Sunday Property Round-Up June 23rd, 2019

 

 

Welcome to another Sunday Property Round-Up, this has been another particularly busy week of events with the latest Construction IT Alliance or CitA ‘Technology Trend Series’ taking place on Wednesday; the Housing Agency and Cluid Housing launched their report on owners’ management companies on Thursday and, on Friday, Property Industry Ireland, or PII, hosted their annual conference with a selection of Irish and international speakers. I was delighted to moderate two of these events and I have included further details below. If you missed last week’s round-up, you can catch up here: https://propertydistrict.ie/category/sunday-property-review/

 

Before we get stuck into the general property news of the week, below are a few local and international stories that might be of particular interest:

 

 

 

 

 

  • ‘I’ve been stung by £23k mortgage fine because our new home is on Airbnb’ https://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/katie-investigates/stung-23k-mortgage-fine-new-homes-airbnb/amp/

 

 

 

As always, you might let me know if I have missed out on any relevant property news by emailing  carol@caroltallon.com.

 

(Apologies in advance for any typos, it’s difficult to get good help on a Sunday. Also, I use voice to text dictation so just sound out anything that really doesn’t make sense in a strong rural accent and that should help!)

 

Sunday Listen

 

 

#PropertyMatters Ireland’s First Weekly Property Radio Show (& Podcast!):

Ireland’s first weekly property radio show, Property Matters, launched In January 2019 on Dublin South FM 93.9 and is now available internationally via iTunes and Spotify podcast (@iPropertyRadio). Seasoned political journalist and broadcaster, Bryan Fox, and I (Carol Tallon) team up to deliver 60 minutes of industry chat with guests from the areas of planning, construction, property and proptech. Produced by Katie Tallon of Hear Me Roar Media.

 

Guests in studio this week include: Lorraine Mulligan, owner of REMAX Results Celbridge and Lucan; Maria Fenlon of Maria Fenlon Interior Architecture and Paul McCarthy, CEO and Founder of Irish proptech Snapfix.

 

Produced by Katie Tallon (email the team: hello@ipropertyradio.com)

 

Listen back to this episode here: https://anchor.fm/ipropertyradio/episodes/Property-Matters–June-19th-2019-e4cqkm

 

 

*Listen back to all #PropertyMatters episodes here: https://anchor.fm/ipropertyradio

Email the Property Matters team at hello@iPropertyRadio.com

 

 

**Podcasting – why businesses need to get on board (and HOW they can!):

https://hearmeroarmedia.com/podcasting-why-businesses-need-to-get-on-board/**

 

 

PLACEMAKING

Public Consultation and Community Engagement

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

*PLACEengage: The future of speedy, successful placemaking for property developers is here – Property developers and project owners ready Public Consultation are encouraged to contact the PLACEengage team for full details*

 

 

Other Property News

 

 

  • Wayne O’Connor, writing in The Sunday Independent today, reports that ‘Bad neighbours causing 6,000 complaints a year: Landlords will  not face fines if they fail to tackle antisocial neighbours from hell’. This is one of the most frustrating articles I have read this week; landlords, who find it difficult to get rid of bad tenants for this exact behaviour, will now be FINED for not doing so! It is worth noting that this also applies to local authority and ABH landlords, so the tenants they might rightly need to evict will inevitably become homeless – and then the same news publication will write about how these bodies made people homeless.

 

  • In the same newspaper, Colette Bennet, research and policy analyst with Social Justice Ireland, has an opinion piece entitled: ‘How the Government should tackle the current housing crisis’. [Whenever I read that type of bold claim coming from one commentator or one organisation, I generally worry. The last thing we need is any one organisation thinking they hold the magic bullet. This is one of the practical barriers to the meaningful collaboration this country needs and deserves…]. Affordability is rightly identified as one of the most urgent issues that needs tackling; however, to also list affordability as the solution is simply too high-level and, frankly, unhelpful at this stage.  Relaxing the Central Bank mortgage lending caps would arguably be a good start. In relation to the help-to-buy scheme, I am consistently surprised to hear and read commentators assess this from the perspective buyers – yes, it falls short and for a quite a noble reason, this was never intended to be a buyer support, but rather a much-needed supply-side initiative for the industry.  And from that point of work, it was working [not perfect, but working].

 

  • Co-living continues to dominate; the lead business story in the business section of the Independent today reports that global giant, Medici Living, is planning 5,000 units/beds in Ireland over the next five years.

 

 

  • The same journalist also reports that the delivery of new homes in Dublin has started to slow down. 17,520 new homes were delivered in 2018 and this now looks set to drop back to 16,873 for 2019. [There appears to be a heavy reliance of BER data, and these figures do not quite tally with others published since May 2019].

 

  • Last week, two of Dublin’s most significant retail properties hit the market, the Eason building on O’Connell Street and a 62.4% stake in the St. Stephen’s Green centre. Dan White has a focus on Irish retail on page 5 of the business section today. He reports that more than a quarter of all debit and credit card spending (€10.2bn of €37bn) in the six months up to April 2019 was spent on ecommerce, however, when you strip out ATM transactions, this increases to 36% of all spending going to online retailers! While investment in office space and multi-unit residential continues to rise, investment in retail is the exception. Might we see up to 200,000 sq.ft. of new office space upstairs in Stephen’s Green..?

 

  • In the Ergo weekly column: Cornel Living (connected with Ardstone Capital) is expecting a decision from An Bord Pleanala on August 12th, in relation to the fast-tracking of 469 BTR development; Cairn Homes is in the masterplan stage of its Barrington development; Marlet has secured planning for its development on Brennanstown Road and Hibernia Reit has partnered with Bee Gree to establish urban beehives in three of their city-centre buildings.  

 

  • In The Sunday Business Post today, Michael Brennan reports that ‘Data centre giants will be hardest hit by electricity tax hike’.  This comes on foot of proposals to double the electricity tax for all businesses as part of the climate action plan.

 

  • No one puts Tom Parlon’s industry in the corner: On page 11 of the SBP today, CIF chief Tom Parlon writes that ‘Irish building firms are big players abroad. At home, the industry plays a pivotal role in delivering the infrastructure and housing the country needs’. He talks about how “the Irish are now designing, engineering and constructing the world. Rather than workers leaving in search of work, they are being sought out and headhunted”. And he lists many examples of Irish firms pioneering some of the most complex construction projects globally. Tom Parlon is responding to a disparaging opinion piece by economist Sean Barrett in last weekend’s edition, wherein the economist referred to Irish construction companies as “Bob the builder”. In addition to inviting Barrett to visit a working site in order to see the expertise and excellence for himself, Parlon also points out that the Government is one of the largest clients of the industry. As such, the  State has a huge role to play in improving productivity on public sector contracts, which “would enable Bob the builder to deliver more for less, on time and on budget”! Nicely done, Mr. Parlon.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  • 7,493 planning permissions for new homes granted in Q1 2019, down 3.5% on the same period in 2018 (fewer houses but greater number of apartments)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Left to right: Dr. Thomas Lier, Goethe-Institut Ireland Director, Michael Moriarty, 3D Personnel (sponsor), Rachael Stewart and Roy Pickford from Stewart Construction.

 

 

The Agile Agent

Getting Ireland’s Property Marketplace Digital by Default

The Agile Agent is a 12-month digital transformation programme for independent Irish estate agents and auctioneers, which runs from September – August. This programme will be delivered by a multi-disciplinary Irish and UK team and will go beyond proptech adoption to help agents get their industry digital by default.

 

Q3. March – May 2019 Agile Agent check-in now available HERE: 

 

 

To get involved and for free Proptech Prompts, please

SIGN UP HERE

Proptech and Construction Innovation

 

 

  • From smart design and planning right through to the smart property transaction, where does your Irish-led or Ireland-based #proptech business sit?  Pease take five minutes to add or update your details to our internationally-shared listing here: SIGN UP: PROPTECH INNOVATORS and STARTUPS

 

  • From Smart Dublin and Smart Docklands: We ran Dublin’s first 3D Data Hackathon from 10-12 May. The aim of the Hackathon was to use GIS, BIM and other Geospatial data alongside augmented and virtual reality applications to solve city challenges. #TBThursday #3DDataHack Check out the video here : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_xbyWnmpUmo&t=14s

 

  • In The Sunday Business Post today, Elaine O’Regan reports on the launch of a new online sales portal for the construction and plumbing sectors, NRG Store (nrgawareness.com).

 

  • In the technology pages of the SBP, Emmet Ryan  interviews Autodesk’s CIO Prakash Kota about the digitisation of global construction and what future roles within the industry will look like.  

 

  • Also in the SBP today, there is a two-page feature on the DigiCon 2019 conference on construction technologies, which took place last week.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  • Squint/Opera, BIG and UNStudio create virtual-reality collaborative design tool https://www.dezeen.com/2019/06/21/hyperform-squint-opera-big-unstudio-virtual-reality-design/

 

 

 

New Facebook Group for Irish Property Buyers & Investors

 

Crowd-sourcing answers topical property questions:    

 

As many of you might know, my annual property book The Irish Property Buyers’ Handbook (since 2011) was rebranded in 2018 and will now appear as part of The Property Insider series, published by Oak Tree Press, the first three titles are now published and available here.

 

From 2019, the publishers and I want to ensure the content remains topical and we are doing this by crowd-sourcing home buyer and investor queries, with crowd-sourced and editorial team answers. Join the Facebook Group here to contribute: https://www.facebook.com/groups/IrishPropertyBuyers/

 

 

 

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