INSIDE AIRBNB: DUBLIN'S MOST LUCRATIVE RENTALS - More than 10 Airbnb hosts in Dublin are earning more than €100,000 a year - and the landlords' combined income may be considerably higher if they let multiple properties through the service, as Airbnb increasingly moves into the realm of the professional property business.
According to AirDNA, a US-based company that analyses the global Airbnb market, Dublin's biggest earner is a six-bed apartment in the south city centre that generates €163,495 a year, says the Irish Times. Its average daily rate is €651, which implies occupancy at the average rate for 251 nights of the year. Another big earner is a seven-bedroom property in Drumcondra, on the northside, which brings in more than €150,000 a year, with an average daily rate of €653. A three-bed city-centre apartment is generating €135,583 a year, and a two-bed in Temple Bar is producing €131,164. The figures, which reveal earnings rather than profits, are based on the number of bookings by the daily rate and shows how much more money can be made through the short-term market rather than through the long-term rental market - a property rented at a substantial €5,000 a month will still generate only €60,000 a year. Last week AirDNA revealed that a landlord in London made almost £12 million in one year through Airbnb, renting out 881 properties - the most made in revenue by any owner in the world in the past 12 months.
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VINYL REVIVAL DRIVES EXPANSION AT GOLDEN DISCS - Golden Discs is opening three new stores across Ireland.
After opening a permanent store on the main street in Wexford on Saturday, the record store chain will open another in the Square shopping centre in Tallaght this Saturday. It will also open a new store on Dublin's Henry Street, initially for the Christmas period, with a decision on whether to keep it open full-time to be made in January. The three stores will bring the total number of Golden Discs specialist stores to 16 nationwide, and comes on the back of its recently launched online shop, writes the Irish Independent. Golden Discs CEO Stephen Fitzgerald, said that the website was "growing exponentially, far exceeding the company's expectations". The three stores will create an additional 50 part and full-time jobs, adding to their staff of more than 100. Along with the 16 stand-alone stores, Golden Discs has concession stores in 80 Tesco stores across the country.
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HOME RENOVATION PLAN 'SUPPORTED 30,000 JOBS’ - A home renovation scheme described as a "boon for the construction industry" should serve as inspiration for the Government to introduce a bigger stimulus to generate house building, an industry leader has said.
Construction Industry Federation (CIF) southern regional director Conor O’Connell said the Home Renovation Incentive scheme had achieved what it set out to do since 2013, and its success could be replicated in a national house-building incentive project. The Home Renovation Incentive scheme was introduced in 2013 as a measure to assist homeowners and contractors after the during the fallout from the economic crash to upgrade their homes, says the Irish Examiner. The scheme enables homeowners or landlords to claim tax relief on repairs, renovations, or improvement work such as a new fitted kitchen, which is carried out on their main home or rental property by tax-compliant contractors and subject to 13.5% Vat. It has cost the exchequer some €46.25m up to the end of 2016. More than 9,000 tradespeople have undertaken work on 52,000 properties across the country, with an average of almost €16,000 spent on each job, according to Revenue statistics.
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CENTRAL BANKS SHOULD EMBRACE DIGITAL CURRENCIES, AXEL WEBER SAYS - Central banks should be more open to creating digital versions of their currencies, which could offer significant benefits to society, the chairman of Swiss bank UBS says.
Axel Weber is a past president of Germany’s conservative Bundesbank - and was once tipped as a future head of the European Central Bank. As UBS chairman, he is helping to drive a revolution in how banks, companies and individuals conduct financial transactions. In an interview with the Financial Times, he now worries his former public sector colleagues may be left behind. "Whilst the official sector very often looks at the risks of these new means of payment, the private sector tends to look at the opportunities they offer," he says. Mr Weber’s comments come amid uncertainty among central bankers over how they should react to the rise of digital and cryptocurrencies and how they operate beyond official financial systems - he carefully distinguishes the latter as using encryption to mask transactions. The chairman argues the issue is not the volatility of bitcoin prices - the currency is "simply too insignificant to matter" from a financial stability perspective.
