My name is Christine Bohan and I’m a journalist with the Sunday Tribune.
I’m working on an article for this Sunday’s paper about the downturn in the economy, and one part of the article is looking at the property crash. It will look at how the real picture about the property market was (and is) being obfuscated by VIs and the impact that this has had on people.
For the piece, I’m looking to speak to a couple of people:
Someone who bought a house at the peak of the boom and is now facing negative equity/unable to sell out or trade up.
Someone who is looking to buy a house and is either a) having a hard time getting mortgage approval or alternatively b) sees this as the perfect time to buy a house.
If anyone is interested in talking to me for the piece it would only take a few minutes and could be done either by phone or by email, whichever is handiest.
And slightly off-topic: I know that journalists trawling the site looking for participants isn’t always appreciated (I’ve read the Ken O’Conor Prime Time thread!), especially when it’s their only post. I asked Open Window for permission before I posted this just to make sure it was ok, and I’m also posting the same thing over on boards.ie where I’m a moderator (just in case anyone sees the same thread over there too). So I guess that’s just to say that I’m prepared for any/all flaming:)
So if anyone is interested, PM me or email me at: christine.bohan@gmail.com and I’ll get back to you immediately.
Be careful, Ken could be lurking. Nice approach, I hope you find someone. Try Askaboutmoney perhaps, there’ll be few enough people here who fell into the trap of buying at the top or who think now is a good time to buy, but in AAM land house prices only ever go up. Weddingsonline forum is another good place to look I would suspect, they’re typically mad to “get on the ladder” at all costs.
All part of the cycle, denial is over when we get journalists tripping over themselves looking for stories about couples in negative equity, unwittingly playing their part in the cycle and moving the public onto the next stage of the cycle, fear.
Could Ken be busy baking bread and preparing fresh pots of coffee or has he sold that house of his yet??? Presumably he has if the tribune are preparing to write articles like the planned one.
I like this new, ‘print and be damned’ spirit that has swept over the Irish media of late. (Ahem now that advertising revenues from agents and developers have dropped off.) But still the more the merrier.
But you notice they are all jumping on the negative equity bandwagon after the event, there are none of them projecting what the situation is going to be like in 2009/2010. Yet the writing is on the wall for those who want to look.
Now, now GB it would be very easy to miss a fcucking humongous speculative asset bubble that will cause untold misery and define this nations future for a generation, if you were tied up in editorial meetings and various luncheons.
You need to add a third type of person to that list of yours - the FTB who would like to purchase a home but knows that they would be commiting financial suicide & therefore will not touch the current market . This should be a pretty large category by this point i would imagine & there views would offer you a true reflection of the market.
That would be the Neo-Canny-McSavvy a 70’s child with a hefty deposit hybridized with the electric wisdom of internet forums & watcher sites and this time its PERSONAL!
I am a Neo-Canny-McSavvy a 60’s child with a hefty deposit hybridized with the electric wisdom of internet forums & watcher sites and this time its PERSONAL!
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This highlights a major deficiency in the Irish media, we get no analysis from people of the calibre of Alistair Cooke who could put the events of the present in context and explain what is happening and the likely outcome. I always liked his letter from America program.
Now having said that, thanks to the internet communications revolution I am able to access a huge variety of opinion and fact from a wider world of very knowledgeable people, some of which I present here, but, most people in Ireland don’t get time to do this and they get thrown to the wolves as a result of dishonest and bad analysis, this has been the most shameful conduct on the part of the media during the boom.
