank.

But the EBS’s inability to raise cash represents another blow for the Government’s policy, which was meant to avoid nationalisation of the banking sector.

The Government has pumped tens of billions into the banks to keep them solvent and is raising another €40bn to buy their property loans through Nama.

Even though his building society has just received a €100m bailout from the taxpayer, EBS chief executive Fergus Murphy believes there can be no Nama-style rescue for distressed mortgage holders.

“I don’t think it’s workable. I don’t think it’s there. I think moral hazard would make it very, very difficult. I don’t currently see that structurally as something that could happen. Banks need to fund their balance sheets,” Mr Murphy told the Sunday Independent when asked about the issue on the margins of his society’s AGM last Friday.

The EBS chief’s response is sure to anger the thousands of homeowners struggling to meet their monthly repayments in the face of falling wages, rising interest rates and the ever-present threat of redundancy.

According to the latest statistics, 33,321 mortgage accounts — 4.1 per cent of all private residential mortgages in the State — were in arrears for more than 90 days at the end of March. Total arrears for these distressed mortgages amount to €464.5m.

Report by Alan Ruddock and Ronald Quinlan – Sunday Independent.

Ireland Property – Daft Property – http://daftproperty.blogspot.com

A small inspiration lush desert park in Downtown Phoenix.

See Also

• Other post in the Urban Parks Series
  Get to know Central Phoenix parks.
• Phoenix Home Search By Map | MLS Properties For Sale | MLS Wizard
  Search Phoenix Real Estate by Region, Map, Address, School, MLS# or Zip Code | Lender Owned, REO homes | SearchValleyHomes

You don’t really need certificates or short sale middle-men, but you do need to participate fully in the short sale process.

There is a lot of hoopla out there about selling short sales and most of it’s simply made to sound important when the reality is, completing a short sale is not any sort of magic, it does not mean that you should pick any agent to represent you in the sale. You do need to pick someone who knows what they are doing. Please take the point below into consideration before making any choices.

• Certifications are nice, but they don’t close transactions. Plenty of agents close short sales without having some type of certifications and plenty of agents with certifications have issues or don’t know what they are doing: plenty of certifications don’t require actual experience. Don’t rely on these to pick and agent. Further more, be wary of anyone calling themselves experts. The short sale process, though improving, is still a wild initiative and each transaction is different. Having participated in even a few dozen does not make one an expert.
• Watch out for third party short sale transaction companies. They simply wiggle themselves into the transaction to take a cut. You don’t need them. All you need is a good agent and yourself plus your CPA and lawyer.
• Do consult your CPA and a lawyer about the implications of a short sale because for some a foreclosure is the better option and for others a modification is possible and they do get done.
• Do research the Realtor you’ll hire to sell your home. Don’t stop at their ability to manage the short sale transaction, they still need to have the skills and tools to actually get a contract for the property.
• Research the short sale process. The more you know, the better decisions you’ll make. Don’t reply on the alone Realtor to tell you everything. Learn through other sources, be informed.
• Be a very active participant in the short sale. As much as you’d like to simply pass the responsibility along to others your participation is vital and necessary for the process to be done and completed in a timely manner.

Is that all? It’s not, but these are some things to research more and think about before you make a decision. Considering selling via short sale is only the first step and not always the right one.

Of course, by writing this I am suggesting that you give us a call with further questions. We have closed plenty of short sale transactions on both sides: for buyers and sellers and we know the principles to follow that will help the process be a more successful one and we’ve got the marketing and management skills to get offers, as long as those guidelines are followed.

See Also

• Articles and market reports about short sales in Greater Phoenix.
  Short Sale
• Phoenix Home Seller’s Guide
  Be a more informed seller.

Burden of Irish debt could yet eclipse that of Greece…

OPINION: What will sink us, unfortunately but inevitably, are the huge costs of the September 2008 bank bailout…

IT IS no longer a question of whether Ireland will go bust, but when. Unlike Greece, our woes do not stem from government debt, but instead from the government’s open-ended guarantee to cover the losses of the banking system out of its citizens’ wallets.

Even under the most optimistic assumptions about government spending cuts and bank losses, by 2012 Ireland will have a worse ratio of debt to national income than the one that is sinking Greece.

On the face of it, Ireland’s debt position does not appear catastrophic. At the start of the year, Ireland’s government debt was two- thirds of GDP: only half the Greek level. (The State also has financial assets equal to a quarter of GDP, but so do most governments, so we will focus on the total debt.)

Because of the economic collapse here, the Government is adding to this debt quite quickly. However, in contrast to its inept handling of the banking crisis, the Government has taken reasonable steps to bring the deficit under control. If all goes to plan we should be looking at a debt of 85 to 90 per cent of GDP by the end of 2012.

This is quite large for a small economy, but it is manageable. Just about. What will sink us, unfortunately but inevitably, are the huge costs of the bank bailout.

We can gain a sobering perspective on the impossible disproportion between the bailout and our economic resources by looking at the US. The government there set aside 0 billion (€557 billion) to buy troubled bank assets, and the final cost to the American taxpayer is about 0 billion. These sound like, and are, astronomical numbers.

But when you translate from the leviathan that is America to the minnow that is Ireland, it would be equivalent to the Irish Government spending €7 billion on Nama, and eventually losing €1.5 billion in the process. Pocket change by our standards.

Instead, our Government has already committed itself to spend €70 billion (€40 billion on the National Asset Management Agency – Nama – and €30 billion on recapitalising banks), or half of the national income. That is 10 times per head of population the amount the US spent to rescue itself from its worst banking crisis since the Great Depression.

Having received such a staggering transfusion of taxpayer funds, you might expect that the Irish banks would now be as fit as fleas. Instead, they are still in intensive care, and will require even larger transfusions before they can fend for themselves again.

It is hard to think of any institution since the League of Nations that has become so irrelevant so fast as Nama. Instead of the resurrection of the Irish banking system we were promised, we now have one semi-State body (Nama) buying assets from other semi-states (Anglo) and soon-to-be semi-States (AIB and Bank of Ireland), while funnelling €60 million a year in fees to lawyers, valuers and associated parasites.

What ultimately matters for national solvency, however, is not how much the State invests in its banks, but how much it is likely to lose. It is alright to invest €70 billion, or even €100 billion, to rescue your banking system if you can reasonably expect to get back most of what you spent. So how much are the banks and, thanks to the bank guarantee, you the taxpayer, likely to lose?

Let’s start with the €100 billion of property development loans. We’ll be optimistic and say the loss here will be one-third. Remember, Anglo has already owned up to losing about €25 billion of its €75 billion portfolio, so we have almost reached that third without looking at AIB and Bank of Ireland. I think the final loss will be more than half, but we’ll keep with the third to err on the side of optimism.

Next there are €35 billion of business loans. Over €10 billion of these loans are to hotels and pubs and will likely not be seen again this side of Judgment Day. Meanwhile, one-third of loans to small and medium enterprises are reported already to be in arrears. So, a figure of a 20 per cent loss again seems optimistic.

Finally, we have mortgages of €140 billion, and other personal lending of €20 billion. Current mortgage default figures here are meaningless because, once you agree a reduction of mortgage payments to a level you can afford, Irish banks can still pretend that your loan is performing.

Banks in the US typically get back half of what they loaned when they foreclose, but losses here could be greater because banks, fortunately, find it hard to take away your family home. So Irish banks could easily be looking at mortgage losses of 10 per cent but, to be conservative, we will say five.

So between developers, businesses, and personal loans, Irish banks are on track to lose nearly €50 billion if we are optimistic (and more likely closer to €70 billion), which translates into a bill for the taxpayer of over 30 per cent of GDP. The bank guarantee may have looked like “the cheapest bailout in the world, so far” in September 2008, but it is not looking that way now.

Adding these bank losses on to the national debt means we are facing a debt by late 2012 of 115 per cent of GDP. If we are lucky.

There is more. The ability of a government to service its debts depends on its tax base. In Ireland the proper measure of tax base, at least when it comes to increasing taxes, is not GDP (including profits of multinational firms, who will walk if we raise their taxes) but GNP (which is limited to Irish people, who are mostly stuck here). While for most countries the two measures are the same, in Ireland GDP is a quarter larger than GNP. This means our optimistic debt to GDP forecast of 115 per cent translates into a debt to GNP ratio of 140 per cent, worse than where Greece is now.

And even this catastrophic number assumes that our economy does not contract further. For the last two years the Irish economy has not been shrinking, so much as vaporising. Real GNP and private sector employment have already fallen by one-sixth – the deepest and swiftest falls in a western economy since the Great Depression.

The contraction is far from over, to judge from the two economic indicators I pay most attention to. Redundancies have been steady at 6,000 per month for the last nine months. Insolvencies are 25 per cent higher than this time last year, and are rippling outwards from construction into the rest of the economy.

The Irish economy is like a patient bleeding from two gunshot wounds. The Government has moved competently to stanch the smaller, budgetary hole, while continuing to insist that the litres of blood pouring unchecked from the banking hole are “manageable”.

Capital markets are unlikely to agree for much longer, triggering a borrowing crisis for Ireland. The first torpedo, most probably, will be a run on Irish banks in inter-bank markets, of the sort that sank Anglo in 2008. Already, Irish banks are struggling to find lenders to leave money on deposit for more than a week.

Ireland is setting itself up to present an early test of the shaky EU commitment to bail out its more spendthrift members. Probably we will end up with a deal where the European Central Bank buys Irish debt and provides continued emergency funding to Irish banks, in return for our agreeing a schedule of reparations of 5-6 per cent of national income over the next few decades.

To repay these reparations will take swingeing cuts in spending and social welfare, and unprecedented tax rises. A central part of our “rescue” package is certain to be the requirement that we raise our corporate taxes to European levels, sabotaging any prospect of recovery as multinationals are driven out.

The issue of national sovereignty has for so long been the monopoly of republican headbangers that it is hard to know whether ordinary, sane Irish people still care about it. Either way, we will not be having it around much longer.

We have long since left the realm of easy alternatives, and will soon face a choice between national bankruptcy and admitting the bank guarantee was a mistake. Either we cut the banks loose, or we sink ourselves.

While most countries facing bankruptcy sit passively in denial until they sink – just as we are doing – there is one shining exception: Uruguay. When markets panicked after Argentina defaulted in 2002, Uruguay knew it could no longer service its large external debt. Instead of waiting for a borrowing crisis, the Uruguayans approached their creditors and pointed out they faced a choice.

Either they could play tough and force Uruguay into bankruptcy, in which case they would get almost nothing back, or they could agree to reduce Uruguay’s debt to a manageable level, and get back most of what they lent. Realising Uruguay’s problems were largely not of its own making, and that it had never stiffed its creditors in the past, the lenders agreed to a debt restructuring, and Uruguay was able to return to debt markets within a few months.

In one way, our position is a lot easier than Uruguay’s, because our problem is bank debt rather than government debt. Our crisis stems entirely from the Government’s gratuitous decision on September 29th, 2008, to transform the IOUs of Seán FitzPatrick, Dermot Gleeson and their peers into quasi-sovereign instruments of the Irish state.

Our borrowing crisis could be solved before it even happens by passing the same sort of Special Resolution legislation that the Bank of England enacted after the Northern Rock crisis. The more than €65 billion in bonds that will be outstanding by the end of September when the guarantee expires could then be turned into shares in the banks: a debt for equity swap.

We need to explain that the Irish State has always honoured its debts in the past, and will continue to do so. However, the State is a distinct entity from its banks and, having learned the extent of the banks’ recklessness, we now have no choice but to allow the bank guarantee to lapse and to share the banks’ losses with their bondholders. It must be remembered that when these bonds were issued they had no government guarantee, and the institutions that bought them did so in full knowledge that they could default, and charged an appropriate rate of interest to compensate themselves for this risk.

Freed of the impossible bank debt, the Irish State could concentrate on the other daunting problems left by its decade-long credit binge: unemployment, lack of competitiveness and indebted households. The banks would be soundly capitalised and able to manage themselves free of political interference.

There are two common objections to sharing the banks’ losses with their bondholders, both of them specious. The first is that nobody would lend to Irish banks afterwards. However, given that soon nobody will be lending to Irish banks anyway, this is not an issue. Either way, the Irish State and banks are facing a period of relying on emergency funding. After a debt-for-equity swap, Irish banks, which were highly profitable before they fell into the clutches of their current “management”, will be carrying little debt, making them attractive credit risks.

The second objection is that Ireland would be sued in every court in Europe. Again wrong. Under the EU’s winding-up directive, the government that issues a bank’s licence has full power to resolve the bank under its own laws.

Of course, expecting politicians to sort out the Irish banks is pure fantasy. Like their British and American counterparts, Irish politicians have spent too long believing that banks were the root of national prosperity to understand that their interests are frequently inimical to those of the rest of the economy.

The architect of Uruguay’s salvation was not one of its politicians, but a technocrat called Carlos Steneri. The one positive development in Ireland in recent months is that control of the banking system has passed from the Government to similar technocrats.

This transfer did not take place without a struggle – one that was entirely missed by the media. When Anglo announced they wanted to take over Quinn Insurance despite the objections of the Financial Regulator, journalists seemed to view this as just another case of Anglo being Anglo. They should have remembered that Anglo cannot now turn on a radiator unless the Department of Finance says so, and what was going on instead was a direct power struggle between the Financial Regulator and the Minister for Finance.

Having been forced to appoint a credible Financial Regulator and Central Bank governor – first-rate ones, in fact – the Government must do what they say. Were either Elderfield or Honohan to resign, Irish bonds would straight away turn to junk.

Now you understand the extraordinary shift in power that lay behind the seeming non-headline in this newspaper last month: “Lenihan expresses confidence in regulator”.

The great macroeconomist Rudiger Dornbusch observed that crises always take a lot longer to happen than you expect but, once started, they move with frightening rapidity. Or, as Hemingway put it, bankruptcy happens “Slowly. Then all at once.” We can only hope that the Central Bank is using whatever time remains to us as an independent State to devise an intelligent Plan B – or is it Plan C?

Report by Morgan Kelly – Irish Times

Ireland Property – Daft Property – http://daftproperty.blogspot.com

First-time buyers are still not tempted by cheaper houses…

HOUSES are now more affordable than they have been in a generation — but few first-time buyers are tempted to buy, new figures show.

House prices have fallen so sharply that it takes just more than 12pc of an average first-time-buyer couple’s income to repay a mortgage, the EBS/DMK housing-affordability index shows.

But despite the continuing drop in affordability, the number of new buyers jumping on the property ladder is a fraction of the level it was during the housing boom.

National average house prices are still falling and are predicted to drop below €140,000 over the next year.

A major reason for the lack of demand in the housing market is the continuing falls in rents.

Another set of figures released by Daft.ie yesterday showed that rents fell again in the past few months, as there is a glut of rental properties.

The latest housing-affordability index found that the average first-time house-buyer couple are paying 12.6pc of their joint income in mortgage repayments, compared with 26pc three years ago.

The index shows that the average new-buyer couple were paying €644 a month in mortgage repayments in April.

This is down from €1,323 a month that the same couple would have paid at the height of the boom in December 2006.

Economist Annette Hughes of DKM Consultants said affordability was at its highest level in a generation.

She said average house prices had fallen from a peak of €360,000 in December 2006 to just under €200,000.

However, she predicted that the average price nationally would come down to less than €140,000 over the next year.

Repayments

The affordability index measures the proportion of after-tax income required to meet first-year mortgage repayments for an ‘average’ working couple — each on average earnings and with a 90pc mortgage.

It takes into account mortgage rates, changes in the level of mortgage-interest relief and is based on average earnings and average first-time-buyer new house prices.

Recent figures from the Irish Banking Federation showed that just 2,300 first-time buyers took out mortgages in the first three months of this year.

This compared with almost 10,000 first-time buyers taking out a mortgage in the autumn of 2006, when the housing market was ballooning.

Mortgage brokers said yesterday that new buyers were finding it almost impossible to get approval for a mortgage.

Chief executive of the Irish Brokers Association, Ciaran Phelan, said it “has never been more difficult to get a mortgage in the Irish market.”

He said new buyers were being deterred from buying by lenders demanding that they have a large deposit.

Meanwhile, figures from property website Daft.ie yesterday indicated that residential rents fell by 0.5pc in the first three months of this year, with the average nationwide rent now standing at €760 per month.

Rents in Dublin have fallen by 14pc in the past year, by 12pc in Cork and by 13pc in Limerick. Ronan Lyons, an economist with Daft, said there were signs that the rental market was stabilising.

Report by Charlie Weston – Irish Independent

Ireland Property – Daft Property – http://daftproperty.blogspot.com

Over 14,000 homes are under contract and awaiting to close, a number surpassed only one month ago at 15,131.

See Also

• Phoenix Housing Market
  data, graphs, commentary
• Phoenix Home Search | MLS Properties For Sale | MLS Wizard | Real Estate By Map | Greater Phoenix real estate and investments
  Search Phoenix Real Estate by Region, Map, Address, School, MLS# or Zip Code | Lender Owned, REO homes | SearchValleyHomes

Struggling homeowners turn to SVP…

Under-pressure homeowners are using every last cent to pay their mortgage bills, leaving them so short of cash they are turning to the Society of St Vincent de Paul for extra money to buy food and pay utility bills.

In the capital, St Vincent de Paul volunteers dealt with a massive 10,000 calls in the first four months of this year — up 30 per cent on 2009.

Now they fear there will be a further raft of people in trouble with their mortgages when redundancy payments given to people who lost their jobs last year run out.

According to ratings agency Moody’s, the number of Irish people who have fallen behind in their mortgage repayments has come close to doubling in the last 12 months.

The rate of delinquency in mortgage repayments — those with more than 90 days of mortgage arrears — rose to 3.8 per cent in March up from 2.1 per cent during the same month last year.

According to John Monaghan of the St Vincent de Paul Society, more and more people are seeking help because they are struggling to keep their home.

“They are using all their available money to meet their monthly mortgage bill, which means they cannot afford the basics like food and fuel.

“This is a country-wide phenomenon. Our conferences are helping people with food, with keeping children in school with books and uniforms,” Mr Monaghan said.

“We have seen a 30 per cent increase in people coming to us overall. The two most frequent requests we are getting are people seeking help to buy food and to keep the lights on and the house warm.”

He said that when this happened, the Society sat down with the householders and talked to them about getting in contact with their lenders and the Money Advice and Budgeting Service (Mabs).

“We are finding that when they get in these dire straits, people panic and don’t think about going to the lender. We say to them: ‘Look we are with you, we are not going to abandon you. We cannot help you pay your mortgage but we will look after the other bits and pieces. What you have to do is to take control of this process and contact the lenders and try to come up with some kind of deal’,” he said.

He added that the main financial institutions who were part of the moratorium on house repossessions had been generally amenable to negotiation.

He noted that there had been a recommendation from the Law Reform Commission that other institutions like sub-prime lenders and Credit Unions be included in the moratorium initiative and he supported this call. “What St Vincent de Paul is trying to do for these people is to keep life ticking over as normally as possible.”

He said the Society thought there would be more people seeking assistance, but redundancy payments and a moratorium on repossessions had helped families get by.

“However, we believe there will be an increase in the number of people in trouble.

“One of the things that we are concerned about is that many people are on Job Seeker’s Benefit. That lasts for nine months to a year and as soon as that goes, they will find that whatever they get from the dole will be means-tested.

“That is when people start coming to us, when they are struggling to get a social welfare payment and their income drops drastically and they cannot afford to keep things going on the home front,” Mr Monaghan said.

Meanwhile, Senator Marc MacSharry and other members of the Prevention of Family Home Repossessions Group last week presented new proposals to the Expert Group on Mortgage Arrears and Personal Debt, which was set up by Finance Minister Brian Lenihan.

Report by JEROME REILLY – Sunday Independent

Ireland Property – Daft Property – http://daftproperty.blogspot.com

Things to do more then once in Phoenix, AZ: hiking in the Phoenix Mountains Preserve.

See Also

• Other things to do in Phoenix
  from inPhoenix.com

4 key factors to not overlook when selling your Phoenix home.

See Also

• Phoenix Home Seller’s Guide
  Real estate selling services.
• The science of selling real estate
  become a more informed seller.

Too many estates in the capital have been left in a mess after developers pulled out…

THE Government is being called on to change derelict site legislation to prevent vacant Nama land turning into a new generation of eyesores.

The call comes as it emerged that there are over 3,700 unfinished houses in developments in south Co Dublin alone.

Councillors have backed a motion seeking a review of the laws and a redress of the balance “between the interests of developers and local communities”.

It was brought before a meeting of the council by Cllr Dermot Looney (Lab), who said the existing legislation favoured developers who had been allowed to leave behind ghost estates and “other kips” after the property crash.

Derelict

At the same meeting it emerged that South Dublin County Council has 3,789 houses in 23 developments that have not been completed. The council will now write to the Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government, John Gormley, to carry out the review.

“I think it is time considering the likely dereliction of vast swathes of Nama land,” Cllr Looney said.

He pointed to local examples of derelict land — such as the former McHugh’s shopping centre site at Greenhills, Tallaght.

“We are left with the neglect, the eyesore, the dumping and the rats,” he said. “Up until recently we also suffered vast scrawls of graffiti, an unsecured entrance, antisocial behaviour within the site and the danger of bonfires at Hallowe’en. This council called for the provision of a brick wall at the site. Instead, the developer threw up a few sheets of MDF hoarding in a job that would make a cowboy builder blush.”

Cllr Looney said the existing legislation — the 1990 Derelict Sites Act — had failed “miserably” to protect communities.

“The legislation is clearly pro-developer and anti-community,” he said.

A council spokesman told the meeting the council had a number of actions open to it and had taken action several times. He pointed out that some sites were cleaned up, only to be as bad “as they were on day one” a month later. “We don’t have the resources to even contemplate (compulsory purchase) of these lands,” he said. “We will be taking all action open to us under the legislation.”

Figures on the numbers of unfinished homes were released following a question from Cllr Caitriona Jones.

It council said it defined as “unfinished”, developments that had not yet been taken in charge by the council and where there were works still to be carried out that were the responsibility of the developer. The largest of the unfinished developments is the 588-unit Carrigmore at Fortunestown, built by Devondale Ltd.

The road has yet to be taken in charge, with resurfacing needed and an inspection by the council to be arranged.

Survey

The next largest is Kelland Homes Ltd’s huge Sundale development in Tallaght.

In this development, services have not yet been taken in charge even though the road was, in 2004. The council said a drainage survey and revised drawings had been resubmitted. At Mill Race in Saggart, a mixed residential scheme of mostly private housing built by Neville Development Partnership, construction is nearly finished. The council said it was inspecting work on a regular basis.

A remedial list has been prepared and issued for McInerney Construction’s 292-unit Hansted development in Lucan, with a final inspection of works due.

At 290-unit Beechdale, in Ballycullen, the developer has been on site in recent weeks completing works following the council’s actions.

Report by Andrew Phelan – Evening Herald.

Ireland Property – Daft Property – http://daftproperty.blogspot.com