DUBLIN, Jan. 17 (Xinhua) -- Ireland's National Asset Management Agency (NAMA), the country's so-called "bad bank", said on Friday that the property crash in Ireland has come to an end.
Ireland's state broadcaster RTE quoted NAMA Chairman Frank Daly as saying that property prices have begun to move off the bottom and that the property market has moved into a different phase.
At a briefing in south Ireland's Cork city, Daly said the recovery was not homogeneous, but was occurring more quickly in Ireland's capital Dublin and in particular parts of Dublin.
He expected the recovery will spread to places such as Cork and then to other parts of the country, believing that the change was occurring in both the residential and commercial property sectors.
Daly also said signs of recovery were evident in increased interest in NAMA properties, as well as in increased investor interest in Ireland.
NAMA was created in 2009 to purge Irish banks of some 74 billion euros (100 billion U.S. dollars) of risky property-related loans.
People buying houses now have confidence that they are not going to move into negative equity on the day they buy their properties, he said.
Daly expected a strong demand for prime properties, saying that part of NAMA's job will be to work to make prime properties available to the market as they are required.
He believed there will be steady but not spectacular growth in the residential property market, and said that NAMA itself will be funding the construction of up to 4,000 houses over the next couple of years.
Daly said NAMA will soon begin to sell more property.
Last month, Ireland wrapped up the bailout in a landmark for the euro zone's efforts to resolve its debt crisis. It becomes the first bailed-out country in the eurozone to officially exit its international financial rescue program.
Ireland was forced to turn to the EU and the IMF for the 85-billion-euro bailout in late 2010 after its banks collapsed and its property market bubble burst.
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