Housing bubble starting to pop?

miju · 13-10-2006 07:29PM

gamer wrote:

.....I dont think they are gonna get cheaper in 3 years time......

you know gamer your 100% correct they won't get cheaper in 3 years time.....why???????

because they are becoming cheaper TODAY

Cantab. · 13-10-2006 07:44PM

gamer wrote:

if house in good areas are going up 15percent,EVERY YEAR, thats a reason to buy,cos at some point they will be out of your reach in regards to having any chance of getting mortgage,unless u are happy to rent for the next 50 years.I dont think they are gonna get cheaper in 3 years time.there is not enuff serviced land in dublin to build 3bed houses on ,to meet demand.

Well if houses in good areas are going up 15% ever year, and rents are staying the same, then the argument for buying over renting falls apart the longer this goes on.

For example. I live in a house in D6: my rent payments are 25% of an equivalent mortgage repayment. For me to buy a crap house in commuter-ville, I would have to increase what I pay in rent in D6 by 50%. It just doesn't make any logical sense!!! The benefits of ownership (i.e. inherent Irish inferiority complex) just aren't worth this kind of money.

[side note: I had the misfortune of having to travel to "Blanchardstown Town Center" last weekend. There was a sign on one of the housing developments at the side of some roundabout saying "if you lived here you'd be home by now" (I think it was called the pheonix racecourse or something) - I nearly crashed the car with laughter!]

Contrarian · 13-10-2006 10:24PM

Heres another ridiculous graph for ye. Housing as a % of GDP is reaching absurd levels.

mad m · 14-10-2006 01:34AM

Seen one house not to far from me drop its asking by €40K...So from €635k to €595k and its not been up long.

Gurgle · 14-10-2006 06:21PM

SimpleSam06 wrote:

If you had €10,000 in 1970, you could buy a lot more with it than if you had €100,000 in 2006. That is inflation. Real value. Still with me?

Did you actually read any of my posts or just click 'quote' where you saw a point of view different to your own?

SimpleSam06 wrote:

Bwahaaaaaahahhaha!! Oh dear oh dear... Are you one of those "property never falls" people?

Nope. Thats stupid.

SimpleSam06 wrote:

Japan called, it wants its prices from 15 years ago back...

It has requested its economy back too.

mad m wrote:

Seen one house not to far from me drop its asking by €40K...So from €635k to €595k and its not been up long.

Oh well that just proves it then :rolleyes:

I saw a car in the buy and sell that was €500 cheaper than it was advertised 2 weeks before - OMG THE PRICE OF SECOND HAND CARS IS ABOUT TO DROP TO NOTHING, EVERYBODY SELL YOURS NOW, QUICK BEFORE ITS TOO LATE!!!!!

gurramok · 14-10-2006 06:33PM

Gurgle wrote:

Oh well that just proves it then :rolleyes:

I saw a car in the buy and sell that was €500 cheaper than it was advertised 2 weeks before - OMG THE PRICE OF SECOND HAND CARS IS ABOUT TO DROP TO NOTHING, EVERYBODY SELL YOURS NOW, QUICK BEFORE ITS TOO LATE!!!!!

Can you find a property...errr rephrase (as we know 1 example is not good enough) 'a few properties' that have actually gone up in price in last couple months or so?
Would be interested to see them, i've only found ones that have either stayed the same price or gone down in price, maybe i'm looking in wrong places:rolleyes:

Dr. Octagon · 14-10-2006 07:09PM

The joy of all this is that commuting, dido/coldplay listening, rat racing fools will cushion the blow of buying a house for my generation when their hyperinflated properties devalue. The fat cats will be fine, they'll get out on time but their departure will be the catalyst for a rapid downward spiral. I can't wait!

Dr. Octagon · 14-10-2006 07:30PM

CiaranC wrote:

Speaking of not thinking things all the way through, I cant help be amused at the people (usually single people on the avg national wage) coming on here and rubbing their hands together at the prospect of a property crash.

They seem to think that a property crash will mean that house prices will fall to exactly where they can become a property owner themselves (presumably they will buy exactly where prices go back up because they are so clever) without the impact on the wider ecomony affecting them in any way whatsoever.

These people are as delusional as the supposed sheep who 'think prices can rise at their current rates forever'. (Where are these people anyway, they dont seem to post on the internet)

Hello there your excellence.

Two questions..Be honest...Do you have many property investments? By any chance are you trying to maintain the all important market perception of which you perorate?

SimpleSam06 · 15-10-2006 04:37PM

Gurgle wrote:

Did you actually read any of my posts or just click 'quote' where you saw a point of view different to your own?

Eh, you were the one making out that inflation had nothing to do with the price of a house. Negative equity is important only when you want to sell your house. Likewise with inflation. It doesn't matter if you sell it for €10,000 more than you bought it for, when that sale can't buy anything more than the original price of the house+10k. Is the connection being made yet? So your blithe dismissal of that graph earlier doesn't really put you in any kind of authoritative position there.

Gurgle wrote:

It has requested its economy back too.

wut

Sponge Bob · 15-10-2006 04:48PM

poor Gurgle is also studiously avoiding the BIG issue of the 275k empties nationally and the sudden and historically unique bloat in the national empty ratio betwen 2002 and 2006 from 11% to 16% .

You emm , uhhhhm, eh ! 'Thoughts' Gurgle please. I'm sick of asking for them now.

Gurgle · 16-10-2006 08:30AM

gurramok wrote:

Can you find a property...errr rephrase (as we know 1 example is not good enough) 'a few properties' that have actually gone up in price in last couple months or so?

Ok, you're asking me to point at a property where it didn't sell at the original asking price so the seller increased the asking price?
Thats generally not the best way to speed up a sale.

SimpleSam06 wrote:

Eh, you were the one making out that inflation had nothing to do with the price of a house.

No, I'm not. I'm saying that inflation is the mechanism by which large fluctuations can occur in the value of the housing market without large fluctuations in the actual prices.

SimpleSam06 wrote:

So your blithe dismissal of that graph earlier doesn't really put you in any kind of authoritative position there.

I'm not blithely dismissing the graph, I'm saying that it shows how a crash is not required for an inflated housing market to come back into line. It actually backs my point up if you look at the inflation figures.

Sponge Bob wrote:

poor Gurgle is also studiously avoiding the BIG issue of the 275k empties nationally and the sudden and historically unique bloat in the national empty ratio betwen 2002 and 2006 from 11% to 16%

Poor Sponge Bob didn't actually read anything past the headlines on this historic national empty ratio:rolleyes:
Let me summarise it for you:
Holiday homes - technically unoccupied
Section 23 properties - Tenants are purely optional, saves the owner from paying income tax on his other earnings
Houses on the market - often empty for showing purposes

Here, let me waste my time and provide a link you're not going to read:
Holiday homes

Sponge Bob · 16-10-2006 09:34AM

Gurgle wrote:

Poor Sponge Bob didn't actually read anything past the headlines on this historic national empty ratio:rolleyes:
Let me summarise it for you:
Holiday homes - technically unoccupied
Section 23 properties - Tenants are purely optional, saves the owner from paying income tax on his other earnings
Houses on the market - often empty for showing purposes

Here, let me waste my time and provide a link you're not going to read:
Holiday homes

Holiday homes are held for the same reason as any other property, property prices never fall you see

But the sum total of the rural renewal and seaside resort scheme properties is only about 25000 out of 275000 properties nationally that are empty. As 16% of the national housing stock is empty they explain 1.6% of it . Even assuming they are off market for this reason we are still running an empty rate of 14.4% which is still historically very high.

For my purposes I assume that 100,000 of the 275,000 _could_ hit the market once the capital appreciation juggernaut stops and that 175,000 will not or will continue to be held by their owners. Thats as much as we build in two normal post 1990 years.

The rest of the empties do not come with tax subsidies and anyway the tax subsidies will start to run out for the seaside resort properties in 2 or 3 years at which point they will overhang the market unlike now.

Only 10% of these empties, nationally, are tax break properties.

Other tax break schemes like section 50 require that you let ( to students) in order to get any tax break. They have distorted the private rental market in cities and towns where there are private rented accomodation .....eg Athlone .

In London the empty rate is 3% , in Dublin its 6% , how peculiar.

Gurgle · 16-10-2006 12:12PM

Sponge Bob wrote:

Holiday homes are held for the same reason as any other property, property prices never fall you see

Not because people want a place to go at the weekends etc to get away from the city?

Sponge Bob wrote:

For my purposes I assume that 100,000 of the 275,000 _could_ hit the market once the capital appreciation juggernaut stops and that 175,000 will not or will continue to be held by their owners

The capital appreciation juggernaut appears to be slowing to a stop now.
You think people are waiting for prices to crash to put their second home on the market?
Have you thought that one through?

Sponge Bob · 16-10-2006 01:11PM

Gurgle wrote:

Not because people want a place to go at the weekends etc to get away from the city?

they can rent can they not ?

You think people are waiting for prices to crash to put their second home on the market?
Have you thought that one through?

why should anyone hold onto an asset whose worth is evaporating (save for tax reasons) and they are not waiting for anything , prices can only go up (repeat as a mantra ) ??

What exactly makes this crazy level of vacant property sustainable in any sense ???

16% of all property empty at the time of our highest ever population growth with half of Poland here in the past 2 years means we have a massive oversupply in the market despite the historically high demand .

The market mechanism will remove that oversupply as it always does and will reduce it to the normal 10% ish level that we appear to maintain as our base. While thats still high it appears to be what we maintain historically.

Strangely enough the Poles mainly came here to build and many will go home once there , basically , is no building work as will happen within a year or so .

On the reasonable assumption that there are 50,000 housing units nationwide let to migrant construction personnel that 50,000 empties will join the 100,000 surplus right about the same time thereby pushing the vacant rate up around 20% for a time I should think.

Gurgle · 16-10-2006 01:50PM

Sponge Bob wrote:

prices can only go up (repeat as a mantra ) ??

Find one place I said that please.

Sponge Bob wrote:

The market mechanism will remove that oversupply as it always does

Please explain how the market mechanism will remove the alleged oversupply of houses.

Sponge Bob wrote:

Strangely enough the Poles mainly came here to build and many will go home once there , basically , is no building work as will happen within a year or so .

On the reasonable assumption that there are 50,000 housing units nationwide let to migrant construction personnel that 50,000 empties will join the 100,000 surplus right about the same time thereby pushing the vacant rate up around 20% for a time I should think.

And then what?
The owners will sell them all off for 60k? Back to the pre-'bubble' prices?

You and others predict the future with no actual reasoning beyond 'houses cost too much mkay!'.

And as that future persistently doesn't happen, you carry on regardless. Is it all just based on the theory that if you predict something for long enough you will eventually be right?

-edit-
hehe - a quick trawl through old threads gave me this gem from June 2003:

spongebob wrote:

There now appears to be a soggy overhang on the market which indicates that the AVERAGE 4 bed semi is available in the 270-280k bracket. I think it could fall below 270k by next month.

This is still a lot more than the same house cost a year or two ago but I feel that prices have now stopped rising .

Was that a different spongebob?
Or were you just -em- wrong?

Sponge Bob · 16-10-2006 02:33PM

Dunno the exact date but I have believed this for a long time but then our banks then start offering 50 year Interest Only 107% mortgages fixed for 20 years and stuff to confound me.

At 2003 criteria there are no more borrowers left, at 2006 insanity levels there are some .

Whats next , 110% mortgages and a nice new beemer thrown in ??

Cantab. · 16-10-2006 04:15PM

Gurgle wrote:

Find one place I said that please.

Please explain how the market mechanism will remove the alleged oversupply of houses.

And then what?
The owners will sell them all off for 60k? Back to the pre-'bubble' prices?

You and others predict the future with no actual reasoning beyond 'houses cost too much mkay!'.

And as that future persistently doesn't happen, you carry on regardless. Is it all just based on the theory that if you predict something for long enough you will eventually be right?

-edit-
hehe - a quick trawl through old threads gave me this gem from June 2003:

Was that a different spongebob?
Or were you just -em- wrong?

In bubble markets, fundamentals don't drive the market - hysterical greed takes over and the fundamentals go out the window - this is what has been occuring in Ireland over the last couple of years. In my opinion, houses are only worth what they were in 2001-2002, based on multiples of the average salary. There is also a massive oversupply which equates to a drop in house prices from current levels.

Now, you talk of the theory of "saying something enough, it becomes true eventually" - well, you have done well digging out that post in 2003 - they are much more common in 2006 (and much louder + easier to find too). You know, the bears only need to be right once - the FTB bull living in an apartment in Clonsilla on the other hand needs to be right for the next 40 mortgage years.

Zynks · 16-10-2006 05:43PM

miju wrote:

you know gamer your 100% correct they won't get cheaper in 3 years time.....why???????

because they are becoming cheaper TODAY

Asking price is irrelevant. What matters is how much they sell for compared to similar properties in the past.

But I have to admit that the number of chancers quoting silly prices seems to have increased lately...

CiaranC · 16-10-2006 05:51PM

Cantab. wrote:

You know, the bears only need to be right once - the FTB bull living in an apartment in Clonsilla on the other hand needs to be right for the next 40 mortgage years.

What exactly do you mean by this?

gamer · 16-10-2006 07:03PM

he means if prices drop ,you cud be stuck in a place thats overvalued,negative equity situation.ie loan 350k, value 300k.people think every house will go up 10percent every year for the next few years.if you think ,if you are sure houses are going to continue to rise,than its logical to buy 1 now rather than pay an extra 60k in 3 years time,you may not be able to get a loan in 3 years time,i cant see the future,i dont know if they will rise, but i see high demand,and a shortage of sites suitable for house building in dublin.Not every1 wants to live in an apartment, i think people are holding off now, waiting to see if theres a change in stamp duty rates.

chump · 16-10-2006 07:41PM

Gurgle wrote:

You and others predict the future with no actual reasoning beyond 'houses cost too much mkay!'.

This sentence sums up precisely why no-one should even bother look at your posts any more.

Most 'bears' on here have listed reason upon reason why the believe houses are over-valued, why they believe we may be experiencing a bubble, and have hypothesized how/when/why/where/etc. they believe the market is going.

Again you're rebuttle arguments are void - in that
Wrong in past does not mean one is wrong now, and there are many here who didn't proclaim a crash in the past
If we were to rubbish claims of a possible forthcoming crash because 'someone' got it wrong in the past - we'd be foolish.

There has been a list created at least once in this thread with sound reasons why people believe the market is over-valued. (I'm gonna go have a look for it now).
Why don't you respond to the points put forward instead of another inept response.

(can't find the list, maybe il look again soon... so tired!

)

DonalMcTavish · 16-10-2006 07:50PM

I've been reading this thread for weeks now, hoping against hope that property prices will go down. I just had to register today though as we regularly crack up laughing at the broken record from the bulls and even more so from unrecoverable broken record the '3 bears' as we effectionatly call the top 3 posters in this thread.

I've notices that some peeps post on here constantly. They must not work at all. The top 3 posters on the thread are a source of constant laughter in the office for us.
Quiet Obviously, they have an agenda. Even going as far as saying they have called estate agents to sell fictional property and they refused their businness (we called one for the fun of it in Galwayand put him on speaker phone. After he had finished trying to get our fictional property on his books we told him about this thread).

Why are you pretending that falling ASKING prices are a sign of falling prices?

But by far the biggest laugh came from this one though.
When you read the posts in the thread and then read this one its comical. Thankyou for the memories. You should be on stage.

spongebob wrote:

There now appears to be a soggy overhang on the market which indicates that the AVERAGE 4 bed semi is available in the 270-280k bracket. I think it could fall below 270k by next month.

This is still a lot more than the same house cost a year or two ago but I feel that prices have now stopped rising .

I read a lot of references to the Polish community here too.
I'm from Poland and among us there are usually 5 or 6 people renting in a 3 bed house. I know hardly anyone who wants to go home to live in Poland again. Possibly some that may move to the UK, but not many. We love Ireland and many of us have ties now that will keep us here. So please dont speak for our community. We can speak for ourselves.

Rents are going up over the last year too. Take it from someone who has been looking to rent with his Irish girlfriend for a while.

conor_mc · 16-10-2006 08:05PM

DonalMcTavish wrote:

I read a lot of references to the Polish community here too.
I'm from Poland and among us there are usually 5 or 6 people renting in a 3 bed house. I know hardly anyone who wants to go home to live in Poland again. Possibly some that may move to the UK, but not many. We love Ireland and many of us have ties now that will keep us here. So please dont speak for our community. We can speak for ourselves.

Rents are going up over the last year too. Take it from someone who has been looking to rent with his Irish girlfriend for a while.

Fair play for the insight. Do you think your community will increasingly contribute to house-price growth in the next few years? Do many of your friends intend to buy a home in Ireland?

This article http://www.unison.ie/irish_independent/stories.php3?ca=9&si=1691456&issue_id=14664 seems to suggest that, on average, Latvians are sending €10,000 each back to their home country every year - kinda rules out too many of them having cash for deposits.... is this something thats widespread in the Polish community too?

Appreciate your first-hand comments, rather than us paddy's second-guessing.....

DonalMcTavish · 16-10-2006 08:17PM

conor_mc wrote:

Fair play for the insight. Do you think your community will increasingly contribute to house-price growth in the next few years? Do many of your friends intend to buy a home in Ireland?

This article http://www.unison.ie/irish_independent/stories.php3?ca=9&si=1691456&issue_id=14664 seems to suggest that, on average, Latvians are sending €10,000 each back to their home country every year - kinda rules out too many of them having cash for deposits.... is this something thats widespread in the Polish community too?

Appreciate your first-hand comments, rather than us paddy's second-guessing.....

As with many immigrant populations it starts off with sending money home but quickly stops as you start settling down and making a life for yourself in your chosen country.
We have a lot of contact with the Latvian community. Its much the same for them, but for them there is even less desire to return to Latvia apart from holidays to see family. Most immigrants are in Ireland not because they wanted to come to Ireland in the first place but because they are much worse off in their own countries. Then you start planting roots and lose the desire to go anywhere else. Usually one big relocation would be the norm. Possibly if Poland became a much much better place to live i might move home eventually, but if i have a Irish family i wont. And if you've ever been to Latvia, Romania or Lithuania, youll know that even if you came from those countries would never return there to live again.

miju · 16-10-2006 08:28PM

DonalMcTavish wrote:

Why are you pretending that falling ASKING prices are a sign of falling prices?

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

Rents are going up over the last year too. Take it from someone who has been looking to rent with his Irish girlfriend for a while.

firstly, becuase falling asking prices ARE a sign of falling prices, common sense would explain that

secondly, my rent nor any of my friends rents have gone up in the last year so you must be unlucky in that respect

though out of curiousity are you renting a brand new apt / house or is it an old one?

Sponge Bob · 16-10-2006 10:55PM

DonalMcTavish wrote:

I've been reading this thread for weeks now, hoping against hope that property prices will go down. I just had to register today though as we regularly crack up laughing at the broken record from the bulls and even more so from unrecoverable broken record the '3 bears' as we effectionatly call the top 3 posters in this thread.

WHAT!!! Your WHOLE OFFICE reads this ???? I am dead chuffed at that I am <bows> .

I read a lot of references to the Polish community here too.
I'm from Poland and among us there are usually 5 or 6 people renting in a 3 bed house. I know hardly anyone who wants to go home to live in Poland again. Possibly some that may move to the UK, but not many. We love Ireland and many of us have ties now that will keep us here. So please dont speak for our community. We can speak for ourselves.

Hmm, Poles is shorthand for new EU immigrants of whom the Poles are the largest group, its also shorter than "new EU immigrants" . 'Lithuanians' simply takes too long to type. The movement of new EU immigrants to Ireland since 2004 is the largest population migration in european history relative to the population of the host country save in or after wartime...and even then I am not sure .

Thanks for confirming my assumed impact on the rental market though

As an Irishman who was an immigrant in 4 other EU countries in my lifetime ( 5 to a house was the norm

) I will observe that the single major reason for Irish people going to UK Holland and Germany in my experience was that they had a building boom. When that building boom stopped the Irish left...sometimes they went home sometimes elsewhere. Some always stayed behind too . Most left, nothing to do any more.

Any comments I make on immigrant mobility are based on what I myself saw in London in 1988 (and then 1991 when the building industry collapsed and they all went to Barcelona or Berlin ) or Berlin in 1992 and then 1995 when that collapsed and is nothing really to do with Poles or New EU immigrants but to what happens to surplus labout that is mobile when a building boom stops . You may or may not be aware that the Irish were the largest migrant labour force in the EU during the 1980s and I was part of that migrant group .

1% of the Irish population emigrated every year during the second half of the 1980s , similar to the number of persons who have left certain new EU states since 2004. In terms of scale and relative to the donor population it was the same .

Rents are going up over the last year too. Take it from someone who has been looking to rent with his Irish girlfriend for a while.

Not everywhere and they have not really gone up in 5 or 6 years where I live. Rent went up like billyo in the 1990s as did house prices but have not tracked house prices in this recent post 2001 boom.

Gurgle · 17-10-2006 08:27AM

chump wrote:

There has been a list created at least once in this thread with sound reasons why people believe the market is over-valued. (I'm gonna go have a look for it now).
Why don't you respond to the points put forward instead of another inept response.

(can't find the list, maybe il look again soon... so tired! )

Let me save you the trouble:
Reasons why the housing market is going to crash:
1) Houses are waaaaay too dear mkay
2) Lots and lots of houses are empty
3) Investors can't get enough rent to pay the mortgage anymore
4) Some people are reducing their asking price
5) They can't keep going up forever
6) Average house price is 10 times average wage

Reasons why those reasons aren't reasons for a crash:
1) mkay
2) read my other posts, and the bit after the headlines
3) could never last and was a driving force behind the increases over the last decade
4) irrelevant, was always the case
5) doesn't mean they're gonna come crashing down
6) average family has 2 earners, average house price is still 5 times average family income.

DonalMcTavish wrote:

I've notices that some peeps post on here constantly. They must not work at all.

Not at the moment actually. Still paying my mortgage though.

DonalMcTavish wrote:

The top 3 posters on the thread are a source of constant laughter in the office for us.
Quiet Obviously, they have an agenda.

My agenda is purely to argue with people who make unfounded predictions and try to ram them down everybodies throats. I have a 'starter home' (as my Mum called it when we bought it) where I intend to stay for at least another 30 years. Boom, crash, negative equity, stamp duty, even rising interest rates are all pretty much irrelevant to me.

Calina · 17-10-2006 09:12AM

Gurgle wrote:

My agenda is purely to argue with people who make unfounded predictions and try to ram them down everybodies throats. I have a 'starter home' (as my Mum called it when we bought it) where I intend to stay for at least another 30 years. Boom, crash, negative equity, stamp duty, even rising interest rates are all pretty much irrelevant to me.

So your agenda is not to be constructive, in other words. No wonder I think this thread is hilarious.

As for your starter home, I'll be presumptuous enough to assume it isn't one of today's starter home types - ie one bedroomed apartment somewhere in an estate which is not particularly well served by public transport and where parking is at a premium.

For what it's worth,

1) Property prices are unsustainably high because of their ratio to average salaries particularly in a time of rising interest rates is, in fact, a valid reason for expecting a property price correction.

2) It hasn't happened yet is not a valid reason for assuming it won't happen.

Regarding rents: asking rents have gone up in the market where I have an interest. But supply hasn't fallen and more than a few properties are sitting on the rental lists for weeks. I think a lot of landlords are starting to feel the pinch.

But of course, that's only anecdotal.

Calina · 17-10-2006 09:29AM

DonalMcTavish wrote:

I've notices that some peeps post on here constantly. They must not work at all. The top 3 posters on the thread are a source of constant laughter in the office for us.

Why are you pretending that falling ASKING prices are a sign of falling prices?

I read a lot of references to the Polish community here too.
I'm from Poland and among us there are usually 5 or 6 people renting in a 3 bed house. I know hardly anyone who wants to go home to live in Poland again. Possibly some that may move to the UK, but not many. We love Ireland and many of us have ties now that will keep us here. So please dont speak for our community. We can speak for ourselves.

Rents are going up over the last year too. Take it from someone who has been looking to rent with his Irish girlfriend for a while.

Falling asking prices are a general indication that 1) the interest is not there in the property and 2) similar properties are not making the asking price. I've spent a lot of time looking at asking prices and looking at property to buy and what it boiled down to until around three months ago is that every new similar property that arrived on the market where I was looking on average, went up around 30K in asking price. This is not happening. Asking prices are either static or falling and this does not augur well for actual selling prices being made.

Rents in Ireland are still at a lower level than they were in 1999. You were probably not here at that stage, but I was, and that's my experience. My rent has been static for the past 4 years; I expect to have to pay more come the next review of my rent/or end of lease, and that's in the nature of things. Where rents are rising, they are doing so below the rate of inflation. In real terms then, they are still actually falling.

Just because you are not posting here constantly but are reading here constantly doesn't make you any more productive than people who are posting here all the time. I have to say that I laugh to think of you querying how little work other people are doing when you are reading their output.

I actually worked outside Ireland for quite a while, in several different countries and I can tell you that there comes a point when you decide you want to come home. Every single person I know who has moved away from their home country - and I know people from a lot of different countries living in a lot of different host countries - has either hit it, or is planning for it and some of them have extremely good jobs in other countries where the health/transport/public systems are more effective and organised than they are here. The reason that most Irish people expect a significant part of the immigrant population to move on is because their past experience tells them that it will be so. Some Irish people, of course, stayed put in their host countries, but a huge number of them did not.

Sponge Bob · 17-10-2006 09:43AM

Here one for ye lads, back to my favourite topic, the empties we have built post 2002. Increasing our empty in only four years from 11% to 16% of the national housing stock. We have added 100,000 empties to our already large existing empty stock. I accept that 10% empty is the natural order of things in Ireland and am focusing on this extra 6% only

Lets assume each empty cost us €200,000 each to build, mostly borrowed of course .

Thats €20Bn spent on buying generally empty houses that are largely unused in ONLY four years . The same €20Bn would have finished the road network between all our major cities to Motorway standard and bought us a modern telecomunications network as well with some change left over for beers and cheesey biscuits for all .

Poland has 10 times the population of Ireland. Poland has a GDP of about €200Bn a year.

The Irish, over 4 years, have spent as much as Poland produces in a year on buying empty property, population adjusted.

Had the Poles themselves spent 1/4 of their GDP every year for 4 years on buying empty property and leaving it empty then personally speaking I would think that they were MAD ! The Poles did no such thing, of course they did not, but I believe that I am fully entitled to say, based on this gross misallocation of resources that the Irish are MAD !

So is McTavish

Housing bubble starting to pop?

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