But…but…but I thought we had turned the corner?
Hmm, let’s see, someone loses job in late 2007, gets MIRS until late 2008, gets 6 months moratorium from bank until mid 2009, struggles on bravely for a few months but eventually hits the wall and is up 3 months or more in arrears and cant pay. Alternatively, can’t pay since late 2008 but bank has fudged the numbers by capitalising interest etc and only now, in the face of a new financial regulator, have to report the truth.
Either way, could this be the start of mortgage repossessions? And while I’m not completely insensitive to those who have lost or are about to lose their homes, if this process had happened in 2008 it would not have made the “pain” in the parlance of those times significantly worse but now we would be over the hump and might have a possibility of starting a recovery.
As it is, if arrears are going to increase from here on, it looks like a whole other wave of “pain”, bank bailouts etc.
We have indeed…about 4 of them in fact, but they were all left-handers which means we’ve just gone round the block and ended up further back the same street that we started from.
Life’s a bitch like that when you’re walking in a strange environment, and you have a shit sense of direction !
Amongst the people who will be losing their homes in some cases will be tenants in investment properties.
I foresee this being a major problem as people liquidate those before they liquidate PPRs.
I wonder will this be a problem or will it mean more of in inconvenience followed by cheaper renting? If the bank forecloses on an investment property, it eventually goes to a new owner who pays a more realistic price it will eventually reappear as at a more ralistic rental. Somewaht simplistic maybe, but the way the market should work.
Its the empties stupidos. The empties.
Thanks Bertie 
yes , a particularly vomit-inducing editorial…
taxpayers money has been used inequitably before so its ok to do it again etc etc
so many cringe worthy points that I dont have time to list them all…
Looks like it’s starting to sink in that this is not just a 2yr blip and the indebted simply will not be able to get back on track after their mortgage ‘holidays’
No amount of bigging up the recovery is going to change the fact that a massive amount of people will never be able to pay back what they owe, at least in any sort of reasonable time frame
Which lends all sorts of credence to the argument that many thousands of mortgages sold in Ireland over the last six years were mis-sold.
Its hard to argue that people only have themselves to blame when the entire politcal, banking and regulatory system conspired to allow these products to be sold to the public.
Can you produce a definition of “mis-sold” that meets mortgages in Ireland from 2003-2010 but doesn’t meet any situation where someone ends up being unable to repay their debt?
Was every mortgage mis-sold in that time period? Is everyone entitled to just walk away from the debt or do you have a particular type of person in mind?
Nobody has said people have “only” themselves to blame simply that they’re responsible for their own actions and the obligations they themselves took on.
But the reason that something like the Irish property bubble could exist is not so much because things were missold - I mean it has to be obvious that taking on a debt of 8 times your salary is very risky without being told this - it’s that people wanted to be missold to. Even now, people are still more in tune with the banks that will give them more money rather than less.
I know people seem to think that affordability is based on the monthly repayment - but that’s sort of variable. You have to relate the principle to your salary. 8 times. Eight years of work and no food you’re borrowing. Then add on the interest.
I honestly believe that people focussed too much on the monthly payment to measure affordability rather than how the cost related to their earning power over all.
I’m not going to buy misselling. People were positively demanding these huge mortgages. Sure the banks shouldn’t have been handing them out but that’s a matter for the regulators now. Meanwhile, if people are claiming they didn’t understand that 8=10 times their salary was a huge amount of money, what am I supposed to believe? There’s an element of responsibility here that it seems to me everyone wants to abdicate.
Absolutely nothing has changed. One half of the population blames Lehman’s and the other half blame “the banks”. Both halves want to know where their NAMA is.
During the boom people simply didn’t want to hear about reality. They elected politicians who told them anything but reality and took as much money as the banks would give them.
I’m happy to put the proper blame where it belongs and there’s more than enough to go around. I’m not prepared to victimise the Irish population and suggest they’re subservient to the Irish government or the banking system, they’re responsible for what they do.
Ah lets not get into this too much. Im on the record and I presume you are on this topic.
In effect, what Im saying is that such was the failure of the state to prevent the property bubble, and such was its scale, that it was inevitable that many mortgage products available during this time should never have been allowed to be sold.
This is a very different thing to “mis-sold”.
If you go into a shop and the guy knowingly sells you a TV as being high definition but it isn’t then it was mis-sold.
If you think owning a HDTV will make you enjoy movies more but after buying one you discover they don’t then sure you can be annoyed at “the media” for making you think that was true but you’re an adult whose suppose to be able to make his own decisions. You can’t go back to the shop and demand a refund on that basis.
You definitely don’t get to keep the TV for free which is what a lot of people seem to be hoping.
Not really the right analogy as regards the not mis-sold (I agree that the term is used incorrectly).
It would be more like the HDTV turns your brain to chicken noodle soup, but because the HDTV regulator says it’s fine all the TV shops say, feck it, let’s sell them so.
edit: mis-regulated might be a better term… unfortunately, where does that leave responsibility?