Originally Posted by Schuhart

The ballpark is a few hundred thousand:

Most households immune to negative equity

I'd say its conceivable they'd get a few seats. I've no data, but I'd expect you'd find areas with concentrations of households in negative equity.

Originally Posted by eirefortheirish

Dublin South Central, plenty of negative equity here!

You're on now, aren't you?
Go ahead.

To get rid of Negative Equity you'll have to either double or treble (by enacting a law) their present house value
OR
write them a cheque for the difference between what was paid and what it's allegedly worth at election time.

Oh.....the taxpayer will pay for all this.
Great idea.....wonder why no one ever thought of it before.....and the OP says Gurdiev, McWilliams or Donnelly should front this?
Absolutely spiffin' idea....as Basil Fawlty would have said

Originally Posted by Tea Party Patriot

But the point is the state is broke, therefore the burden of helping those in negative equity would fall on taxpayers who were prudent and did not engage in borrowing beyond their means.

There is a risk to any purchase you make, if the state removes this risk the whole foundation of the economy would be shattered.

So why is our State paying at least 60 billion euro to the banks?? Some free market we live in.....

Originally Posted by tonic

Is it possible for a political party telling the voters what they want to hear to do well in an election? You know, I believe it probably is, but you really should ask FG & Labour about their experiences in the last election, just to be sure like.

Yah, and Bertie's team in 2007 and 2002. Let's be fair tonic.

The 2002 GE was particularly well bought, with everyone partying and whatnot.

Originally Posted by EvotingMachine0197

Yah, and Bertie's team in 2007 and 2002. Let's be fair tonic.

The 2002 GE was particularly well bought, with everyone partying and whatnot.

2002, yes, very unnecessarily as it turned out, 2007, no, the buying of that election was attempted by FG/Labour early on but this time it didn't work.

Originally Posted by AlanDukesofMoralHazard

No, not the opposite of the Celtic Tiger's "how much is your house worth?" dinner parties.

Do you think a party standing in the next elections with the single issue of negative equity can have an impact?

Hundreds of thousands are effected by this issue throughout the country. The FG/Labour Insolvency Bill to be announced on Friday is said to include a veto by banks on insolvency issues. This issue demands a real solution at Government level, not more kicking a can down a cul de sac in a ghost estate.

Yes, I know negative equity is meaningless unless you are moving house. But is means hundreds of thousands of people CANNOT move house.

If engineered properly, a Negative Equity party could mobilise these people in a way the likes of New Beginnings have not. I, for one, would vote for them if only as a once-off protest vote. I can no longer tell the difference between FG/Labour/FF and while Sinn Fein have some decent young performers their costings are unrealistic.

A figurehead such as Stephen Donnelly, Constantin or McWilliams would be perfect.

Is it possible for a single issue party such as this to do well at the next General Election?

Can populism buy votes? Absolutely.

Can populism take the hard decisions we need to solve the root cause problems at the heart of our national debt? Not a hope in hell.

And this idea is populism at its very lowest.

Sure - fantastic idea. Taking on another unnecessary massive debt, to be paid by taxpayers, is exactly what the country needs. It'll solve all our problems.

The only way this would work would be along the lines of this (fictitious) story:

Several years ago, during the pilot dispute, there were no domestic flights in Australia.
Remote places like Darwin, Cairns and Port Douglas went into crisis. They were tough times, everybody was in debt, and everybody lived on credit.

Fortunately, one day a rich American tourist stepped out of a taxi and walked into the lobby of a Port Douglas hotel.
He laid a 100 dollar note on the reception counter, and went to inspect the rooms upstairs in order to choose one.
The hotel owner immediately took the 100 dollar note and ran to pay his debt to the butcher.
The butcher took the 100 dollar note, and ran to pay his debt to the pig farmer.
The pig farmer took the 100 dollar note, and ran to pay his debt to the supplier of his feed and fuel.
The supplier of feed and fuel took the 100 dollar note and ran to pay his debt to his regular hooker who in these hard times, gave her "services" on credit.
The hooker ran to the hotel, and paid off her debt with the 100 dollar note to the hotel proprietor to pay for the rooms that she rented when she brought her clients there.
And just as the 100 dollar note was back on the counter of the hotel, the tourist came down after inspecting the rooms, and saying that he did not like any of the rooms took his 100 dollar note back and left the hotel lobby.
The whole town was now without debt, and looked to the future with a lot of optimism.

So instead of feeding bailout money directly into the banks, the government would need to divide it up per family and give each a fixed sum, with the strict condition that it could ONLY be used to pay down the principal outstanding on mortgages or, for those who have no mortgage, pay taxes. (Need to give non-mortgage holders the money too, in order to keep it fair. But once they've given it back to the government in tax, they pass it on to the banks, so it's just a slightly more circuitous route.)

We'll all still need tax increases to pay off the borrowings (just as we do now), but mortgage holders would have reduced debt/reduced interest payments so they're in a better position to pay the tax increases, and non mortgage holders have been given the bailout money to then return in the form of their tax payments. The bank debt is still paid down, but feeding the payment through the general population first makes everything a bit easier for them. Maybe people even have a bit more money to spend in the general economy,

But this is too off the wall - unfortunately it'll never happen.

Originally Posted by eirefortheirish

I paid 280,000euro on my own for a 2 bed apartment in Dublin 8 back in 2006, in massive negative equity now but can still afford to pay my mortgage which I do! I now have a toddler and new born baby living here and we can never move. Its very frustrating when I see non nationals get upgrades to houses and our own welfare crowd get the same.

You were part of the problem as you fuelled over priced property. I never bought even though I had a good job as I didn’t want to buy a crappy apartment for a quarter a million and wasn’t about to pay half a million for a terraced house. People like you kept me out of the housing market by paying ridiculous money for small apartments now you want me to pay for your mistake through taxes.
Would those affected by negative equity give their profits to the state when the house increased in value? Would you give the state a stake in your property if you were allowed to trade up so the money could be returned at a profit when the house is sold or passed on?

Originally Posted by nonpartyboy

Property has halved since 2006 and property losses have cost us somewhere in the region €60bn so far, now you want to double that cost, i'm sure you'll get plenty of people to vote for free money......

That's kind of a stupid response. He didn't ask for free money.

His point is that hundreds of thousands of working-age people in a country with only 2 million working-age people cannot move house.

You think that is good? Can you do a 50 words on "It is a good and wholesome thing to have 15% of the working-age population unable to move house because..."?

Any fool should be able to see that, in a dynamic capitalist economy, it's necessary for workers to be flexible about where they live, in order for them to be able to take advantage of job opportunities outside their geographic region. Negative equity freezes that.

Basically, the cohort of workers who bought houses in 2000-2008 are stuck where they are, totally unable to take up opportunities in other areas, meaning we all suffer. Employers most of all.

Ireland has to make do with older folk who bought before the boom, and younger ones (the handful of non-emigrants) who were lucky enough to be born too late. And my cohort, very much the smallest, the tiny bunch of people with an under-developed herd instinct.

But the fact is clear, keeping people stuck in houses is very bad for the economy. Especially when the country is strewn with empty houses, generating zero rent, that they could be renting for €100 a month.

Why the hell are we tolerating these places being left empty when they could be generating a modest income and alleviating the flexibility problem? Why, given the choice between a little money and zero money, are we plumping for the latter?

Originally Posted by Potatoeman

Would you give the state a stake in your property if you were allowed to trade up so the money could be returned at a profit when the house is sold or passed on?

He didn't say anything to the contrary. In fact, nobody has asked people in NE to do this, though they should.

Originally Posted by feargach

That's kind of a stupid response. He didn't ask for free money.

His point is that hundreds of thousands of working-age people in a country with only 2 million working-age people cannot move house.

You think that is good? Can you do a 50 words on "It is a good and wholesome thing to have 15% of the working-age population unable to move house because..."?

Any fool should be able to see that, in a dynamic capitalist economy, it's necessary for workers to be flexible about where they live, in order for them to be able to take advantage of job opportunities outside their geographic region. Negative equity freezes that.

Basically, the cohort of workers who bought houses in 2000-2008 are stuck where they are, totally unable to take up opportunities in other areas, meaning we all suffer. Employers most of all.

Ireland has to make do with older folk who bought before the boom, and younger ones (the handful of non-emigrants) who were lucky enough to be born too late. And my cohort, very much the smallest, the tiny bunch of people with an under-developed herd instinct.

But the fact is clear, keeping people stuck in houses is very bad for the economy. Especially when the country is strewn with empty houses, generating zero rent, that they could be renting for €100 a month.

Why the hell are we tolerating these places being left empty when they could be generating a modest income and alleviating the flexibility problem? Why, given the choice between a little money and zero money, are we plumping for the latter?

But wouldn't every house you filled in this way simply be replaced on the empty house list by the one the renters vacated?