Ha - Property Inception !
In future we don’t have direct links to their previous predictions, just links *within *links *within *links, just to emphasise how repetitively incorrect they have become.
Or maybe it’s just a dream of mine 
On my list for most detested form of bullshit, the inference that the statement is balanced or some analysis of real world situation has taken place
Read…
[Theres never been a better time to buy]… but thats probably because of… [insert nonsensical note of caution here taking care not to highlight any actual reason to be cautious]
Maybe they’re working on the assumption that people have short memories and will only remember their most recent soundbite. Was McWilliams not advising people not to buy and calling the bursting of the bubble since 1999. 8 years of being wrong doesn’t seem to have hurt him. What about Lucey? In 2006 did he not say prices would continue to increase for a few years before the soft landing happened? That doesn’t seem to have hurt him too much either.
At some point someone calling the bottom will be right and they’ll be hailed the new guru.
Look, I have no problem with the IAVI or anyone else calling the bottom, it’s a free world and the IAVI is as free as anyone else to be wrong as many times as they want.
But what I do object to is the IAVI continuing to get away with calling itself an ‘institute’, as if its pronouncements are somehow linked to detailed scientific analysis, backed up by heavy duty mathematical research proving why the bottom is in.
Where are the trade descriptions people when you need them?
Or can any pinster offer one single reason why or how the IAVI can seriously claim to be an institute?
Around that time the FF government commissioned Bacon to report (actually they did 3 times) on the property market - we can only assume because they felt it represented a threat!?
Much of what Bacon reported & suggested was ignored but they had to be seen to do something so sometime in 2001 (I think - going from memory here) eventually FF government removed the tax relief on the interest of investment properties. By December 2001 property prices had fallen (by 5% if my memory serves).
But with an election coming in 2002 FF could not have this - who then would pay for their campaign if not the developers!? … so they reversed this tax relief decision, sent McCreevy, who’d introduced it, off to Europe and then proceed to support & inflame in every way possible the property bubble.
So McWilliams was correct by 2001 - but he continued to say that government policy was driving a bubble that would be the ruin of the country which has turned out to be true again. I think after 2002 he stopped putting dates to this crash just that it would happen and the longer it took the worse it would be.
I think it is disingenuous to say he was wrong for 8 years… he was correct all the time it just took 5 years (2002-2007) to actually prove it.
Had the FF government moved to cool the property markets in 1997-2000 we might have gained from our previous years of real growth in the 90s. Most of what happened post 2000 was fake… simple borrowed future earnings.
He answers this very question here - scroll down the article to the first 2 comments.
When prices fall back to levels last seen in the early 90’s will he have been right or wrong ?
Nonsense, I’m not saying he was wrong when he pointed to a bubble forming, I’m saying he was repeatedly wrong when year after year after year he told us it was about to burst. He said it was about to burst in 99, he said it was about to burst in 2000, he said it was about to burst in 2001. As GA points out, in 2002 he decided it was probably best to stop putting dates to it.
But property prices did start to fall in 2001! It wasn’t allowed to actually burst as we then saw just how far the FF government would go to ensure the happy feeling of the boom lasted at least until the election in 2002. I suspect he stopped saying when after 2002 because it was no longer a free market place and with government intervention to support the bubble who could say when it would finally end. But it was certain it would end.
According to Deparment of Environment they increased by 5%-10%
for the whole year… but prices had begun to fall and the FF government acted to stop it because as I mentioned there were elections in 2002.
I am sure there must be details somewhere on the web but a little googling found me this article from 2002
archives.tcm.ie/irishexaminer/20 … y25280.asp
So you see here that in Feb 2002 property price changes turned positive for the first time since Aug 2001. Of course there had been a big slow down in most of 2001 as prices had been increasing by 20% YoY since FF came to power. So there was a big slowdown with prices eventually turning negative in August and that continued until FF changed direction and indicated to the market that they would do what was required to ensure the bubble would continue… at least until the 2002 election!
That article mentions a
which I think supports my view.
Property prices did actually fall in the 1st 6 months of 2001. We bought then after selling and six months renting and ended up getting our house for well below asking, due to the plateauing in prices that year. They took off again soon afterwards, of course, and the rest is history. Prices around here will be back to 2001 levels by next year at the latest. The debate over whether 97-2001 was real growth and the bubble was 2001-2007 is over. We’re nearly at 2001 prices now and the unwind to 1997 prices can then commence. It was all a mirage.
If people like us are staring at neg.eq. 10 years after buying then anyone who bought in the noughties at all is going to end up under water. An amazing collapse. Thank you IAVI, Fianna Fáil and all the inbred morons who ever voted for them.
Bottom my arse.