Housing Bubble Bursting

Do-more

joemc99 wrote:

Ireland is in a great shape at the moment, no need to panic yet, possible in a couple of years though!

Jaysus, wake up and smell the roses! (that shouldn't be a problem tomorrow morning!)

Haven't you been listening to the news lately, Ireland is hemmoraging manufacturing jobs at the moment or maybe you figure it doesn't count when they are outside Dublin. They are decent well paid jobs too not minimum wage. But it's nothing yet till you see the number of unemployed builders there will be by next Winter.

Around the Midlands here, new house sales are well down, but the developers are still piling on, in the hope that they can finish and sell what they are financially committed to before the $hit really hits the fan. I expect the number of new starts to be well down by the Autumn. And at least another 50,000 people out of work by Christmas.

By the middle of next year major panic will have set in.

Iristxo, I'm in a similar quandry, but with a different motivation. As I see it after a crash the amount of house sales activity will drop considerably and so even if you are prepared to take a much reduced price for your home you may still have considerable difficulty in selling. So even if you want to up sticks and head for Germany or wherever, it may not be possible. The only people who this won't effect are those in rock solid secure employment who don't have to relocate around the country.

I'm looking at selling up and moving to Germany or Luxembourg if I can make my mind up to do so. (if I'm not too late.)

babytooth

"its only when the tide goes out, do you see who's swiming in the nip..."


my god, some ppl are unbelievable naive...for ex joemc...

one gets sick of asking them why things will keep getting better?

Someone said we are growing at 5%, our economy. What exactly is growing, nominal wages,...yess..GDP, falling, GNP, even more importantly is falling.
I can throw stats at ya all day long....stats don't mean a huge lot here.

The two main things at play in Ireland is the availability of cheap credit and sentiment...nothing more, there is no underlying market data, no demographics, no immigration policies or infrastructure....
Nothing more, nothing less.

Now, the bullish septics out there, look to point one, the availability of credit, namely cheap credit.

Rates has doubled, the cost of money is still negative but this is changing. ppl are finding it hard to pay mortgages in Ireland and the us, especially in the us where prime rates are still quite cheap at 6.5%...a not unheard of real number..
In Ireland we are moving to 3.75% in March and another in May.

We are still quite far behind both the US and the UK....this will change.

But even of more concern than ecb rates is the interbank rates are rising, the credit spread is widening, which means that the large banks and institutional investors are starting to get very worried, if you don't believe this, then look at HSBC, one of the largest banks in the world...look at what Citigroup have done last week with regard to sub-prime mortgage lenders in the US. Things are getting tighter in the money markets, money is going to cost more whether or not central banks raise rates or not.

And what most worrying is that the big banks are putting the squeeze on these lending banks (like AIB & BOI and Anglo), forcing down the price of their securitised bonds....
....anyone notice that now commercial property can be now wrapped...why, to lower risk profile and prop up international prices....

To summise this point; even if you can afford the loan at the higher rates, the banks are losing their appetite for lending, you have two elements going against ya, implying less money which in turn means even less people have access to the same amount as before....


To look at the second point, open your eyes and years and see whats going on in the western world.....
America is in bits, you can't sell houses even at big discounts and extras thrown in. Ireland has lost growth. Spain, you can't sell property over there...


now, anyone of you can argue that I'm talking ****e, you can throw your 5% growth rates at me along with your other info, but you can't argue about how dependent Ireland's economy is on

- Stamp Duty, just look at how much we raised last year from it..it wont be hear next year to pay public service wages and National Development Plan costs.
- Cheap credit, money is costing more and is going up more
- International companies are under pressure to trim fat, Whig means reducing jobs, and we do have a large number of international companies.
- Employment figures from property indicate a larger percentage than normal for countries is employed in construction...eggs...basket...
- Costs of living are rising everywhere, food prices are to soar, oil is currently low but will climb up again....do you know we are the second most dependent oil importer in the world...will push costs even higher...
- Business costs are rising in compassion to competitors.
- Infrastructure deficits are creating a major lag on economy.

AND Personally, what i think will very soon become a major factor, is quality of life...we, as a people, are now used to a certain standard of living, we travel far more frequently and widely so we get to see what other countries are like. So being well educated and trained and having experience working in large multinationals, I can decide to pay half a million dollars for a small 3 bed semi d 40 miles and 2 hours drive from work, or I can pay 400k aud or 300usd for a large, individual private house, close to where i work, in a country with a functioning transport system, a health system, accountable public servants, cheaper living costs, healthier way of life....

i better stop typing...the pros vs the cons is quiet scary. we have a great little country but we are abusing it so much, younger generations will eventually say enough is enough, we are driving a huge wedge between the middle aged "haves" and the young "have-nots"....will i pay for their nice big defined benefit pensions in twenty years time whilst my own is tiny in comparison to living expenses and my mortgage payments and childcare costs cripple me and suck the marrow from my bones......

excuse the spellings but appreciate the concern.

Gurgle

babytooth wrote:

- Stamp Duty, just look at how much we raised last year from it..it wont be hear next year to pay public service wages and National Development Plan costs.
- Cheap credit, money is costing more and is going up more
- International companies are under pressure to trim fat, Whig means reducing jobs, and we do have a large number of international companies.
- Employment figures from property indicate a larger percentage than normal for countries is employed in construction...eggs...basket...
- Costs of living are rising everywhere, food prices are to soar, oil is currently low but will climb up again....do you know we are the second most dependent oil importer in the world...will push costs even higher...
- Business costs are rising in compassion to competitors.
- Infrastructure deficits are creating a major lag on economy.

Not arguing with any of your points, just looking at them from a different perspective:

- Stamp duty: Can and will be abolished/reduced/remodelled at the first sign that a crash is really imminent. There are too many big money people owed favours by the political parties not to do it.
- Cheap credit: The ECB rate will be stabilised probably at around 4%. Europe isn't the US, its a socialist system not capitialist. I doubt we would ever see an ECB rate above 6% even in a major recession.
- International companies: Have always been under pressure to be competitive. The more high tech a manufacturing concern is, the less the pay costs at the bottom end of the economy matters. We're losing jobs in the lower skilled end, but pay rates for higher skilled workers do not vary enormously world-wide.
- Employment in property: (I assume you include construction) is high. As the construction boom slows down, we will see a lot of the immigrants here moving on to the next country having a construction boom, and a lot of Irish going with them. Thats how its always been.
- Cost of living, food & oil prices etc: We pay over the odds for food & clothes. In an economic slowdown the companies involved can easily cut their margins and still operate profitably. It comes down to competition, at the moment theres enough pie to give them all a great big slice but when they have to they will fight over it.
- Business costs: Rising maybe, still quite low though with low corporation tax etc. Biggest threat here is other countries lowering their corporation tax to follow the Irish model.
- Infrastructure deficits: Not quite sure what you're aiming at here.

Anyhow, I think the country can handle an economic slowdown without any major ill-effects. A worldwide crash would obviously be bad, but theres little you can do to plan for that except try to keep personal debt to a minimum, maybe even keep some rainy-day money in the bank.

Calina

Gurgle wrote:

Not arguing with any of your points, just looking at them from a different perspective:

- Stamp duty: Can and will be abolished/reduced/remodelled at the first sign that a crash is really imminent. There are too many big money people owed favours by the political parties not to do it.
- Cheap credit: The ECB rate will be stabilised probably at around 4%. Europe isn't the US, its a socialist system not capitialist. I doubt we would ever see an ECB rate above 6% even in a major recession.
- International companies: Have always been under pressure to be competitive. The more high tech a manufacturing concern is, the less the pay costs at the bottom end of the economy matters. We're losing jobs in the lower skilled end, but pay rates for higher skilled workers do not vary enormously world-wide.
- Employment in property: (I assume you include construction) is high. As the construction boom slows down, we will see a lot of the immigrants here moving on to the next country having a construction boom, and a lot of Irish going with them. Thats how its always been.
- Cost of living, food & oil prices etc: We pay over the odds for food & clothes. In an economic slowdown the companies involved can easily cut their margins and still operate profitably. It comes down to competition, at the moment theres enough pie to give them all a great big slice but when they have to they will fight over it.
- Business costs: Rising maybe, still quite low though with low corporation tax etc. Biggest threat here is other countries lowering their corporation tax to follow the Irish model.
- Infrastructure deficits: Not quite sure what you're aiming at here.

Anyhow, I think the country can handle an economic slowdown without any major ill-effects. A worldwide crash would obviously be bad, but theres little you can do to plan for that except try to keep personal debt to a minimum, maybe even keep some rainy-day money in the bank.

I'm very busy but:

the problem with stamp duty is that the Government is heavily dependent on it for income. As it wipes out, the government gets less money to spend on worthy projects like the health service, public transport and old age pensions.

No one can say for sure that the ECB rate will be stabilised at around 4%. Most of the comments I've heard on that are from property vested interests. I think it is entirely possible that it will stablise at around 5% but who knows? The US economy is in deep deep trouble and if and when it implodes there is no knowing what is going to happen the rest of the world's economy. They are serious consumers, after all.

We are seriously losing jobs at the mid income level, not the low level. Low level waged jobs are okay for the moment. It is not, however, good to lose jobs in export sectors and tough, we are losing them hand over fist at the moment. The knock on is not just to jobs, it is to exports as well. For consistent economic growth, that is bad. The only export sector showing any growth at the moment is potentially financial services, but I don't know, given the massive growth in the credit sector here, possibly job creation is very internalised there too.

Other countries are lowering their corporate rates or didn't you notice?

As for slowdown in employment in constructionn - given that roughly 20% of our growth is attributed to construction, has it occurred to you that a slow down in construction will contribute to major economic issues here, with knock on impacts on retail sales, services requirements, on which our economic growth is also heavily dependent. oh, and on property prices both sales and rental....And what if people don't go on to the next construction boom? - sure I know it's only over in London, for the Olympics - but people don't always do what you want them to do, particularly if they have families - then they will be drawing unemployment benefits here which have to be paid for out of a pot of money which is seriously dependent on ever disappearing stamp duty.

This country doesn't do reality, by the looks of things. It didn't do reality when the property market got hugely out of whack with economic and demographic fundamentals, and it's not willing to face reality now that prices are levelling off and falling in some cases. For an example, Holywell/Abbeystone Swords has seen one beds down 15K (brand new) and some two beds down 2K over the prices they were looking for in May last year. I'm not talking falling asking prices on second hand properties here - I'm talking falling prices on brand new properties.

babytooth

Gurgle wrote:

Not arguing with any of your points, just looking at them from a different perspective:

- Cheap credit: The ECB rate will be stabilised probably at around 4%. Europe isn't the US, its a socialist system not capitialist. I doubt we would ever see an ECB rate above 6% even in a major recession.
.

It's not the ECB that loan us money for mortages, i personally think that this is a major wrong assumption....if the appetite for risk decreases, which it is, then the amount of ccash a bank can lend tightens...plain and simple...
bad debts rise, and then in turn the provision for bad debts rise, ACS markets squeeze, even less oney again,....its all a spiral....bear that in mind when looking at the ecb...all this rate is is an absolute floor..nothing more or less.

joemc99

Thanks Gurgle, that was what I was trying to say.

The two main things at play in Ireland is the availability of cheap credit and sentiment...nothing more, there is no underlying market data, no demographics, no immigration policies or infrastructure....
Nothing more, nothing less.

What about the job/money. You could not get a job in Ireland in 1990, I mean, NO JOBS. Everyone is better off here now, no matter how you look at it. New grads in my work buying 25k cars, nuts!

my god, some ppl are unbelievable naive...for ex joemc...

I did say for a couple of years more, not forever. Bottom line is we are still creating great jobs here. A couple of bad headlines (last week) and everyone is in a panic! Look at the big picture. If there was a MAJOR global meltdown, it would still take years for ALL the mulitnationals to pull out.

Are we still debating whether house prices have fallen? So you think asking prices have fallen (as reported by Daft), but 100% of those people are still managing to seal the deal equal or above their asking price.

I'm confused here pjbrady1, I thought you were encourging people to sell now and buy at the bottom....when above you are saying house prices are rising.

BTW, I am not in praise of the current situation, I would love to get out of Ireland and all this rubbish.

Anyway, gotta go, enough already. All I wanted to say was that I think you would be mad to sell now, buy later a the 'bottom'.....big risk. Cheers, and good luck to you all.

Zambia

Can we rename this thread ..Is Ireland Buggered??

That said I remember in 1992 being unable to get a job in a spar shop ...any shop for that matter.

miju

Gurgle wrote:

Not arguing with any of your points, just looking at them from a different perspective:

- Stamp duty: Can and will be abolished/reduced/remodelled at the first sign that a crash is really imminent. There are too many big money people owed favours by the political parties not to do it.

government is addicted to the income this brings in and theres zero chance of it being abolished / remodelled drastcially enough to counteract the effects of a major slowdown , besides which remember what the VI's trotted out as an excuse late last year about the slowdown and the expected stamp duty change , any such change again would cause the same thing to happen (if we're to believe the VI's in the first place that is)

Gurgle wrote:

- Cheap credit: The ECB rate will be stabilised probably at around 4%. Europe isn't the US, its a socialist system not capitialist. I doubt we would ever see an ECB rate above 6% even in a major recession.

interesting about US , members of the ECB have gone on record as saying ECB rates are in deficit compared to the US and they will be moving to rectify this. Also , between 5-6% is considered normalised interest rate and don't forget in 2001 interest rates were at 6% (possibly a bit above that)
- International companies: Have always been under pressure to be competitive. The more high tech a manufacturing concern is, the less the pay costs at the bottom end of the economy matters. We're losing jobs in the lower skilled end, but pay rates for higher skilled workers do not vary enormously world-wide.

Gurgle wrote:

- Employment in property: (I assume you include construction) is high. As the construction boom slows down, we will see a lot of the immigrants here moving on to the next country having a construction boom, and a lot of Irish going with them. Thats how its always been.

exactly thats how it's always been ,which lends plenty of credence to the argument that renting invensotry stock will rise drastically , causing yields to drop and more property to eventually flood the market more so that now

Gurgle wrote:

- Cost of living, food & oil prices etc: We pay over the odds for food & clothes. In an economic slowdown the companies involved can easily cut their margins and still operate profitably. It comes down to competition, at the moment theres enough pie to give them all a great big slice but when they have to they will fight over it.

correct and other economies are very quickly gobbling up our piece of the pie

Gurgle wrote:

- Business costs: Rising maybe, still quite low though with low corporation tax etc. Biggest threat here is other countries lowering their corporation tax to follow the Irish model.

................

- Infrastructure deficits: Not quite sure what you're aiming at here.

poor infrastructure adds to business costs and we're not just talking roads we're talking technology infrastructure as well. an as other econmies are adopting the "irish approach" when we're compaerd we have low taxes / high labour costs versus another economy with low taxes / low labour costs ....... 9 times outta 10 we'll lose out

Gurgle wrote:

Anyhow, I think the country can handle an economic slowdown without any major ill-effects. A worldwide crash would obviously be bad, but theres little you can do to plan for that except try to keep personal debt to a minimum, maybe even keep some rainy-day money in the bank.

I'm luckily now in the same boat as yourself in that I'll not be affected by any slowdowns. however, in any kind of slowdown others also adopt the poilcy of "minimising their risks" by clearing loans etc which in turn leads to reduction in money sloshing around economy even more ...... it's all a viscious cycle really

conor_mc

Gurgle wrote:

- Cheap credit: The ECB rate will be stabilised probably at around 4%. Europe isn't the US, its a socialist system not capitialist. I doubt we would ever see an ECB rate above 6% even in a major recession.

Got to take issue with this. The ECB is apolitical - it doesn't matter whether Europe is socialist or not.

What does matter is that Germany is the biggest economy in the Eurozone and it sets the trend. Historically, Bundesbank rates have normalised at 6% or so.

The US live in fear of deflation and another Great Depression, hence they're inclined towards low interest rates to stave off any hint of deflation.

Germany's experience of hyperinflation in the last century means that the ECB are predisposed to ramping up rates at the merest hint of inflationary pressure.

In short, the Fed leans towards low rates, the ECB towards high rates.

Raskolnikov

This talk of people selling up and re-entering the market after a crash sounds like lunacy to me!

For example, you bought your house at €200,000 a couple of years back, it's now worth €500,000. You sell up, auctioneer takes his 1.5% (€7,500) and you pay revenue the 20% (€58,500) capital gains tax. Let's say you then decide to rent for two years to see how the market pans out, we'll say you rent for €1,500 for those two years (€36,000). Let's say that we get a fall of 20% on the price of your old home (this is generous given current sentiment). So you make an offer of €400,000 at the current market price. Factor in solictor fees at 1% (€4,000) and Stamp Duty at 7.5% (€30,000) so you hand over the €434,000, taking out a mortgage of €234,000 to top up the €200,000 or so of the gain you made form selling the house original.

Lots of hassle and you end up increasing the size of your mortgage.

aphex™

No CGT on the primary home Raskolnikov

Raskolnikov

aphex&#8482 wrote:

No CGT on the primary home Raskolnikov

You're dead right, my mistake. Still, you'd want to be fairly sure of a sizeable market crash to come out on top.

ronbyrne2005

Raskolnikov wrote:

This talk of people selling up and re-entering the market after a crash sounds like lunacy to me!

For example, you bought your house at €200,000 a couple of years back, it's now worth €500,000. You sell up, auctioneer takes his 1.5% (€7,500) and you pay revenue the 20% (€58,500) capital gains tax. Let's say you then decide to rent for two years to see how the market pans out, we'll say you rent for €1,500 for those two years (€36,000). Let's say that we get a fall of 20% on the price of your old home (this is generous given current sentiment). So you make an offer of €400,000 at the current market price. Factor in solictor fees at 1% (€4,000) and Stamp Duty at 7.5% (€30,000) so you hand over the €434,000, taking out a mortgage of €234,000 to top up the €200,000 or so of the gain you made form selling the house original.

Lots of hassle and you end up increasing the size of your mortgage.

People would only do it if they beleived they would make significant gains. I think prices can fall by a lot more than 20% over next decade. Sure if prices stay flat for next 4 years and with inflation running at 5% houses would drop by nearly 20% in real terms over those 4 years. No stamp duty on many new build properties and no CGT on PPR as someone else stated. The lump sum one gets when selling up can be placed in bank or invested. Anyone considering selling and renting obviously has to crunch the numbers but if they felt prices will drop by at least enough to make significant gain then why not take a risk, prices can't go much if any higher in real terms from levels they are at now and with massive supply of new properties coming to the market every year theres only one way this market can go.

joemc99

I said I was finished with this, but I have one more crazy thought....

Lets say there is another world-wide boom between now and 2012, similiar to the boom of 1999 -> 2001. New tech (fibre to homes, etc), new pharma, etc. BIG international investesment, salaries increase 100%.....what do you think will happen to house prices then. I defo dont think it will happen, but there is a small chance it will happen. Think about it, what do you think will happen to house prices then? Dont say its impossible either.

Afuera

Raskolnikov wrote:

you'd want to be fairly sure of a sizeable market crash to come out on top.

I'm not too sure all those considering selling up to rent are doing so purely for profit. There are a lot of people who bought property only to get on the ladder and it may never have been ideal for their circumstances in the first place. They are now facing the distinct possibilty of being stuck in that property for a long time unless they cash in their chips now. While they might not be in a position to trade up to what they want now, they would be able to lock in equity gained so far and save a fortune by renting cheaply if they took the sell-to-rent route.

conor_mc

Raskolnikov wrote:

This talk of people selling up and re-entering the market after a crash sounds like lunacy to me!

For example, you bought your house at €200,000 a couple of years back, it's now worth €500,000. You sell up, auctioneer takes his 1.5% (€7,500) and you pay revenue the 20% (€58,500) capital gains tax. Let's say you then decide to rent for two years to see how the market pans out, we'll say you rent for €1,500 for those two years (€36,000).

Aside from the CGT that others have mentioned, you'd have to discount the rent paid against interest you would be paying if you kept your original mortgage. In that case, say you're paying 750 a month on interest, your cost of renting is only €18k, not 36.

And as someone else mentioned, you could also subtract interest earned on 270k cash in the bank from the overall cost.

As I said before, it'd be lunacy to do this if you just wanted to buy your old house back, but with a smaller mortgage. But if your intention is to trade up or move to a more suitable location anyway, it's worth taking the time out from the market to see how things pan out.

miju

joemc99 wrote:

Dont say its impossible either.

indeed it is very possible though highly unlikely. you only have to look at todays news that BT Ireland has lost over €1 billion in the Irish market and will be now conducting a massive review of its

BT management wrote:

overstaffed company

to see the indicators for what is more realisticly down the road for Ireland

Iristxo

Afuera is right. And Raskolnikov, you forget the interest generated by the capital gains deposited in the bank while you're renting. In my case, the interest of that capital gain pays the rent for the 2 years generously.

jobless

ronbyrne2005 wrote:

People would only do it if they beleived they would make significant gains. I think prices can fall by a lot more than 20% over next decade. Sure if prices stay flat for next 4 years and with inflation running at 5% houses would drop by nearly 20% in real terms over those 4 years. No stamp duty on many new build properties and no CGT on PPR as someone else stated. The lump sum one gets when selling up can be placed in bank or invested. Anyone considering selling and renting obviously has to crunch the numbers but if they felt prices will drop by at least enough to make significant gain then why not take a risk, prices can't go much if any higher in real terms from levels they are at now and with massive supply of new properties coming to the market every year theres only one way this market can go.

can someone explain to me in lay mans terms how inflation affects a houses price in real terms if the price remains flat for a few years?....

conor_mc

jobless wrote:

can someone explain to me in lay mans terms how inflation affects a houses price in real terms if the price remains flat for a few years?....

It's not inflation per se that makes the difference, it's wage inflation.

Put simply, assume house A costs €400,000 today and still costs €400k in 5 years. If wage growth is say 3% per annum, then the average wage goes from 30k to €34,700 so you can now buy more house with the same money, if you want to look at it that way, or alternatively you can now stretch to buy a (400/30) * 34.7 = €460k house (all other things being equal).

joemc99

He multiplied 5% * 4 years (= 20%).....totally wrong, forgot to compound (~11%). Anyway, they would not loose value, just not keep up, difference ya know. Also, still make a hugh loss if you sell and try to buy back using the 'flat for 5 years calculation'.

aggh, enough already. Lets resurrect this post in 5 years.

ronbyrne2005

conor_mc wrote:

It's not inflation per se that makes the difference, it's wage inflation.

Put simply, assume house A costs €400,000 today and still costs €400k in 5 years. If wage growth is say 3% per annum, then the average wage goes from 30k to €34,700 so you can now buy more house with the same money, if you want to look at it that way, or alternatively you can now stretch to buy a (400/30) * 34.7 = €460k house (all other things being equal).

No its general inflation. If your house is worth 400k today and stays at 400k in 4 years with general inflation at 5% then the 400k is same in nominal euro amount but in 2007 euros(todays money) its only around 330k. Wage inflation is irrelevant to the time value of money.

joemc99 wrote:

He multiplied 5% * 4 years (= 20%).....totally wrong, forgot to compound (~11%). Anyway, they would not loose value, just not keep up, difference ya know. Also, still make a hugh loss if you sell and try to buy back using the 'flat for 5 years calculation'.

aggh, enough already. Lets resurrect this post in 5 years.

Eh no, its around 17.7% .
1/(1.05)^4

conor_mc

ronbyrne2005 wrote:

No its general inflation. If your house is worth 400k today and stays at 400k in 4 years with general inflation at 5% then the 400k is same in nominal euro amount but in 2007 euros(todays money) its only around 330k. Wage inflation is irrelevant to the time value of money.

Yeah, I'm with you on the economic theory but if wages don't increase then house price stagnation is irrelevant to the common man - this year is the same as year 5 in respect of both what the house costs and what he has available to pay for it with.

pjbrady1

Joemc99, what I was trying to put across was that if asking prices are falling, which has already been reported by Daft.ie. Then logically, in a market with rising supply, most sellers are only managing to sell for their asking price, or under their asking price.
Even if someone sells above their asking price, in a buyers market it would only be a small % above the asking price.
Overall its a pretty conservative assumption that house prices have and are falling.
As regards a major expansion of world economy aka 1998-2007.
Alot of those large multinationals intel, microsoft, big pharma are in the phase of trying to milk profit out of their large array of global products.
These companies no longer require the huge workforces they had when they were heavily into development and R&D.
They are finding it harder to grow sales by 20%+ year on year, (just an example figure) so what they do is rationalise and cut back on labour.
For example Wallsteet analysts were negatively pointing out Microsofts relatively small sales growth in last five years, but if they looked at their net profit margins they were an effortless 20%+. (Think it was 28%).
Similarly Intel, who were taking in a similar 20% profit margin (if my memeory is correct, check yahoo.co.uk for more accurate answer) without trying too hard to control their cost base. They had something like 100,000 workers.

Do-more

I only heard the news headlines at lunch time, but there was some mention of Dick Roache saying the country would need 600,000 more houses over the next 9 years!

The government is certainly doing it's part in trying to talk up the market and keep everything on an even keel till the election.

I'd love to know what set of stats were used to come up with those figures, did anyone get any more details?

I have searched the RTE and daily newspaper sites but can't find anything on it, I think it was related to a launch of 500 affordable homes in Dublin.

miju

that figure is completely laughable , in otherwords , pretty much full steam ahead lads to try and keep the bubble going as long as possible

gearoidmm

Do-more wrote:

I only heard the news headlines at lunch time, but there was some mention of Dick Roache saying the country would need 600,000 more houses over the next 9 years!

The government is certainly doing it's part in trying to talk up the market and keep everything on an even keel till the election.

I'd love to know what set of stats were used to come up with those figures, did anyone get any more details?

I have searched the RTE and daily newspaper sites but can't find anything on it, I think it was related to a launch of 500 affordable homes in Dublin.

That's not entirely unreasonable if the population continues to grow anything like it is at the moment - that's only 65,000 per year which is 30% less houses than we are building at the moment. That in itself would constitute a large reduction in house building

Do-more

gearoidmm wrote:

That's not entirely unreasonable if the population continues to grow anything like it is at the moment - that's only 65,000 per year which is 30% less houses than we are building at the moment. That in itself would constitute a large reduction in house building

There is nothing however to suggest that our population will continue to grow.

Even if we take it as fact that we will need 65,000 new homes a year that means that up to one third of present builders will be unemployed. We are not creating jobs at any significant rate in any other sectors, quite the opposite infact. So that means we cannot employ the current population nevermind an increased one!

The fact is we are likely to see a net outflow of population over the coming years, with for example many unemployed builders relocating to London to build the infrastructure for the 2012 Olympic Games.

Where do you see the increasing population being employed? Centra or the Public sector?

Tea drinker

Andrews Lane Theatre sold to property developers... absolutely rotten.
I know the place needed renovation, but it might be another example of cashing in while the going is perceived to be good.
I have noticed it's getting harder and harder to even get petrol around town, what with shell pocketing from it's pullout of the market.
70 mill for the little area in Donnybrook with the shell station, tyre place, car wash etc. Everyone seems to be trying to sell now.... but it still seems the land is getting the good prices. Obviously not a glut of the finished product on the market yet.

Sponge Bob

Do-more wrote:

I only heard the news headlines at lunch time, but there was some mention of Dick Roache saying the country would need 600,000 more houses over the next 9 years!

The average Irish household size is 2.8 persons , we have 1.5m used houses (out of 1.8m existing houses) for 4.2m people. Dick Roche proposes we will increase our housing stock by 33% in 9 years .

600,000 extra houses implies a population increase of 600*2.8 or 1.68 million persons in 9 years which is almost 200,000 a year.

Roche is either being delusional or else (possibly) has access to post census data indicating that the population growth is indeed of that order , almost 200,000 a year . And of course they are all coming to build houses Dick , eh !!!

If we are not getting 200,000 a year then Roche is lying and knows it. Lets see if any journo can add two and two.