Searching OverseasCafe.com

Although the OverseasCafe.com site provides plenty of search options within the site, there are times when an off-site search is more appropriate, or will yield results referring to the site that you will not necessarily find on the site.

A very useful tool is the Site: command run in the search bar of a search page. It will work with any of the main search engines such as www.live.com (MSN), www.yahoo.co.uk and www.google.com.

Basically, if you wish to search for all references to 'French Property' on the OverseasCafe.com or all references to it relating to the site then type in the search box of your search engine "site: www.OverseasCafe.com French Property" (without the inverted commas) and you will be given a page (or several) pages of results for your query. It is a very handy option and can throw up a far more comprehensive list of results than you could find searching the site alone.

It is also worth trying more than one search engine, as they all use different criteria for their searches so they will all throw up different lists in different orders. Just click on the links to see an example of the results of the "site: www.OverseasCafe.com Overseas Property" query for MSN Live, Yahoo & Google.

Just be aware that search engines don't crawl sites every day so you may be limited to content that has been loaded up to a week previous to the search. An on-site search will still be more appropriate if you are looking for up to date content. Happy searching.

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When is a Governing Body not a Governing Body?

The Irish overseas property industry is completely unregulated then? Well not completely, but almost at the moment. If you take a look at our piece on the newly created NPSRA (and a bit of a blog on it previously) you'll have noted that there are moves afoot, intended to make the Irish property industry a whole lot safer for the consumer. Let's hope the NPSRA is successful and give it all our support to enable it to do its job properly.

On that issue, however, you may have noted that there are a number of 'associations', 'federations', 'organisations' or 'unions' to which various developers and agents are often aligned. It is, of course a perfectly pertinent question to ask, "what validity do any of them have and what exactly do they do?". Well, some of them do absolutely nothing, apart from acting as a means of promoting those in their organisations, others do perform some form of regulatory function, except with limited recourse to actions against their members. The NPSRA is the only statutory body that we are aware of to take on such a function, and that's not in full operation yet as it needs to have final laws passed to enable it to perform the functions envisaged for it.

Of the more common bodies you'll find in the overseas industry both the Federation of Overseas Property Developers, Agents and Consultants (FOPDAC, which has recently teamed up with the NAEA in the UK) and the more recently formed Association of International Property Professionals (AIPP) are pretty well known and both are fairly highly rated in the industry. Both have 'vetting procedures' and 'codes of conduct' to which members are obliged to comply, otherwise they face expulsion. Unfortunately for both, this is as far as they can go, there is no means of preventing the offender from being involved in the overseas industry. Until the legal advent of the NPSRA here, there still is no body that can essentially 'shut down' a rogue agent.

Another organisation we have come across is the EEAU which doesn't seem to be held in the same esteem as the others mentioned. Apparently the organisation was thought to have disbanded a few months back but seems to have bounced back from what would normally be seen as a terminal problem.

The feedback from within the industry is that this organisation was previously known for getting information into the media that 'wasn't necessarily correct' and that it is essentially a 'for profit organisation masquerading as a trade body.' It has no vetting procedures and its website is essentially a property portal (nothing against that, we are a property portal, but we're not claiming to provide regulation within the industry). In any case, the information gleaned could hardly be considered a ringing endorsement so we wouldn't advise you to put too much faith in the EEAU badge if you do come across companies using it.

As an amusing aside, the first paragraph of the EEAU homepage claims to offer protection against "rouge estate agents", so if you know of anyone in the industry who isn't wonderful at applying make-up or uses too much foundation you might report them.

www.OverseasCafe.com

We Welcome Helen Carson to our Journalistic Team

We are delighted to welcome the property editor of the Belfast Telegraph, Helen Carson, to our journalistic team. You can see her first piece for the website here, based on one of Northern Ireland's most famous sons, legendary footballer Gerry Armstrong. We hope to get regular pieces from Helen which will make for interesting reading for our growing band of viewers.

Helen's commentary will complement regular pieces submitted by our other contributors to the site who are Gillian Nelis, Cliodhna O'Donoghue, Gordon Miller, Ginetta Vedrickas, Margaret Carragher, Diarmaid Condon, Shane McGinley and Rose Martin. All in all the site boasts an exceptional journalistic team and we are very proud to bring information from these great writers direct to your desktop.

Keep visiting the site at OverseasCafe.com and thank you for making the site such a great success.

Click here for property listings

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Click here for News

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Click here for exhibition listings

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The OverseasCafe.com team.

Give NPSRA a Chance

You'd have to feel a bit sorry for poor old Tom Lynch in the National Property Services Regulatory Authority (NPSRA). This is the new body set up by the government to regulate Ireland's property industry. If you want a bit of a brush up on the authority you can see an introductory piece on our website here.

The authority hasn't even been fully legally set up yet and it's getting it in the neck from all directions. Catherine Cleary in the Sunday Business Post had a bit of a cut off it last Sunday in an article called 'Still Waiting for the Regulator' (if the link doesn't work the page may have been moved so you may have to do a search for it).

It's not enough that the authority is getting it from the print media, it's also getting a bit of a pasting in the blogosphere. Value Ireland has posted several less than complimentary pieces on the prospects of the new authority, the first of which is called 'Another Useless Irish Regulator on its Way - Lucky Us'. You'll find others if you visit IrishBlogs.ie and do a search for NPSRA.

Ok, so you would have to admit that our history in Ireland of running effective government regulatory bodies isn't exactly inspiring, but lets give it a chance to prove itself before we condemn it to the dustbin. If the authority has not been able to see through its remit after a couple of years of statutory regulation then it will deserve our wrath. But let's give it the benefit of the doubt and at least wait until it can legally regulate the industry before passing comment, positive or negative, on it.

To give credit where it is due, no other government in the world, to our knowledge, has entertained such an initiative so it is a real step into virgin territory. Perhaps it will be an unmitigated success, like the smoking ban has been.

Tom Lynch seems like an honourable, decent guy who is intent on carrying out his job in as effective a manner as possible. It is very possible that he will not get the resources or powers necessary to carry out his job properly, but then again he just might. If he does our property industry here could be one to hold up as an example to the rest of the world, so let's let him get on with his work and judge him on his achievements or lack thereof at a later stage.

If you've any interest in property, Irish or overseas, and how it is likely to be regulated in Ireland in the future then it is worth a visit to the NPSRA website.

Light at the end of the tunnel for Orient Palace investors?

For those of you not up to date with all that is going on, or more precisely, not going on, at the Orient Palace development in Bodrum on the southern Turkish coast, you should take a look at the Eye on Worldwide forum or some of the posts on Ask About Money. This will give you some idea of the problems and complaints that buyers there have had and, unfortunately, are still having.

The picture here is of the Orient Palace in Alanya, by the same developer, which was built with no great problems and is the basis on which many investors took a punt with the proposed Bodrum version.

Things have so far being going pretty badly, the developer has run out of money because stage payments were tied to delivery of Tapu's, unfortunately the local council stopped issuing them for a time, which meant that all the developer's cash ran dry. Never a good thing in a development. But there may be some light at the end of the tunnel, we just hope it is not the light from an oncoming train, as the saying goes. Although talks with an unnamed proposed German investor appear to have fallen through at this stage, it would appear that a new Turkish investor may well be on the horizon.

Obviously we don't wish to get investors in the project too excited, although this is probably a difficult task at this stage anyway because they have had so much heartbreak with the development so far. The fact that the last 'white knight' didn't materialise will make them far more wary of so called 'good news'. We are just hoping that this particular investor will be capable of seeing the project through, presuming he is signed up fully to begin with.

Unfortunately the advent of any investor is not going to rescue the rental guarantees which have been some of the problem with this project in any case. A guaranteed 10% return on investment for 10 years sounded too good to be true and, unfortunately for investors in the project, it doesn't much look like it will ever materialise.

Those invested in the development have had their sights lowered considerably. Most would now consider actually getting their property built and receipt of a Tapu (Turkish title deed) a success at this stage. This development has a staggering 66% Irish investors (over 440 units) sold by three agents in Ireland so the interest in this development is phenomenal. There will be a lot of people out there holding their breaths and hoping that the new investor will not alone come on board but will allow this project to be completed to a high standard. The development is meant to be 5* but the worry is always that a new investor, coming in with their own money and the power that brings, will want to change things.

If there is more info on this situation we'll let you know as soon as we do.

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The Dreaded Inspection Visit

Love them or hate them, you just can't avoid the fact that inspection visits (IV's) exist. A lot of people wish they didn't, but then there is nothing to force them to go on one, and some people can actually find the 'property of their dreams' while on one. Ok, so not very many people do, but there are some out there who can put their 'dream home in the sun' down to an IV.

If you want a full run down on what an IV actually consists of you should visit our advisory article on the site (link). This gives you a third party view of what an IV consists of and what you can expect if you go on one.

Let's be honest, if you really want to get to know an area and are intending spending any length of time there in the long term, the least you can do is commit to flying there for a few days (or longer preferably) yourself. With the advent of low cost carriers it isn't going to burn too much of a hole in your pocket to visit (and if it does do you really want to buy there anyway?).

As the article states, if you're going to spend a considerable amount of money in an area then use an IV sparingly, when you know the area quite well, or you could well end up being pressurised into buying something you don't really want. At best you probably won't get to see as much property by as many different developers as you would wish and usually very few, if any, resales because the commission on them is far lower than it is on 'new build' or 'off-plan' purchases.

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Spanish Lowdown

Looking for a little lowdown on what's going on in coastal Spain? We'd all love to know who are the fraudsters on the coast, which estate agents to avoid and what are the latest scams on the Costas.

Well you might just be in luck. If you visit the Spanish Shilling blog you'll get some info on various different groups and publications that unveil wrongdoings in Spain, admittedly they are mainly aimed at the Costa del Sol, as this is where most ex-pats are located, and oddly enough, it is mainly ex-pats that are responsible for much of the wrongdoing against other ex-pats along the coast. They are predominantly British but the Irish are getting in on the act and our biggest drug dealers have famously set up camp in the Torrevieja region just south of Alicante on the Costa Blanca.

Also worthy of a mention is the Costa del Sol action group magazine (which features heavily on the previous site in any case) which seeks to uncover financial scandals across the province, some of the stuff is pretty chilling. You'll find it at www.costa-action.co.uk.

Mark Stucklin's Spanish Property Insight site has long been a source of information for those looking to invest in property along the Spanish coastline. The site, at www.spanishpropertyinsight.com, also has a Spanish property forum which is pretty good at uncovering various shifty dealings going on in Spain relating to property. Unfortunately the site has been threatened with legal action on a number of occasions by various companies which have been discussed. The most famous is MacAnthony Realty International (MRI), which has somewhat diluted its effectiveness but Stucklin has a lot of knowledge of this market so it is a site to visit if you're looking at Spanish property and seeking info on what and who you should avoid.

Closer to home you'll find the Overseas Property section of Brendan Burgess' Ask About Money (AAM), at www.askaboutmoney.com has some useful discussions on the various ins and outs of property across a number of countries. Like Stucklin's forum, the AAM site has been threatened with legal action by a few companies, again most notably MacAnthony's (see a common thread popping up here anywhere?). In fact, MRI have been discussed so often and in so much detail on both sites, leading to a litany of legal threats, you'll find a sticky on both sites stating that discussion of the company is completely forbidden (with the notable exception of the complete reprinting of a less than flattering Irish Times piece on the company on AAM which is available at This Link.)

Eye on Spain is also worth a look, it has rating forums for most agents and developers you'll find along the coastline, very informative if you're considering purchasing in a particular development or from a specific agent. There is also a worldwide version at Eye on Worldwide.

www.OverseasCafe.com