€900 for a week? Ouch.
I thought the whole point of going self-catering was to pay less than you would for a hotel.
For a decent 4 bed house in Kerry/West Cork - in fact all up the west coast, you would expect to pay that in July/August.
This year we noticed the price falling alright, but that’s about the going rate.
Lots of holiday home pseudo-investments available to rent at the moment, nothing like enough demand to fill them - and with the owners feeling pressure through rising interest rates and unable to sell, they’ve started discounting rents.
The entire west coast is like this.
If water started coming out of the light socket I would be out of there immediately and demanding my money back. At that rate you wouldn’t know what might be live in the house. Sometimes I wonder if these examples are made up and the writer doesn’t think through the consequences or if it is actually true.
All true. Having steam from piping hot water coming from the toilet bowl when you flush, has happened on quite a few new developments.
Outside drains are also a particular problem, often overlooked when doing snag lists, pipes at the wrong gradient, openings that allow vermin to enter, pipes that go to dead ends, pipes that get busted by heavy loads during construction.
Tip: very often builders leave some minor defects for the person doing the snag list to find, otherwise the person doing the snagging has to go look for actual defects in order to justify their fee to the client, these might be more expensive for the builders to fix!
Surely having hot water in your toilet is the ultimate in sophisticated living?
I knew some guys living in a house in Drumcondra where a hopeless landlord’s DIY had done this.
Apart from steamcleaning your particulars not being the most pleasant experience, it wasn’t too nice to be having a shower when the bog was flushed. You ended up with high pitched screams from two different people in pain.
Without a shadow of doubt it was the worst house I ever crashed in during college. It seemed to defy the laws of physics by remaining colder than the outside at all times. I used to slag the lads in the house that they should sub-let it out to Larry Goodman so he could store Intervention Beef in it.
The Admiral’s Potato trick. Happens all the time in the bespoke software field.
What prey tell is the Admiral’s Potato trick 
The Admiral’s Potato
Once upon a time, the Captain of the newest ship in the Navy heard a rumour that a high-ranking Admiral would arrive the next day on a “surprise inspection”. So he gathered his men, reminded them that the Admiral in question had an evil reputation for ordering mass floggings and keel-haulings, and told them to get to work to make the ship the finest, cleanest tall fighting ship on all the seven seas.
Just before dawn he gathered the men together again and asked how stood the work. The First Mate replied “Don’t you fear Cap’n, all is in readiness. The sails are clean, starched and neatly furled, ropes and hawsers well coiled and stored, the cannons are gleaming, the bilges spotless, the deck polished and waxed, every man jack of the crew clean-shaven and sober. She’s the finest, cleanest ship ever afloat, and not even that Admiral can find a single fault”.
The Captain was quiet for a moment, then softly spoke.
“Get ye down to the galley man, and go through the stores, and find me the largest, ugliest, most muck-clad potato ye can lay yer eyes on”
The First Mate, much puzzled but well aware his Captain was a wise and far-sighted leader, did as he was bid, and soon returned with huge deformed half-rotted foul spud, all wormy mud and trailing roots.
The Captain smiled. “Excellent man, good work. Now I want ye to take yon vile spud, and set it in plain view upon the wheeldeck”
“But the Admiral will see it! He’ll be angry, he’ll yell at us, he’ll put us all on half-rations for a week!”
“Exactly,” said the Captain " and in so doing, and finding such a lapse, he will be see that his trip here was justified, and go home again well content"
Obama gave a great speech on John McCains attitude to wealth, housing and how much money you need to be rich.
It centred around some comment McCain made about Americans being able to comforably afford their homes and live good lifestyles, while also saying he though you need an income of $5,000,000 to be well off.
Someone then asked how many houses McCain owned himself, and he said he didn’t know. Then McCains advisors were asked, and they said more than 4. Further research discovered the correct answer was 7.
Obama rips the piss out of him for claiming to understand the fears of ordinary Americans in the credit crunch when he’s so out of touch, and when he doesn’t even know how many houses he owns.
The speech is on youtube, but I don’t have access to look it up now.
I think underneath the veneer of American politics, it is a great article about revulsion reaching the BTL market. Starting with the bit that is most in danger - the investment holiday home. The YM family went for a week to Kerry and paid the aforementioned price for a cottage. It pissed down most of the week. Kerry is lovely, most of the people are friendly, but with two small children wanting to play on the beach, there is not much you can do. And, aside from the accommodation, it is hugely expensive for sub-standard fare - whether that be ‘attractions’ or more particularly food (this is where I get to the unfriendly bit - I don’t feel that being royally ripped off for poor service and a sub-standard lasagne is particularly friendly).
Here’s ONE aspect of the property market I can speculate about and be very confident I’ll be proved right…renting a holiday home in Ireland will DRAMATICALLY go out of fashion in 2009.
Why? Exorbiant cost, atrocious weather (2 consecutive summers), rip off food and drink prices etc etc.
This reminds me of a phrase issued to me by a builder:
“Sure Sand is Grand!”
as he laid sewage pipes to the back of a house that my father was building. Luckily I was there for that part of it and arranged proper stone and got the pipe sloped correctly for proper flow otherwise the sewage would have been stagnating in a dead end.
Througout most of the building industry the guys who care generally receive a lot of abuse from those who couldn’t car. There is a widespread tolerance in Ireland of bad buidling standards. Even if people see something they oftentimes are unwilling to complain directly to the person involved. If they do they often get abuse back. It’s won’t be too soon to see a proper education being served to some of the more illicit builders who’ve been practicing during the last 12 years.
I wish I had you optimism, but as I’ve mentioned on this board before I have some personal experience from the 80s & that suggests that its the cowboys will survive, because they’ll just revert to the black economy way of doing things, no insurance, no PRSI, cash in hand.
They’ll always be the lowest cost & people will use them.
As our bubble demonstrates, the Irish know the Price of everything, but the Cost of nothing !