Don’t have access to the Irish Times online, but the article says:
There is logic in there somewhere
Full article…
Bit selective with your quote there crashandburn… 
You could translate that latter paragraph as 80 percent of Irish property investors uninterested in buying investment properties in Ireland as prices are falling.
And with 61% of people in general in the camp that prices are going to fall by more than 5% this year than it’s a self fulfilling prophecy perhaps.
Umm…not really. It was the only part of the article which mentioed investors directly. But you made a good point - 20% willing to buy means 80% unwilling 
Then you should have titled this thread:
“Falling property prices will cause more investors to buy”
And not more people…
To my mind, investors are very distinct from ordinary people in the context of the bubble and how it was created and how it will play out from here.
In either case, both statements are complete bunk because there are significantly less people buying or investing now, so unless they are only referencing the last three months, it’s complete tosh to say “more”.
The market is at a virtual standstill compared to the heady days of 04/05 and first half of 06, so how can it be “more”? 
Investors or owner-occupiers, the article is drivel either way.
While owner occupiers can buy places a little cheaper than before, the availability of credit has and will drop far more - if they couldn’t buy by now, they can’t buy now, and if they didn’t buy by choice before now, they’re not about to get an attack of the stupids just when the market starts to correct in their favour (unless absolutely forced by personal circumstances etc).
For investors, it’s all about return, whether from capital or rent. If they’re looking at likely capital depreciation in the short term, they will need a massive rent yield to make up for that - to get a minimum ‘buy’ signal return of 6%, in a market where capital depreciation of 4% is a realistic (maybe even optimistic) possiblilty, they’d need rental yields of 10% - so a place renting for 1500 a month (thus 18K a year) would have to cost in the region of 180K (and that’s ignoring the costs of vacency and upkeep). Coming from a market which supported investment by capital appreciation alone on vacent properies, this is a massive shift - no sane investor will be buying propery in ireland until it bottoms out, or drops a long way.
Unfortunately, from talking to family & friends there are still a lot of insane ones out there.
Indeed jc, I could well believe it!!! 
Canny & Savvy have only departed the scene because of the ECB rate rises and finally some restraint entering into the hiterto dynamic lending practices.
It’s the banks that called the party off, they wanted to play for smaller stakes from here on in but are suddenly discovering they can’t have it both ways. The values of their IOUs are starting to slip because well, they were the ones that loaned the money in the first instance!
Unfortunately, it was not a epiphany of sudden financial acumen that caused investors to pull back from the market.
Would that it were so!
BoI research article in The Metro today Tuesday 28th August - page 2 if you have it.
This is why I believe we will not have the 60%+ price falls that other posters have said: I like to think of us as a religious cult when it comes to property: dead set for something despite any logic.
Not typing the full article but some points:
Not sure how prevents a correction of:
A market with the some of the world’s most expensive residential property
A market with some of the world’s most unaffordable housing
The EU’s most indebted country
A market with 15% vacant supply
i’d love to see the same survey when/if prices fall by 20%
While I agree with you crashandburn on the noted irrationality of Irish people in general to property, I’d make 2 comments.
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The Metro is a desperate publication which really fills its pages with any old garbage.
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The timing of all these surveys and the nature of the surveys in general is interesting. Who would have thought 2 years ago, you’d need all this research into the mindset of people buying property, essentially I see this as an increasingly desperate tactic trying to talk people down not from the ledge but the fence. They’re trying to pressure people into committing to property, to not question the cult of property. Whilst we are very much into the notion of being homeowners as a nation, certainly aspirationally even if the homeownership stats reveal us to be no different to the rest of Europe, we’ve also been at the mercy of a willing media that has constantly reinforced the idea and mantra that buying a home is your duty. It’s interesting stuff.
Last night, got the old: “Just buy a house” speech from my friends in the pub and got shut off from putting any of my position as to why I’m hanging back on the basis that they didn’t understand what I was saying.
These are reasonably intelligent successful people.
Am I a victim of paralysis by analysis or are they guilty of succumbing to the mantra?
Mind you, one couple was in receipt of a key worker loan in the UK to buy their first home one bedroom maisonette, the second fellow has been made an offer of an affordable house and is taking it up. 
The Fed studied several international property booms and found the following;
The Irish market will have to fly in the face of economic theory and international experience if the bust is not to follow the well worn path chartered by the Fed in this study.
Love that mindset - often feel I do this with way too many things. And you see those who analize nothing making a fortune around you
And some who play the lottery win. Most don’t.
Not if they can’t sell
Shocking amount of dust around at the moment, it’s so bad I can’t see ten yards 
that’s assuming that they want to buy houses.
there’s tons of equity around. most of it went into Eastern european two-bit developments.
There’s no investors to compete against the FTBs for up any shoddily build duplex outside the pale .
Foreclosures were very low in the US two years ago as well, even in subprime. This was largely because people could always sell or remortgage their way out of trouble, all thanks to a rising market.
While ireland was never this bad, i’m sure the same happened - those that did look like foreclosing got out. Thus the recent historic rates of foreclosure in ireland are meaningless.
Early days. Too early for a valid comparison.