Property prices.......

[johnmurphy]

Indulging again darling? Remember the water.

hi juicy i was wonfering if i would bump into you

[Lucy Chambers]

hi juicy i was wonfering if i would bump into you

I like to wander in, sweetie, on a saturday night. Usually my favourites are here..x

[anitasizzle]

I think we're years away from an upturn in the property market.........put together a series of tough budgets with expenditure cuts and increases in or new forms of taxation, existing oversupply, redundancies, emigration, pay cuts, little or no bank lending, increasing ECB rates somewhere down the line, who knows what shocks to emerge in the future and a general fear of taking any financial risks and only a masochist would venture into bricks and mortar.

I like to take a biblical perspective on such matters.......which I am sure Brother Luther would appreciate. You will all recall the dream that Joseph had of seven fat cows followed by seven lean cows. Well how long did the Celtic Tiger purr for? That's how long it took us to get into the shit and with the best will in the world, it will take us at least that long to dig ourselves back out.
Violette used the example of Japan. Other than the fact they are the third largest economy in the world and we are a minnow, both countries suffer from a lack of natural resources and both are dependent to a high degree on export markets......so the comparison may be quite valid.

Factor in such items as wholesale disruption in the public service, civil unrest, political instability, defaulting on our sovereign debt repayments, a Greek style bailout by the EU, becoming an ECB and/or IMF dependency and emigration starts to look very attractive. And to rub salt into the wounds, the weather sucks. We need to think outside the box to get ourselves out of this pickle. The Queen will be here next year........we may never get a better opportunity to attract a potential buyer.

Since we're going to get biblical, isn't this whole mess a morality tale? Doesn't the Bible allude to this crisis in Genesis 10, the story about 'Nimrod and the Builders'? Everyone needs to take equal responsibility in helping fuel this disaster; consumers, why did they need to live above their means? Because of greed ,and the need to incite envy? But aren't greed and envy sins, possibly two of the deadliest sins? governments are suppose to lead their people to the Promise land , not to financial ruin; by way of 'Stamp Duties', and taxation without representation; I don't think the Irish government represented the Irish public fairly when it sold the nation's telephone company, airlines, or allowed the re-zoning of land so that property developers could built in areas that weren't fit for communities. Those builders know they were building enough houses to supply two decades worth of population growth. The Bankers didn't care because they were creating assets that could be turned into bonds that was then sold to various investors around the World, that's why Wall St. and The City kept giving them money at low interest rates.

But isn't this all a way of taking control over countries, getting rid of democracy and replacing it with totalitarianism; Wall St. doesn't want the likes of Greece and Ireland to make good on their Sovereign debts, Wall St. wants everyone to default, it's going 'short' (betting against) that you don't, that's probably why there's little or no foreign investment-you might get smart, tear down the housing surpluses, and rebuild going 'Green', thus building and manufacturing your way out of this mess, being at the forefront of innovation and 'green' technology, and so what that you Ireland doesn't have natural resources, Africa and South America have loads of natural resources, but what good has it done for them, okay Brazil's economy is kicking right now, but it isn't because of natural resources alone..

[anitasizzle]

The entire basis of the Irish economy for the past 15 years.

It was the same thing in America, but instead of 'Stamp Duties' two government ran mortgage companies' added fuel to the fire. People are mad because of the jobs that were lost as a result of the financial crisis, haven't been replaced but they don't realize those jobs were there because of a fake economy. And that's what a lot of people should be asking, 'what happened to the REAL economies?'

[luther]

People are mad because of the jobs that were lost as a result of the financial crisis, haven't been replaced but they don't realize those jobs were there because of a fake economy. And that's what a lot of people should be asking, 'what happened to the REAL economies?'

Well said Anita, but people here don't realise thay were living in a false economy here in the first place...........

[carlos marvado]

You're quite right Anita, it is a morality tale, thought I doubt that the author of Genesis 10 had the aftermath of the Celtic Tiger specifically in mind. I would'nt go so far as to blame the house purchasers, but I would hold the electorate partially to blame as they cast their votes in support of the political culture of greed. As direct taxation was reduced for many and the salaries of the public sector became ever inflated vis a vis the private sector and the public sector across Europe, it was the purchasers of houses and apartments etc. who were paying through stamp duty for all this. If people bought property when they did it was either as a result of attractive borrowing terms and/or the fear that if they did'nt buy when they did, increasing prices would lock them out of the market in the future. Fear of being left behind caused many to jump into home ownership and let's not forget that they were being pushed into it also by the banks, the economists, the developers and the government. Basically all the people who should have used sound economic, business or political sense threw caution to the wind and suckered the rest into the casino mentality.

In a recent documentary, an English financial analyst noted that whereas elsewhere one talks about the construction industry, here it was referred to as the building game.......which in quite a few cases even involved building housing estates on flood plains. Many unfortunate punters bought their homes and moved in in the summer and found themselves in the middle of a lake in the winter/spring.

As far as selling off the family silver I disagree. It should be disposed of asap. We have amongst the highest electricity tariffs in Europe and the highest paid workers in an electricity generation and supply organisation....break it up and sell it off and lets have some real competition. RTE can afford to pay their top contracted celebrity broadcasters €700,000 per annum. The Taoiseach does'nt get that, top surgeons who save lives don't get that, the most powerful political leader in the world only get's a fraction of that. The answer is simple, if RTE has that much money to throw at prima donnas, then the licence fee should be abolished so that people of modest means don't end up financially massaging those with super egos. Alternatively, privatize RTE and make it a level playing field for TV3. There's plenty of competition in the skies over Europe, so the state has no need to maintain any shareholding in what used to be the national airline. Thank God the telephone company is gone..........30 years ago when they were a state monopoly it usually took at least 6 months to get connected for a house phone....unless you were a priority case. The semi-state sector served it's purpose from the 1920s up until maybe 20 years ago.......given the lack of large indigenous or multinational concerns, it fell to the state to provide the economic infrastructure including the exploitation of the national resources which made it possible for the state to develop. Up until about 1960, the state was virtually isolationist and protected itself with high tariff barriers, which in the long run probably only held back the pace of economic development. Many semi-state organisations were suited to that era of virtually non-existent competition and it just breed poor management practices and inefficiencies, the results of which are still with us today.

The other area that needs to be tackled is the number of white elephants rampaging around the countryside. We have literally dozens of organisation, some public bodies, some NGOs, non-for-organisations etc. who are either wholly paid for by the public purse or receive state grants and basically duplicate work that should be or is already being carried out by government departments or agencies. In many cases there is little accountability or supervision of the work that these bodies conduct.....so in those cases where the work is deemed necessarily or of value, these areas of responsibility should be brought back under government departments; the remainder should either be shut down or told to operate of charitable foundations without state subvention.

Last but not least, the civil service. This is a complete misnomer. The civil service is neither civil nor does it provide much of a service to the state/public (with the exception of the front-line staff). It's contribution during the celtic tiger years was to complain that it was grossly underpaid compared to similar types of workers in the private sector. Benchmarking was the result, but it now transpires that your average public sector employee earns substantially more than your average private sector employee, plus their jobs are permanent, their pensions are secure and they don't need to worry about not being able to pay their mortgages in the future. Their only real concern is to protect what they have and to ensure that the cold economic wind which is bashing against everyone else's shutters does'nt affect them....oh yeh....and those who are still employed in wealth creating private sector jobs are supposed to finance this or the state can borrow it and we can all share out the debt repayments of keeping the public sector comfortable. It's about time that a new benchmarking exercise is conducted and public sector pay is at least matched to private sector pay or to the average of public sector pay in the UK/France/Germany/Benelux if this is lower. It makes no economic sense that people who seek employment in a sheltered, risk free, permanent environment where their pension benefits are protected, should expect to receive greater rewards to those enjoyed by people who are subject to all the risks and vagaries of the free market. If public employees want to become wealthy, they should get out and take their changes and face the risks in the free market economy.

[Cooldude]

cork county council announced that they are selling there afforable housing sceme at 105 thousand with 5 thousand to furnish there house.

this is far from the end of the housing crash it will slowly deflate. however price above is a benchmark and not a good one

my father bought his first house for 2000 pounds prices will not go this low however as prices come back to some what reasonable levels sanity will prevail and afforablity

but banks are broke so will the goverment help out struggling house holders no i think they only help white collar crimmnals so get away clean if you steal steal big and you get away with it