Half of first-time House buyers in Ireland are ready to buy says a new survey
But the banks are holding back progress
Three out of four first-time buyers say they have enough money to pay a deposit on a home – and half say they plan to buy a property in the next 12 months, according to a new survey released yesterday by MyHome.ie.
It also found that one-third of first-time buyers already have mortgage approval.
However, like homeowners quizzed in the survey, most expect to see house prices fall further in 2012.
Nearly three-quarters don’t think prices will drop dramatically: 37 per cent think they may fall by between 5 and 10 per cent, and 34 per cent think they’ll fall by 1 to 5 per cent. (Another 20 per cent believe prices will fall by 10 to 15 per cent.)
Only one-fifth of people who already own property are planning to buy again in 2012.
The survey of 1,792 people – of which 1,276 were homeowners and the rest first-time buyers, carried out in the second week in February – showed that over half did not believe that financial institutions are lending.
Sixty-five per cent of homeowners believe institutions are not lending, with 43 per cent of these believing that the institutions are over-regulated or over-cautious when granting mortgage approval.
But 52 per cent of first-time buyers think institutions are lending. Some of them – 38 per cent – believe institutions are over-regulated, with the same percentage saying they are over-cautious.
Angela Keegan, managing director of MyHome.ie said the findings showed that availability of mortgage finance and consumer confidence were the key factors influencing participation in the housing market.
“Availability of finance was the number one factor for first-time buyers and was also in the top three for existing homeowners. The fact that so many respondents believe the institutions are over regulated or over-cautious reflects the widespread frustration felt by prospective buyers of being locked out of the market. Unless access to finance is freed up the level of transactions will remain at low levels.”
People’s belief that prices won’t fall dramatically this year might help explain why so many were still planning to buy in the next 12 months, said Keegan.
“First-time buyers monitor the market very closely and while most of them believe prices look set to fall by up to 10 per cent, many may well be factoring in mortgage interest relief measures announced in the Budget.
The survey shows that the three-bed semi-detached remains the house of choice for prospective buyers.
The best incentive ever for improving your diet:
Before on the left and on the right after 6 weeks: A study has found that eating a diet of fruit and
vegetables can lead to a person having a healthy glow and appearing more
attractive in just six weeks
How fruit and vegetables could make you look cuter and more attractive
If the fact that they’re nutritious isn’t enough to get you eating more fruit and vegetables, here’s some news that may convince you – they make you look good too.
People who increased their intake were rated more attractive after just six weeks, researchers found.
Scientists at St Andrews University monitored the food consumption of 35 people and took pictures of them over this period.
Before and after: A study has found that eating a diet of fruit and vegetables can lead to a person having a healthy glow and appearing more attractive in just six weeks Eating an average of 2.9 more portions of fruit and vegetables a day made them look healthier when rated by others at the end of the study, while an extra 3.3 portions enhanced their attractiveness.
Fruit and vegetables are rich in carotenoids, which protect against cell damage from pollution and UV rays and can prevent age-related diseases including heart disease and cancer.
Sowing the seeds of love: Eating fruit makes you look sexier, so tuck in, say scientists
It was already known that eating extreme amounts of certain vegetables such as carrots could turn skin orange. However, it was not known that a small increase in these red and yellow pigments in the skin could be perceptible to others – or that it was seen as appealing.
A camera which can measure close-up changes to the skin’s redness, yellowness and lightness found that these significantly increased in people who increased their intake of fruit and vegetables.
Using light sensors, the researchers showed these red and yellow hues were linked with the levels of carotenoids in the skin.
There are hundreds of different types of carotenoids.
But those thought to have the most dramatic impact on the skin are lycopene – which gives tomatoes and red peppers their red colour – and beta-carotene, found in carrots as well as broccoli, squash, and spinach.
Skin colour can also be affected by chemicals called polyphenols, found in apples, blueberries and cherries, which cause blood rush to the skin surface.
Ross Whitehead, who lead the study published in the journal PLoS ONE, said: ‘We expected the colour change to be most dramatic in people who ate very few fruit and vegetables to start off with, but it was actually across the board.
‘A lot of the people were already eating close to the recommended amount.
‘But we found even a couple of extra portions could still make a difference to their skin colour.’
He said the team, who studied white and Asian volunteers, would look at whether this was also true for other races, and whether it had a smaller or greater effect in older people, as the volunteers were all aged 18 to 25.
Major agreement signed with giant software firm for Sligo IT
FIRST DEAL OF ITS KIND IN IRELAND OR THE UK
IT Sligo lecturers Colm Davey and Stephen Reid with Web Development student TJ Wallace with the equipment that hosts the Adobe software and facilitates its remote accessibility to the Institute’s students. TJ is demonstrating the remote availability of…
IT SLIGO has become the first third level institution in Ireland and the UK to sign a licence agreement with computer software giant Adobe which will give students round the clock access to some of the world’s leading design software.
Adobe is one of the world’s top digital media and creative software providers, whose most famous product is Photoshop.
From this month the Institute will deliver a number of online tutorials to students, on a pilot basis, to help them exploit the potential of round the clock access.
“We recognise that many students have other commitments, for example, they may be working part-time to put themselves though college and not in a position to spend an evening in the college lab before it shuts at 10 p.m.,” said Colm Davey, lecturer in Web and Digital Media at IT Sligo.
Thie development initially will provide students with freedom to access the software, to work on assignments and complete coursework, at a time and place that suits them, he added. It will also allow the college to develop and deliver full online programmes in the future.
“Without this unique agreement with Adobe this would not be possible,” Mr. Davey said.
Stephen Reid, Co-ordinator of the KITE Project at IT Sligo, also stressed the significance of the agreement. “This development not only facilitates students who need out of hours access to the software, but also provides the potential to deliver new online courses in this exciting area, further enhancing the Institute’s reputation as a pioneer in online learning.”
He added: “As a result of the KITE Project, the institute has successfully delivered a number of live, interactive practical classes to online distance learning students across a range of courses. This development will enable us to develop more new online programmes”
The KITE Project is part-funded by the European Union’s Regional Development Fund through the INTERREG IVA cross-border programme.
“I am delighted that the benefits of the KITE funding has now extended from Engineering to other departments within the Institute,” said Mr. Reid
Ireland West Knock Airport:
Passenger numbers are up again for the 2 months of 2012
FOR THE second year in a row passenger numbers at Ireland West Airport Knock are up for the months of January and February
New winter sun services to the Canary Islands of Lanzarote and Tenerife have been particularly popular with over 5,000 holiday makers from all over Ireland flocking to the airport to take advantage of the cheap fares on offer and the sunny climates in these popular destinations. A new service to Edinburgh with Flybe has also seen UK passenger numbers increase at the start of the year.
March promises to be an exciting month for the airport as four new mainland European services to Barcelona, Frankfurt, Milan and Paris start at the end of the month with Ryanair reporting record booking numbers on the new flights whilst a new UK service to Leeds with Flybe will also launch. In 2012 the airport will serve over 28 International destinations across the UK and Europe.
“We are delighted to have had a strong start to 2012 in whats generally a quiet time of the year for air travel and in particular its great to see large numbers from all corners of Ireland using the airport and availing of the convenience, choice and low fares flights on offer at our airport,” said Joe Gilmore, MD Ireland West Airport Knock.
New iPad Introduction lights up the trade-in services for Apple Sales
Following Apple’s new iPad intro, trade-in services are seeing record sales for Tablets that are less than a year old.
The new Apple’s iPad.
Record numbers of iPad owners sold their devices yesterday following Apple’s introduction of its next-generation model.
Today both eBay and Gazelle, online services that buy used tablets and other gadgets, reported a record influx of people selling their tablets, many of which were models less than a year old.
eBay says it had “more than” 20,000 trade-in offers for tablets yesterday, 89 percent of which were iPads. eBay says that 20,000 number represents a 10-fold increase in the volume of trade-ins the company pulled in the day before Apple’s event. Perhaps more telling is that more than half of those trade-ins were Apple’s iPad 2, a device that went oh sale a year ago.
Separately Gazelle, which does not offer a way to auction off goods to other buyers like eBay does, said that customers were selling it an iPad on the service every eight seconds.
“Since the announcement yesterday we’ve already had about 80,000 offers presented to Gazelle customers, which is a 650 percent increase in trades,” Anthony Scarsella, Gazelle’s “chief gadget officer” told CNET in an interview.
75 percent of those trade-ins were iPad 2s, Scarsella said, with the other 25 percent consisting of first-generation models.
To put these numbers in perspective, last week eBay said it generated more than 125,000 tablet trade-in offers during the entire month of February, with 97.6 percent of those consisting of Apple iPad models. That number was up tenfold from the number of offers during the same month last year, the company said.
That more people are trading in their iPads now than this time last year shouldn’t be too much of a surprise. In February 2011, the first-generation iPad had been out less than a year and had suffered considerable supply shortages that pushed availability back several weeks for those looking to get their hands on one. By comparison, Apple sold 32 million iPads last year, with the majority of those being the second-generation model–a device that had supply problems of its own.
Worth noting is that eBay’s trade-in numbers come from the online commerce site’s Instant Sale program, which differs from its auction services by giving gadget owners a way to trade in items for cash. Users describe the quality of their item, and eBay picks up the shipping cost, as well as the job of wiping whatever data is on it. A company spokesperson said auction listings for both the iPad and iPad 2 increased nearly three times the number the previous day.
Where do these devices go?
You may be wondering where these tablets and smartphones go once they’re traded-in, and the simple answer is that they’re sold right back to new buyers. Both Gazelle and eBay wipe the data on the device, then clean it up and package it for a sale back to someone else.
The new iPads introduced on launch day.
In Gazelle’s case, the company says the majority of traded-in gadgets are re-sold on the company’s online stores on eBay and Amazon. Gazelle will also sell the units wholesale in the U.S. and internationally, where they end up being sold by other companies.
eBay manages its trade-ins through a third-party company, which assesses the value then puts them up for sale again on eBay’s site. Whereas eBay once made users define the quality of the item, that’s now something that’s been simplified to “working” and “non-working.”
Time is money as always
The diminishing resale value of electronic goods in the gadget world is not a new phenomenon, and with the advent of trade-in services has become a publicly-viewable exercise in economics. Both eBay and Gazelle estimate the value you’d get based on a supply and demand curve. And both offer a way for iPad owners to “lock in” the price they’d get for their used goods, making the eventual trade days or weeks after the price is set.
In eBay’s case, the company is providing a pre-set value for how much it will give owners for their device as long as it’s sent in within a certain time frame. That deadline is this Saturday, with owners having to postmark their package by Tuesday, March 20.
For Gazelle, the amount buyers can get is a moving target ahead of them locking it in, a price the company will put on hold for 30 days. Gazelle also says that it sometimes increases the pricing of trade-ins when people misjudge the quality of their item, with some 5 percent of iPad trade-ins getting a post-trade bump.
As gadgets go, Scarsella said smartphones hold their value the best among the products the company buys, but that the return people are getting on those devices has changed considerably among the varying device makers.
“In the past we tended to see that with BlackBerry devices, now nobody wants them,” he said. “iPhone and iOS are becoming more corporate than when it first started, so businesses are adapting iPhone models and businesses and people are just dumping BlackBerrys. That’s causing them to lose quite a bit of value.”
Scarsella added that Apple’s products are among the top items in terms of holding trade-in value among gadgets.
“Now that people are beginning to catch on to [Apple's] upgrade cycle, users are beginning to trade in much earlier than before,” Scarsella said. “Previously they would wait until the actual launch day to know it has certain specs or features to commit to buying it. Now it’s just like they’re going to buy it, no matter what Apple puts out there. It could be a blender and they’re going to buy it.”
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