Current public sentiment towards the housing market?

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im sure the board of the irish times who live in their ivory towers in the leafy suburbs of south dublin and earn huge salaries and see the massive sums being paid for properties in their property section each week know how to judge good value ;) Pity they didnt ask their increasingly bearish economics commentator on the wisedom of the purchase.
 
soma said:
Anyone who has been watching the attitudes to property of the two main players in the Irish broadsheet market was able to put a very large 2+2 together this morning.

I think people will have noticed that the independent newspaper group's columnists & general articles have been getting increasingly bearish (including a very bearish collection of articles in the Sunday Independent a few weeks back) - whereas the Irish Times has remained largely silent with the exception of the tone their 'worth the investment?' series.

This morning we learn that the Irish Times has emerged as a potential buyer of www.myhome.ie - I was always wondering who was going to end up being the bagholder for that one.

If the I.T. does purchase myhome, I predict they will take such a bath on that one in the next few years, that it will threaten the financial viability of the paper itself.
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Well since The Independent contracted David McWilliams a few months ago it would be very contradictary of them to be anything but bearish.
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yawha said:
Well since The Independent contracted David McWilliams a few months ago it would be very contradictary of them to be anything but bearish.
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I thought he was on holidays!
 
yawha said:
Well since The Independent contracted David McWilliams a few months ago it would be very contradictary of them to be anything but bearish.
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In the article he writes "Now imagine the following scenario. Ireland's house prices are falling in tandem with the forecast slowing economy."

I think that that is what is happening now.
 
The talk of a soft landing which seems to be on many commentator's lips these.......is this possible? - what scenario will bring this about?
Surely a soft landing relies on people keeping their nerve?- if the investors stampede to offload -how can the landing be "soft".

Z
 
phoenix_n said:
I think that that is what is happening now.
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The economy isn't slowing! In fact it is growing at an extraordinary rate. Granted this is unsustainable and construction driven but it is erroneous to say it is currently slowing.

There is a predicted slowdown in 2008 and that sounds about right to me (both for a slowdown in the economy and a serious slide in house prices).
 
Zack said:
Surely a soft landing relies on people keeping their nerve?- if the investors stampede to offload -how can the landing be "soft".
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Worse than that, they are relying on altruism on the part of speculators. Namely, don't take your massive profit now, hold off and keep the prices stable. Form an orderly queue to sell and the prices won't drop etc.

So unlikely it is almost laughable. I'm very surprised (given their warnings in the past few years) that ESRI appear to support this theory too.
 
Room305, exactly,

Its utterly against human nature......we panic.
There will be no orderly queing by investors......in the fact of rising interest rates?!?!? -get rid of it.....now!
I mean c'mon.
 
I don't think the rates have risen enough yet to really start hurting. Like high prices at the pump, this situation is being treated as a temporary pain. Many people have simply fixed for a year or so and think we'll be back to an extremely low base rate by the time the fixed period runs out.

No doubt some people - especially those who have bought recently - will completely overextend themselves. Possibly to the point of not being able to afford repayments on their house. However, I doubt it will lead to a mass sell-off. Friends, family and the banks will all rally round to lend a helping hand.

After all, you'd be mad to sell wouldn't you?
 
Zack said:
The talk of a soft landing which seems to be on many commentator's lips these.......is this possible? - what scenario will bring this about?
Surely a soft landing relies on people keeping their nerve?- if the investors stampede to offload -how can the landing be "soft".

Z
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In California the term 'soft landing' seems to have been consigned to the rhetorical dustbin.

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-soft21jul21,1,3893046.story?coll=la-mininav-business&ctrack=1&cset=true

An alternative I read somewhere 'she's going to auger in'
 
room305 said:
I don't think the rates have risen enough yet to really start hurting.
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But dont forget where the hurt will happen first. As capital appreciation gains from property falls off (i doubt whether property bought yesterday would get the same price today) investors will leave the market. Prospective buyers will hold off waiting for prices to fall even further. So what will happen is that you will have people making mortgage repayments on negative equity properties. And that , rather than incremental rises in interest rates, will cause the real hurt.
 
Any estate agents on here? C'mon, let us know what you think? We won't bite! I say fair play to anyone who goes out to be an estate agent and takes full advantage of the situation - the fools who hand over the money without asking any questions deserve to learn the hard way.
 
CelloPoint said:
Any estate agents on here? C'mon, let us know what you think? We won't bite! I say fair play to anyone who goes out to be an estate agent and takes full advantage of the situation - the fools who hand over the money without asking any questions deserve to learn the hard way.
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I don’t think people are fools just because they buy houses, I think it’s a perfectly natural thing to do. There is another thread about how you should buy a house before starting a pension because of the seccurity of owning your own house. I don’t think people are fools for working hard and wanting to own their own homes. I certainly don’t think FTB don’t deserve it. Easy for people here to say that when most would already own their houses for years, not so easy if you are in the position of uncertainty of not knowing if they are going to continue to rise or not or for how long if you don’t own your own house.
 
CelloPoint said:
Any estate agents on here? C'mon, let us know what you think? We won't bite! I say fair play to anyone who goes out to be an estate agent and takes full advantage of the situation - the fools who hand over the money without asking any questions deserve to learn the hard way.
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One thing that would be very interesting is for all of us on this forum to reveal our true identities once it has been officially confirmed that the bubble has burst. I'm not saying one has to reveal ones name, but things like age, gender, educational qualifications, employment sector etc. etc. I think the resulsts will be very interesting.
 
SteelBlue05 said:
I mean how many estate agents have contractually agreed to use myhome.ie rather than who "owns" it.
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I would suspect that the main EA's (Sherry Fitz, DNG, Gunne) that have sold out will probably setup another website whenever their contract (if present) expires. That's a nice return.
 
phoenix_n said:
So what will happen is that you will have people making mortgage repayments on negative equity properties. And that , rather than incremental rises in interest rates, will cause the real hurt.
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I disagree. Sitting on negative equity isn't a whole lot of fun obviously and it may prevent you selling your house if you need to. However, once rates move into the 6-7% range, it will be coming up with the money to service the jumbo mortgage that will hurt the most.

However, it doesn't help that selling the house at this stage might be an impossible option at that stage because of negative equity.
 
jammacjam said:
I don’t think people are fools just because they buy houses, I think it’s a perfectly natural thing to do. There is another thread about how you should buy a house before starting a pension because of the seccurity of owning your own house. I don’t think people are fools for working hard and wanting to own their own homes. I certainly don’t think FTB don’t deserve it. Easy for people here to say that when most would already own their houses for years, not so easy if you are in the position of uncertainty of not knowing if they are going to continue to rise or not or for how long if you don’t own your own house.
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In most of europe its perfectly natural to rent,if your outlook on life is conditioned by your immediate surrounding then I think you need to broaden your horizons.
What dont FTB deserve?Nobody is physicaly forcing them to do anything,dont believe the hype or the media, they're out to make money ,not do you favours.
House prices keep rising because people keep buying them,if people did their homework and worked out whether houses were good value or not, using facts ,statistics,history,comparisons and basic common sense they would have stopped buying them a long time ago,the're not doing this and been driven by fear(of their own ignorance),this is foolishness en masse.
There is no external,mystical,uncontrollable force driving house prices up,its not like the weather.
You and everybody else's attitude and consequential action affects what happens.
I dont own my own house,I did but now rent,I didnt buy to make money, I have since cashed in and I feel very secure about my decision and I am financially better off.
 
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