Housing bubble starting to pop?

gurramok

I walked by 8 estate agents offices today on my journey from Phibsboro to the city centre, not a single customer inside (at 2:45pm outgoing and 4:30pm return)
Noticed a snip in paper which said that 75% of ssia's so far have been put away for savings and rest mostly to pay off debts. (http://www.unison.ie/irish_independent/stories.php3?ca=9&si=1739534&issue_id=14990)

No splurge there to rescue the housing market.

BobbyD10

gurramok wrote:

No splurge there to rescue the housing market.

Prime Time's programme last night won't help either.
Very interesting insight.

Sponge Bob

BobbyD10 wrote:

Prime Time's programme last night won't help either.
Very interesting insight.

The prime time program will really put the BUYERS off what with

• toxic mortgage brokers
• toxic builders
• toxic planners who enforce nothing
  
• toxic auctioneers

all waiting out there to 'catch' the unsuspecting buyer like a giant flytrap. On the other hand the renter has at least got the tenancy thing to complain to .

kluivert

Very sorry I missed that Prime Time show last night.

Did it inlcuded EA's from Dundalk or something.

Can someone give a quick review of what happened in the show please.

aphex™

kluivert wrote:

Very sorry I missed that Prime Time show last night.

Did it inlcuded EA's from Dundalk or something.

Can someone give a quick review of what happened in the show please.

They named a Dublin estate agent and had video footage of him talking to staff about supposedly pushing up the price of properties with non existant bids.

Rte had someone in the office who they loved to show their tricks to.

They also got info from a mortgage company so they could figure out how much a person could spend on a property and push them to that price (breach of Data Protection act). Mortgage company is 'ensuring it doesn't happen again'.

Another guy was in Dundalk (I think) and paid a deposit to estate agents but the developer hadn't signed it and the apartment never matreialised. The only way he got it was by paying more and adding 10 years to his mortgage.

At least thats what i'm after watching on rte.ie on the Prime Time site. I presume its from last night.

EDIT: They had a reconstruction of an auction with fake bidders in the room. This was talked about by a whistle-blower from the west of Ireland. He said if the buyer could afford it he'd push the price up higher than the house was worth.

BobbyD10

kluivert wrote:

Very sorry I missed that Prime Time show last night.

Did it inlcuded EA's from Dundalk or something.

It explained the case of a young man from Dundalk who had bought from the plans a 140,000 apartment i believe, in the introvening time house prices had accelerated and the development which he had bought into had increased substantially, at the time he purchased his would be dwelling he signed a contract of agreement, unfortunatly for him the developer didn't sign this contract and where not bound by it.

He then heard his apartment would cost him 35,000 more than he thought.
He was begininning to feel priced out of the market and with house prices still rising he gathered the extra money through SSIA, working extra hours and money from his parents.

It was just an example of gazzumping i think they called it.
I would say his case was one of many.

whizzbang

kluivert wrote:

Very sorry I missed that Prime Time show last night.

Did it inlcuded EA's from Dundalk or something.

Can someone give a quick review of what happened in the show please.

you can watch it here!
http://www.rte.ie/news/2006/1211/primetime.html
needs realplayer.

Reyman

kluivert wrote:

Very sorry I missed that Prime Time show last night.

Did it inlcuded EA's from Dundalk or something.

Can someone give a quick review of what happened in the show please.

They made four main points:
1. Estate agents can be in cahoots with mortgage providers to find out what your spending limit is & squeeze the maximum from you
2. Estate agents sometimes use false bidders at auctions to make prices move up
3. Estate agents will not tell you if they know there is something structurally wrong with a house they're selling
4. In a private treaty sell they will sometimes quote non-existent rival bidders to force your hand

BobbyD10

Reyman wrote:

They made four main points:
1. Estate agents can be in cahoots with mortgage providers to find out what your spending limit is & squeeze the maximum from you
2. Estate agents sometimes use false bidders at auctions to make prices move up
3. Estate agents will not tell you if they know there is something structurally wrong with a house they're selling
4. In a private treaty sell they will sometimes quote non-existent rival bidders to force your hand

All this takes place amongst one of the most important purchases people will make.
A sector which seems to be a free for all, un-regulated as regards management companies.
It did say however that everything they do is legal and that they are using that fact to their advantage.

Calina

BobbyD10 wrote:

It did say however that everything they do is legal and that they are using that fact to their advantage.

It might be more accurate to say that everything that they do is not illegal per se and they use that to their advantage.

aphex™

Breaking the Data Protection act (passing information on to 3rd party) isn't legal, for one.

I'd be amazed if there wasn't legislation governing auction rooms.

Calina

Reyman wrote:

3. Estate agents will not tell you if they know there is something structurally wrong with a house they're selling

In Denmark, I think that vendors are required to get a structural survey done and that is included in the vendor pack for any potential purchasers. The UK authorities looked into implementing this last year and in the face of overwhelming lobbying from vested interests, I think they backed down. If I remember rightly, it was suggested that if they introduced it, it would cause a property crash in the months before it was introduced. Obviously the rights of the people getting the money are more important than the rights of the people paying it out.

I don't currently own a house, but if I did and were selling it, I would have it done.

Calina

aphex&#8482 wrote:

Breaking the Data Protection act (passing information on to 3rd party) isn't legal, for one.

I'd be amazed if there wasn't legislation governing auction rooms.

I suspect that this refers to 1) not passing on bids to vendors or 2) closing out on a sale even if there is still some bidding interest and 3) phantom bidders - I mean, it might not be morally right but I bet finding the piece of legislation where it explicitly states that:

it is not permitted to inform a potential buyer of a property that another higher bid has been entered for the property by a third party when no such bid exists.

would be difficult. Sure it's a lie but it won't get them into jail.

As for not telling the vendor of a bid, I've had this comment: "I wouldn't insult the vendor by telling them of your ridiculously low bid". If I remember rightly it was a couple of grand below the ask - so I asked how it could be ridiculous in that context.

Very naive on my part.

kluivert

Am glad to see EA's are doing well for themselves.

This should be a regulated area like all other financial areas.

I was looking to buy a house very soon, but decided that to save and see where I am next year. Might just go work in Australia Amercia UK or whereever.

D'Peoples Voice

the bit on Primetime about the unfinished housing estates really pis*ed me off, because that causes social problems down the line!

It would seem that Local Authorities do not communicate. there was an example of one developer who have several unfinished housing estates in several local authority areas.
Surely there is a black list of developers to which each Local Authority has access, and each local Authority can add their own complaints about particular developers.
If a developer risks having future planning permissions turned down because of a poor history in other local authority areas, then you can be sure they would act very quickly to ensure things are down right.

How Dick Roche (head of local Authorities) and Noel Ahearn (Ireland's DEDICATED Minister for Housing) can put themselves forward for election next May having this crisis over the heads is mindboggling.
I didn't hear Noel Ahearn on the show last night, personally I think he should be sacked instantly!

kluivert

How people can vote for a government next year mind boggling. Who do they vote for.

You have FF/PD's filling their own pockets.
FG who havent got the balls to oppose them.
Lab's just sitting in there.

Housing like every other problem in this country is being brushed aside to let the people look after.

Housing in Carrickmacross is going to be greater demand supply.

There is currently a development where there is about 20 houses up and only has taken three deposits.

aphex™

Can't find any comments/apologies by the IAVI anywhere today. What a shower.

lomb

the EA acts for the vendor is paid by the vendor and not for the buyer.
therefore it follows dont believe a word they say if you are buying.
finanlly sellers are no less guilty in any of this, they are greedy and want to ring the last euro out of the value.
i dont blame estate agents at all they are just feeding off the buyers not wanting to pay more and the sellers who want more.
the property game is a dirty game thats the bottom line.

SimpleSam06

Calina wrote:

I bet finding the piece of legislation where it explicitly states that:

it is not permitted to inform a potential buyer of a property that another higher bid has been entered for the property by a third party when no such bid exists.

would be difficult. Sure it's a lie but it won't get them into jail.

Actually exactly that legislation is coming into place soon, expressly forbidding misrepresentations of price or exaggerated claims, such as we saw on Prime Time. Its legal to do so for the moment, but it won't be this time next year. I can't recall off the top of my head the name of the legislation in question, however.

Anyway just to give you an idea of the feedback the Prime Time episode is getting from people, my mother, who I would say is fairly indicative of "normal" opinions, said yes, she was shocked, but none of the big auctioneers would do it, for example, *big name auctioneer who sold her the house*.

:rolleyes:

It will take a lot more than one Prime Time program to unravel the mass of corruption in the building and housing trade. Theres so much of it, however, that it won't be hard for any investigative reporter to uncover it. I would bet you right now that every estate agent in the country is saying, hard luck lads, and going merrily on about their business the same as yesterday.

Akrasia

kluivert wrote:

Very sorry I missed that Prime Time show last night.

Did it inlcuded EA's from Dundalk or something.

Can someone give a quick review of what happened in the show please.

You can watch it on-line here http://www.rte.ie/news/2006/1211/primetime.html

It's worth a look.

A bit pathetic that they completely overlooked the elephant in the sitting room that is the property market bubble (but hey, RTE makes loads of advertising revenue from property websites and the politicos need to maintain an illusion of a viable economy till the next election)

ANY TAX PAYERS OUT THERE,

TAKE A LOOK AT THIS IN FERNS CO WEXFORD:

AND THIS

as pointed out over on the propertypin.com it should read let the tax PAYER help pay for your investment........

how do ye taxpayers feel about this?

SimpleSam06

Deleted User wrote:

as pointed out over on the propertypin.com it should read let the tax PAYER help pay for your investment........

how do ye taxpayers feel about this?

Well its not like its a shocking revelation or anything, its in bad taste maybe, a bit crass, but honestly it might have been put there just to stir up controversy. Who took the photo, or who put it there, is there a phone number on the back?

I took the photo and no its hardly a revelation but no harm to let people know what is being done with their tax money - its like prime time we all knew what estate agents were at but for it to be highlight like that always strikes a chord in people.

I didnt check the back for phone numbers - I dont think there are any numbers on it either but the development is a mile away at most in the town the signs are up entering the village of ferns on the N11 (signs on both noth and south of Ferns)

pjbrady1

It would be interesting to see the figures for total tax subsidisation and tax avoidance using property schemes. I am not saying tax evasion, but the various legal ways of avoiding tax using property schemes. Combine this with the vast sums spent on Peat/Coal/Gas powered electricity burning stations.
It would all add up to a significant sum of money capable of creating a present day scenario where our industry and residential electricity could be far cheaper based on large scale Wind/Solar and (medium-sized/micro) scale subsidised wind/solar solutions for countries energy needs.

When it is economically viable to construct a 300 million euro gas powered station in Cork (in a country with some of the dearest land/material/labour costs) then it is a sure sign the final sellers margins are effortless.

It's going to be an interesting 2007.

P.J.

D'Peoples Voice

Lads,
Not sure if you saw an animated FG Senater Brian Hayes on TV after the budget speech,
the guy was fuming whilst reading out his speech in the Senate,
He was giving out because the PDs caused property prices to stagnate since september.

Clearly he must have a lot of friends involved in investment properties.

The Tánaiste, the most unpopular party leader, is the big loser from the budget. His comments in September caused the Dublin housing market to stall.

http://debates.oireachtas.ie/DDebate.aspx?F=SEN20061207.xml&Node=H3#H3

Plissken1

D'Peoples Voice wrote:

Lads,
Not sure if you saw an animated FG Senater Brian Hayes on TV after the budget speech,
the guy was fuming whilst reading out his speech in the Senate,
He was giving out because the PDs caused property prices to stagnate since september.

Clearly he must have a lot of friends involved in investment properties.


http://debates.oireachtas.ie/DDebate.aspx?F=SEN20061207.xml&Node=H3#H3

So he is picking on the poor ole PD's, just because the over-priced property market has slowed, Just goes to show you who is really running the country ... the builder / developers. Its like the OK Corall, Cowboys on every street corner !


The developers around the midlands / west are trying to get as many properties built as possible, well not built, started, they are getting materials on tick, just to get the first level done, in order to avail of the tax schemes on offer.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/newspaper/0,,2771-2493341,00.html


oh and this:

http://www.finfacts.com/irelandbusinessnews/publish/article_10007747.shtml

worth a read:

There's 260,000 directly employed in construction and likely another 60,000 in related services. Direct workers are employed on a project by project basis. Average earnings are €40K compared with €31k in industry -but compared with other sectors, there's no worthwhile redundancy payoff to soften the blow of unemployment.

By 2016, there are likely to be 100,000 job losses in the sector.

D'Peoples Voice

I love the quote from Geoff Tucker (Economist with Hooke & McDonald) on page 6 of the property supplement of the Sunday Tribune (Sun December 10th).
He says that prices on a year-on-year figures give a better indication of house prices than month-on-month.

While there may be some element of truth in the fact that the greater the frequency of data, the greater the volatility of each observation, it also overlooks the fact that the most recent monthly observations have built in the most up to date information set.

Lets be honest, if someone asks you to give your best prediction of the growth rate for next month, would you guess that it's the average of the previous 12 months, or would you say that based on last month's growth rate of 0.6%, and assuming there is no new information released into the market, then the best guess would be 0.6%, whereas the 12 month average would be much higher.

This might explain why Geoff Tucker works in the property industry rather than the financial markets. In the financial markets we would take the 0.6% and put it in annualised terms, and then judge it. This means in the financial markets we would use a annualised figure of 7.44% to give them an idea of the growth in house prices while Geoff would look at 13%. Now which of these is the more reliable!