Quote Originally Posted by Sailor View Post
The OP seems to be drawing a comparison between the potato and property. I can see what he is getting at but I think a more appropriate analogy would be between the potato and the excess availabilty of credit. Leading up to The Famine the ability of the potato to sustain a higher population than any other crop made the land more valuable. If you could support a family on a half-acre of potatoes then this resulted in the land having an inflated value over what it would have with a crop of cereal - so the amount of land remained the same ( apart from some reclamation in the West ) but the potato made it more valuable in terms of its ability to support a larger population. I would suggest that something similar happened over the past 10 years - the land area remained unchanged but its value was inflated because of the ready availability of credit both to developers and to the ordinary punter. So, the banks are still the people to blame !!!
what he said!!!