U.S. Housing Slump Deepens
Mar 23 - Summary of business headlines: New home sales plunge to record low in the U.S.; Japan quake could be costliest natural disaster; Goldman Sachs CEO takes witness stand at insider trading trial. Conway G. Gittens reports

The Roof Falls In On Ireland's Millionaires Row
THE OBSERVER: In 2007 Shrewsbury Road in Dublin was the sixth most expensive street in the world. Now, post-crash, homes have been abandoned and the tycoon residents have run for the hills

Walford on Shrewsbury Road in Dublin, the most expensive residential street in the Irish capital, where prices have crashed by 50% or more. Photograph: The Observer
There is a padlock on the gate of Walford, the most expensive house in the priciest street in Ireland. Graffiti adorn the conservatory windows, the lawn is overgrown and old mattresses are piled up in the front room.

In a well-publicised deal at the height of Ireland's economic boom, this red-brick mansion, which sits on a one-and-a-half-acre plot, was sold for an eye-watering €56m (£48m) to a mysterious trust called Matsack Nominees, widely reported in the Irish media to be controlled by the wife of a millionaire property developer, Sean Dunne. The neighbours include telecoms tycoon Denis O'Brien, the biggest shareholder in Independent News & Media, who bought Belmont, a house a few doors down, for €35m.

Walford, which sits abandoned after a failed redevelopment application, is on Shrewsbury Road – a pleasant, tree-lined avenue in the Dublin inner suburb of Ballsbridge which, in the extraordinary gold rush that gripped Ireland, ranked as the sixth most expensive street in the world, ahead of Beverly Hills's Carolwood Drive and St Moritz's ritzy Via Suvretta. >>> Andrew Clark in Dublin | Sunday, December 05, 2010

House Prices Slump in the Hamptons as Wall Street's Wealthiest Feel the Pinch
THE TELEGRAPH: Wall Street's wealthiest are feeling the pinch as property sales in their summer beachside playground – the Hamptons – are more than 40pc below last year's levels.

What was once an area in which New York's rich just had to have a home, the Hamptons is fast becoming a place where owning a home can be a poisoned chalice, given the collapse of the local property market.

According to new data from upmarket NY estate agent Prudential Douglas Elliman (PDE), second-quarter house sales in the Hamptons – which is made up of a series of small, affluent towns on the eastern end of Long Island – are 43.3pc below the same quarter last year. The raw data show that 307 homes were sold in the three months to June this year, compared to 541 in the same period last year.

Although the second-quarter figures are an improvement on the 201 homes sold in the first three months of this year, all the other leading indicators point to a worsening market in the area. >>> James Quinn, Wall Street Correspondent | Sunday, July 26, 2009