Feeling the Pain As Irish Property Values Plummet

But a huge number of Irish investors who bought at the top of the market are being slammed by the global credit crisis.

A few minutes' drive from Sutton's small town center, with its gourmet sandwich shop and designer clothier selling $300 blouses, is the village of Baldoyle.

There, a massive development called the Coast, which aimed to turn an old horse-racing course into more than 2,000 housing units, stands unfinished, its construction suddenly halted.

Ciara Doyle, 35, a social worker who is pregnant with her second child, lives in a three-bedroom duplex with a view of an unfinished block of homes, covered in scaffolding and untouched by builders for a year.

Doyle said that she bought her place two years ago for $665,000 and that now the same style of house is selling for $125,000 less.

Doyle said her family feels trapped. With the new baby coming, she would like to move to a bigger place but can't afford to take the loss.

"It really hurts," Doyle said.

But not everyone is upset about the tumbling home prices.

Lynda McAssey, 36, an aircraft interior specialist, is one of those who can now afford to live in this seaside town, only 15 minutes from her job. Before it became so affordable, she had resigned herself to a 90-minute commute each way.

She just bought her two-bedroom townhouse for $525,000. Not only did she get $140,000 knocked off the price, but the developer threw in kitchen appliances.

"The crisis is a double-edged sword," McAssey said. "A lot of people are suffering, but it worked to my benefit. I am happy."

But Finn's bankruptcy and the joblessness it led to is an increasingly common story. A building contractor in the 1980s, he jumped into the booming housing market in the 1990s and became a developer.