I wasn't actually...I said a crash in the property market could have dire consequences for some people.
You seemed to think this was a bizarre point of view. I still don't understand why?
Andy,
no one denies that a crash in the property market would have dire consequences for some people, in the same way that the skyrocketing market values have had direc consequences for some people. But your sympathy seems to be targetted only towards those who will lose in a crash, not those who have been aversely impacted by the rising market.
In and of itself, the fact that some people will be damaged is not a good reason to try to prevent a correction from happening. There is a simple problem: property is far too expensive for many people on above average incomes. Not just average incomes, but above average incomes. There are only two ways for this to adjust: either property prices come down or incomes go up. The latter will happen over IBEC's dead body. I know people who are earning less in real terms now than they were earning 5 years ago.
The economy is being seriously damaged and skewed by the property market at the moment. If some semblence of rationality does not return to that market then signally more people are going to get hurt in the long term.
The assumption on the part of those with their head buried in the sand about the reality of the property market - where people on 50KE a year can't afford to buy a one bedroomed apartment within 15km of the edge of Dublin city - appears to be that "you're trying to spoil it for us all". In truth, for many people it is spoilt at the moment but of course, because they don't own property, are not part of the property wealth pyramid, their opinions don't count, they're only whining because they can't get on the ladder.
As things stand, things in the Irish property market are bad now. It's easy to pretend they're not while people who own property are feeling rich, but there are a lot of people who do not own property, who would like to buy homes, not income generators, and who are priced out of the market. Whether you like it or not, their opinions count as much as those who have a massive mortgage but feel rich because their property has gone up 15% in the past 2 years or whatever. It will not change the fact that no matter what price you paid for your house, if you took out a mortgage of around 90% of the value of the house, it will still cost you double the price of the house.
Yes, a property crash would hurt some people. But in that way, it is not any different to a property bubble which has equally hurt more than a few people.