Dublin property prices falling by €4,500 a month

[Kevin Doyle]

Under a free market landlord will be left to regule themselve as in england. The power that be will not want to upset this sector as thay have no housing stock

Ah this will be the next property swindle. There has already been rumblings of the government buying large quantities of houses from developers at current market value to use for social housing and to build up a housing stock. How big a waste of tax payers money can you get whilst still managing to bail out the developers.

The ideal is still be to own your home. But in the interim, the rental sector is where thousands will be forced to inhabit and they will be exposed to near criminal exploitation by greedy landlords.

[cooperation]

I now a landlord in plymonth, england. who, when a housing inspector told him to fix the toilet, bath and sink in a WC. The landlord told him, he was shutting down and the council would have to house 30 men. Nothing more was haerd of from or of the inspector. And nothing improved.

[returning officer]

I have a number of quick observations on this excellent thread.

1) Tenancy laws have been strengthened by the Private Residential Tenancy Board.
2) Repossession is not the weapon of choice for banks eg it takes about 18 months when fought in Court. Other creditors will continue to rely on judgment mortgages as it provides 12 years within which to collect.
3) I find the idea of 100,000 builders, electricians, other tradesmen signing on the dole completely ludicrous. There will either be sufficient work in infrastructure, renovation, improvement of they will move to an economy which will support them eg Olympic village, Southern England, Germany etc.
4) Very few immigrants are a burden on the State – they are net contributors. Many will settle here and continue to be productive. Others may move on to other countries in the EU in 2009/10 which were not previously available, some may return to their native land.
5) Describing house price growth/loss in terms of an elastic band, does seem unduly simplistic and ignores that, while the rental sector stagnation betrays a bubble, there is also a demand led basis for price increases eg age profile, immigrants, preference of Irish people to buy than rent.
6) The laws of economics can be ignored for a while but do come back to bite you on the arse in the long run.
7) Those that bought residential property just to “get on the ladder”, deserve to fall. As individuals they took a risk, live with it.
8) Those who are now screaming that people should not buy any property now (“get off the ladder brigade”)without giving any proper analysis of the subjective circumstances of the individual/couple of their location are as bad as the punch-drunk cheerleaders for growth
9) Will those whom predict property price decrease of 30% be selling their homes now and renting it back. Of Course not.
10) Will those, such as 300,000 public sector workers, who are on secure income, who bought well built, suitably sized property in good locations in which they can afford to pay their mortgages (allowing for a 15% increase) and are prepared to stay for 3 to 5 years, now start panicking? Are they right to do so?
11) Is there any chance that given this new current economic forecast, will we engage in a re-think of our economic strategy eg less State ownership, reduction in number of public sector workers, removal of guarantee of State pensions for new public sector workers, greater investment in indigenous entrepreneurs (particular non-US exporters), a new approach to current government spending (including accountability for waste), improving competitiveness, forcing unemployed (6months +) to work, restrictions on personal credit etc (any other suggestions welcome)?
Answer: Will we F*&K (as the Bailey brothers might say).

[kerrynorth]

3 I find the idea of 100,000 builders, electricians, other tradesmen signing on the dole completely ludicrous. There will either be sufficient work in infrastructure, renovation, improvement of they will move to an economy which will support them eg Olympic village, Southern England, Germany etc.

For sure. BUT THEY WILL NOT BE WORKING IN THE IRISH ECONOMY. Which is the point as Morgan Kelly pointed out on PrimeTime last night where he agreed absolutely (in fact he almost parroted) what I said earlier yesterday on this thread that Construction employment can drop like a stone in a matter of months. He used the example of Arizona as is currently occuring over there!

[cooperation]

1) Tenancy laws have been strengthened by the Private Residential Tenancy Board.
The vast majority of landlord are not registered with the PRTB. And most tenant do not now of them. Some of those unregistered landlords are TD's who now of it as well!

[asknoquestions]

1) Tenancy laws have been strengthened by the Private Residential Tenancy Board.
The vast majority of landlord are not registered with the PRTB. And most tenant do not now of them. Some of those unregistered landlords are TD's who now of it as well!

Also, a landlord can just say he wants to sell a house or to give it to a family member to live in and he can get the tenants out in 4 weeks, which is not much tenancy protection.

[Twin Towers]

Great thread this from Cochrane. Mistitled though as since its inception Dublin city centre apartment prices then should have dropped by 22.5K.

Has that happened?

[returning officer]

Great thread this from Cochrane. Mistitled though as since its inception Dublin city centre apartment prices then should have dropped by 22.5K.

Has that happened?

Still have to see the Daft Q1 residential sales figures, but it is a mixed bag.

From Daft (this mainly deals with renting)
http://www.daft.ie/report/Daft-Rental-R ... h-2007.pdf

New developments: average City Centre €373,333
Rent Yields: 3.7%
Rents Dublin 1 to 8 Vary between €894 to €1178.

To compare these two
http://www.daft.ie/report/DaftReport-Q32006.pdf
http://www.daft.ie/report/DaftReport-Q42006.pdf

City centre increase from €317,159 to €320,417 (1% increase, but 0.25% decrease IRT)
North City increase from €293,820 to €302,439 (3% increase but 1.75% increase irt)
South city decrease from €339,873 to €311,969 (10% decrease IRT)
(based on 1.25% inflation over a quarter)

However as was pointed out ages ago, a one-bed price variation is distorted by the size of the apartment, own door and precise location eg ISFC v Liberties. So an average of apartments is dependant on when the apartments are released and is inherently unreliable.

But which is better as a long term investment, a one-bed new apartment where one can walk into Dublin City centre or a 3 bed house, in a estate, 3 miles from some village no-Dub ever heard of, with no transport links covering the 35 miles to Dublin?

[Miriam Cotton]

11) Is there any chance that given this new current economic forecast, will we engage in a re-think of our economic strategy eg less State ownership, reduction in number of public sector workers, removal of guarantee of State pensions for new public sector workers, greater investment in indigenous entrepreneurs (particular non-US exporters), a new approach to current government spending (including accountability for waste), improving competitiveness, forcing unemployed (6months +) to work, restrictions on personal credit etc (any other suggestions welcome)?
Answer: Will we F*&K (as the Bailey brothers might say).

Property developers and other inward investors in Ireland have enjoyed lavish investment and tax breaks in recent years - Bertie Ahern is, as has been observed on another thread, more or less bought and paid for by these guys. Too much of the country's tax revenue has been dedicated to this relatively small collection of people at the expense of the national infrastructure. Trickle-down economics are a fiction. There is a failure at the heart of government policy to recognise the most obvious thing - that wealth creation is a two-way process - it depends on both the entrepreneurs and the people who work for them. Unduly rewarding the former at the expense of the latter is ultimately self-defeating. For Christ's sake, we still don't have a decent surface on the laneway that is the road from Cork to Dublin - after all this time and with all this wealth sloshing around. Our poor infrastructure affects businesses too and it deters inward invesotrs. If this were France the Cork-Dublin road would have been built in three months, to a high standard and for a fraction of the cost. (BTW did anyone every find out where that 10billion overspend on roads actually went? There must have been a lot of suitcases full of cash leaving the country. Just think what we could have done with that!)

The idea that public sector workers are nothing but a drain on the economy is also pernicious. The public sector is part of the infranstructure on which entrepreneurs rely in ways many of them don't even understand. IBEC are out of control - there is far too much emphasis on their perspective which in any case always comes down in favour of short term gains at the expense of long-term security. It's bizarre the influence they wield over government policy. To take one example that might surprise people - I was recently told by the head of a vocational education centre that FETAC (Further Education and Training Awards Council) have disbanded their inespectorate role and are devolving all the responsibilities for marking and maintaining training and educational standards to the centres themselves. This means that there is now no longer any independent means of controlling the standards of vocational education in any vocational centre in the country - and the reason it has happened is because IBEC specified that it should be like this so that businesses can be flexibile about what qualifications they might like prospective employees to have and what their own obligations to training them might have to be. There is no way this can be sold to the electorate as anything other than a dumbing down of the labour force. Where on earth can that possibly get us? It's near suicidal commercially in the long run. And very likely the thin end of the wedge for other sorts of second and third level education. There are serious questions around practices at certain universities already - lecturers marking their own students' work, grades being jacked up so that the record looks good etc etc.

And what has this all got to do with the price of fish - well the property crash anyway - it's just particularly illustrative of how atrociously Fianna Fail have wasted a golden opportunity - have completely fail to manage the opportunity that they had - by focusing so exclusively on one aspect of the management of the economy. Even last week Ahern was claiming that there was a 'demand' for 6,000 new houses. But there are 210,000 empty houses in the country! It just jobs for the boys again, isnt it? Dont'w worry guys, I'll see you alright. Somebody needs to take him to one side and explain that, er, property development is not in fact the solution to ever problem the country faces. Besides, we might like to retain a field or two on which to be able to have a picnic or remind ourselves what countryside actually looked like.

[cooperation]

Maybe not. but i think the rael question is, Are we haeding for a property crash? why? and what will this laed too?