Free car when you buy a house!!!

[ThomasJ]

You'd be mad to pay that sort of price in Dublin 15 even if it came with a free car. They (the developers/planners) should be focusing on public transport.

http://www.independent.ie/business/p...e-1337295.html

Developer offers 'free' car with new home
Friday April 04 2008

A DEVELOPER is offering a free car to anyone who buys a house in a new west Dublin housing scheme in the latest attempt to revitalise the moribund property market.

The Volvo C30, valued at €25,000, is being given away with every house purchased at the Alderwood development at Hollystown, in Dublin 15, according to McPeake Auctioneers.

Houses in the scheme, which have been built by a subsidiary of LM Developments, go on sale from tomorrow, with prices from €480,000 for a two-bed property.

A spokesman for the auctioneers McPeake denied the car giveaway was a gimmick, with the cost of it built into the price of the house.

The move comes as a new economic report has found that the sharp fall in house prices over the last year has made homes more affordable for first-time buyers.

And prices are due to fall by another 10pc this year in a move that will make houses even more affordable, economic consultants DKM said yesterday.

A drop of 10pc in property prices this year would come on top of a 9pc fall in the past year, which would take the drop since the peak of the market in January 2007, to 17pc.

The house price declines -- along with changes in mortgage interest relief in the last Budget -- mean that an average first-time-buyer couple now spends 22pc of their income on mortgage repayments.

This compares with 26.4pc at the end of 2006, according to the affordability index from EBS Building Society and DKM.

The changes have meant that the cost of servicing a mortgage on an average-priced home has dropped by €137 a month for a first-time-buyer couple, Annette Hughes of DKM said.

Improvement

EBS executive Dara Deering said the improvement in affordability meant now was a good time to buy, but she admitted that many new buyers would continue to stay out of the market if prices continue to fall.

Ms Deering claimed the new buyer market was now close to a tipping point which would see buyers return.

This view contrasts with a report from ratings agency Standard & Poor's on Wednesday, which predicted that the housing market slowdown would last well into next year.