So, reading the IT on Thursday and the SBP at the weekend it appears the line now being pushed is that there is a chronic housing shortage.
Ronan from Savills is pushing the “only 10k units left and they are all in outlying parishes so buy quick” - no mention of the merrion gates development or the stalled building (eg next to Purty Kitchen).
I was even chatting to a taxi driver (it must be true) whose “friend of a friend” was an estate agent and claims there is no stock out there.
Whilst in DL I crossed the road to DNG - two windows full of overpriced houses.
So, is there a shortage of properties or a shortage of saleable properties (right price for the market).
Everyone seems on a “second coming” of the bubble type buzz.
Over the years similarities with Japanese culture have been noted. However I’m pretty sure falling on your own sword is not one of them, the general taxpayer is called upon for that.
Speaking of Japan. Their property market has been on a downward curve since 1991. I wonder how many times the media there suggested “there’s never been a better time to buy” in the last 20 years or so…
You’d swear that once a house was bought, it vanished in a puff of smoke, done, dusted and never to appear on the market ever again. Apparently people don’t move, emigrate or even die anymore.
You’d swear there was no unfinished buildings in Dublin. You’d swear there was no more building land in Dublin. You’d swear there wasn’t ghost estates within a 40 minute commute of Dublin. You’d be forgiven for thinking the country wasn’t bankrupt with the IMF installed to run our economy having bailed us out. You might have forgotten that more than 10% of mortgages are in serious arrears, there’s been hardly any repossessions, and there’s changes to personal insolvency legislation coming down the line.
Well, it’s a tried and trusted approach of the property market. It worked well in creating and fueling the bubble, the majority of property buyers during the bubble years never bothered to check the property stats and merrily belived the hype/mis-information put around that there was a real shortage, when in fact, from about 2004 there wasn’t.
Yes there will be very local supply/demand imbalances, but they will be at an individual ‘area’ level, nothing more, while overall in the Irish property market, it will be a very, very long time before any property buyer has to worry about a supply side shortage. By a long time I mean, the next batch of buyers that could potentially face such a problem haven’t even started secondary school yet, and even at that, such a problem could only exist if no new properties were built, no additional emigration continued, with the trend reversing and the existing home owners stopped dying.
I’d caution against too much belief that ‘its all bollox’, even though it probably is.
Here in the UK the policy of ultra-low interest rates and moratorium on repos has been successful.
Its like an action movie; the market was a falling lift and jamming a crowbar into the mechanism has prevented it plummeting to the ground. But what now?
How does the analogy continue? Will the mortgagees be rescued? Will they fall to their doom?
What normally happens in these movies? I’m not sure.
One thing I do know is that the situation doesnt suddenly just rectify itself and the people continue, unencumbered and unscathed, with their journey.
Neither does the lift just do an about turn and start moving upwards again.
Now in the UK the policy of QE seems to be the preferred solution.
In movie terms this involves leaving the lift where it is and lifting the whole building up.
Thus, the people in the lift are brought safely to the ground floor yet remain 30 stories up.
Not much of a movie, is it?
Still though, the lift has been stopped.
Do not underestimate the pure emotion felt by those in the lift; fear this time, not greed, but equally as powerful.
They will believe anything and go with anything that will save them no matter how outlandish and expensive it seems to those on the outside.
Naturally, once they are certain they wont plummet to the bottom they begin to plot how they can get back to the top, whos to blame and why arent more resources being put into their rescue. They have no perspective. How can they, they’re inside a dangling lift?
The media will continue to report this cliffhanger but only for the benefit of those on the inside.
The aim is to gain support for those ‘poor souls’ trapped inside.
How callous would you have to be to want these people to die?
Get your back into it! Get working! That building wont lift itself!
It doesn’t matter what industry you are looking at. People who have careers are based off transaction activity in a particular product will ALWAYS have a positive angle to view that product from. They have to, otherwise work gets pretty depressing!!
Over time, after years of being wrong, they get more creative. The old blarney starts to lack any credibility as Joe Public becomes more wise
Its all about trying to stay one-step ahead. If activity picks up in February, jump all over it, ring up every newspaper in town and try to scare people. If VAT levels increase, why not bring that out as a positive for the market by assuming the ‘break-even’ rate to build a home is now higher. I guess some kind of London Olympics spillover effect will be jumped on pretty soon as summer approaches!
Its not just an Irish thing. Saw in a paper at the weekend some blurb about Chelsea maybe moving to Twickenham having a positive uplift in Twickenham property prices (which have lagged Central London massively). Really? Residents are going to love the increased traffic chaos, the people spilling out drunk from the pubs after games (homes games are much more frequent than a rugby international). If u asked me I would have thought it was more of a positive for Fulham prices as the area becomes more family friendly (but I guess thats for a Fulham EA to argue!)
In the end, every argument has two sides. Generally the more creative one has to be to support the thesis, reflects a lack of substance
I am neutral here as can see the SCD market bottoming very soon. However, it did seem for a while there homes in SCD were getting a bit more scarce. Then in the last 2 weeks I cant help but notice about 7 homes in DL/Monkstown turn up in the 1m+ bracket just like that. Thats alot of supply to chew through in that area. Maybe they are all sold next month…who knows!
The house next to mine in a very desirable part of SCD has been on the market for 2years - they haven’t had a For Sale sign up in 2.
To the posters here who have been voting [hope]/[relief]/[optimism] on the polls consistently for the last couple of years while saying a rosary for the boom to return, let me just say my opinion is:
I was pointed to this site when I was about to buy a 3rd house in 2006.
I was absolutely shocked to read about the oversupply. That’s right. OVERsupply.
This in turn convinced me to sell my two houses.
Nothing has changed since, and while I am one of the people that could buy a house in cash…it won’t be for a while yet, if ever.
The Japan analogy, Landlord, while it might seem ‘crazy’ to you, is that when a bubble bursts it’s burst. And no ammount of wishful thinking can stop it.
