House Market Weakening?

Status
Not open for further replies.
beattie said:
Austin Hughes
Click to expand...
Austin and that Dan fella from some bank who is equally media unshy and equally reluctant to countenance that any of their lending decisions are stupid are a double act that pisses me off. RTE allows them on to soundbite but because they advertise on RTE (unlike estate agents) they seem to be never questioned properly by anone , not George Lee live on air.

My name for the Dan and Austin media Double Act

" The Up and Up "
 
It's pretty real if you sell your house and pocket some wads of lovely cash!

However, if you don't sell then it is merely an aspirational figure based on a realistic assumption of what the market will currently bear. Until then only the debt you owe the bank is real.

Anyone else having trouble explaining such concepts to people? I'm trying to convince a friend to sell an investment apartment he owns. It's costing him nearly €600 a month on top of what he earns from rent, this figure will get worse over the next few months because he has an interest-only mortgage on it. Worse again, he has a number of debts and a hefty revenue bill to pay. If he sold, the capital gain could clear all his debts and put a few bob in the bank. Instead he labours on under this mountain of debt, convinced it is all worth it because his investment apartment is 'earning' him at least an extra €30k a year.

Symptomatic of the madness gripping the country, in his large circle of friends and acquaintances, I am the only one advising him to sell his property. Everyone else, including his parents, think he would be mad to do it.
 

Well your friend is right, given current house price inflation he is making a (nominal) return of €30k a year. He will no doubt reconsider his position once inflation eases, as will thousands of other 'investors' who will then seek to limit their exposure to the market. This is how a bubble works its speculative, not driven by fundamentals such as yields, or housing demand. Once the herd stops stampeding in one direction, its off stampeding in another (sometimes totally opposite) direction.
 
beattie said:
another guy from Trinity who I can't remember the name of (he was Russian so it isn't too easy to remember).
Click to expand...

Constantin Gurdgiev [broken link removed]

Was that NewsTalk 106? Is the audio archived for those of us living outside the pale? Looking forward to when NewsTalk goes nationwide.
 
gearoidmm said:
So much for the house market weakening - house price inflation is accelerating! Time to close the thread?

http://www.finfacts.com/irelandbusinessnews/publish/article_10006381.shtml
Click to expand...

House prices accelerating again in 2006 ?

I've been looking in the newspapers for the announcement that SAP and BMW are moving all operations to Ireland from Germany or Boeing is moving it's aircraft design and manufacture to Dublin or that we are becoming an export powerhouse or the new economy is taking off...

Couldn't find anything of the sort so guess it must just be the ol' reckless lending/ reckless borrowing thing again !
 

... i think i turning Japanense, turning Japanese, I really think so...
 
With the increase in price of second hand property, the net tax take should be WAY above any gov. estimates. I think we are beginning to see the traditional 5-7 year time by frame of yesta-years' baby boomers begining to trade up. This could increase properties in the FTB price bracket (if there is one) thus increasing supply of these starter homes. Which, in turn, could dampen peoples' ability to trade up.
 
There has already been a significant reduction in the number of FTBs applying for single morgages in the Dublin market with a matched increase in the number applying for mortgages in the commuter counties. This suggests that FTBs are now being priced out of the market in Dublin. (sorry, can't find the link).
 

Yes, while his nominal return is currently better than the cost of servicing all that debt it is not much more so. Also, while the price of his apartment may be increasing so is the cost of his debt. Selling the apartment and clearing his debt would give him a large risk-free return. The impossibility of predicting when the market will turn belies the confidence people seem to have in foreseeing any downturn. By the time someone finally shouts "quick, out of the pool!" it could already be too late. His gains on the apartment will have disappeared but his debt will still be there.

I've personally given up on convincing him otherwise and have resorted to simply hoping he doesn't get too badly burned.
 

"No warning can save a people determined to grow suddenly rich"
 
Maybe your friend is unaware of how quickly markets can turn.

A friend of mine is back home on holidays from California where he's lived for twenty years. He is selling his house there and moving to Austin, Texas. They've had a rising house market for a few years now. Three months ago he put his house on the market for 799,000 dollars. Since then the market has tanked and he'd dropped the price to 740,000 and spent 20,000 on new decking, kitchen etc. Still no offers. In three months it went from a bull sellers market to a buyers market; if you can find a buyer! His in-laws sold a smaller house right at the peak for 645,000 (just sheer luck) and now three months later similar properties are looking for around 520,000!

Of course he is stunned at the prices back here in Ireland. His new place in Austin is six bed, 3,000 sq. ft, with four communial pools and play areas. It cost him 250,000 dollars; that's about 199,000 euro.
 
It beggars belief the faith that some people have in the long-term health of the property market especially when many have little or no grasp of local or worldwide economic trends and potential pitfalls. I know of FTBs who are currently buying at very high prices and taking out variable rate mortgages at a time when rates are rising. Some were unable to tell me (a) the projected market outlook for ECB rates in the next 12 months or (b) how much their monthly repayments would rise given a further 1% rise in rates. Given the financial outlay for a FTB I find this lack of knowledge amazing in otherwise intelligent and successful people.

Maybe I'm worrying too much but when I read about economic developments both here and abroad it seems obvious to me that there is certainly potential for tougher times ahead in the coming years and I find it astounding how some people can brush these concerns aside when they are put to them for the first time especially vis a vis the future health of the Irish economy and property market.

Am I being overly pessimistic? Should I just go-with-the-flow and hope for the best as everyone else is? My head tells me no, but every now and again going against the prevailing thinking raises such doubts in my mind.

 
So the ESRI have stated today (news interview on Today FM), that even though the house prices have increased 7% for the 1st 5 months of this year....they are still expecting it to increase for the rest of the year..albeit at a lower level of increase ....to run at about 10% for the entire year.

ninsaga
 

I think the same thing periodically. Here is how I see the bear vs. bull arguments stack up:

Reasons why the property market is overvalued and likely to fall (Bear arguments)

1. Interest rates are rising so people's ability to fund increasing prices is diminishing rapidly and could go into reverse
2. Rent levels relative to purchase price (rents at 50% or less of purchase costs)
3. Irish price/income ratio for houses at the highest level in Europe (you can argue about this, but it is around 8-10x in Ireland when the long-run average is 3-5x)
4. Exotic loans becoming commonplace (IO, 35-year terms etc.)
5. 200,000+ empty properties (census figures)
6. Prices rising faster than incomes, gap financed by huge debt increase (Central Bank reporting almost 30% increase in debt levels annually)
7. Irish property now very expensive relative to international norms
8. Irish estate agents employ economists on their staff - this is astonishing - it would be laughed at in most other countries.

Reasons why it is undervalued and you should buy now (Bull arguments)

1. Celtic Tiger continuing to grow and we are getting richer (not really true as output growth is tracking population growth so the net wealth generated in the economy through productivity improvements is close to zero, and also we are starting to lose FDI jobs to Eastern Europe)
2. We've never had a crash in living memory (hard to disagree with this)
3. Demographics and immigration (but most immigration is to do property-related work, so it is linked)
4. Errrr...rent is dead money

So I think that the rational economic arguments point to some structural problems but the belief and mindset of the public at large is that it is a one-way bet and you should get in before it is too late. Most people shun the bearish view on the basis that "they've been saying this for years". So I expect prices to increase further in 2006.

However, when some of the rational economic effects take effect (and they will, very soon - some "investors" will not be able to fund IO mortgages on rental property doubling if the rent is static), you'll see some softening in the market. I think that will still take another 6-9 months to kick in and then we will see some interesting times ahead.

There's a good piece on the UK Motley Fool site on this - and they are concerned when the price/income ratio is at about 6 !!

[broken link removed]

Personally, I think Ireland will need a lot of pain to really understand that property is a not a one-way bet. It left a nasty mark in the UK and Japan - more of the same is coming here, I think.
 
Good summmary neffa

Neffa said:
3. Irish price/income ratio for houses at the highest level in Europe (you can argue about this, but it is around 8-10x in Ireland when the long-run average is 3-5x)
Click to expand...
The Irish long run average would also have been when mortgage interest rates were not atypically 10-15% . The current rate is about 3.75% .

As well as that the income tax grab was much higher so our take home is also higher. Thats why I never quote these long term averages because the euro and the governments solvency has changed these fundamentals in my opinion.

What the euro has not changed is the long term ratio betwen average house prices and average rents but I cannot find those figures...probably a state secret.


2. We've never had a crash in living memory (hard to disagree with this)
Click to expand...
The period 1981-1987 was a crash in stagflationary form. House prices totally froze while the inflation rate hit 20% at one stage . It was a drop in prices of 30% in real terms ...maybe more.

I lived then and I can remember it
 
Good post neffa, i think in the bearish arguments more points about the macroeconomic unsustainability of the irish economy should be made.
-Becoming uncompetitive, all manufacturing to leave here in next decade ot two
-overreliance on construction and foreign multinationals
-lack of a strong indigenous export sector
-tiny investment in r&d etc,poor innovation
-debt accelerating at 30% which means it more than doubles every 3 years!
-inflation erroding competitivness
-etc
-etc
 

yeah but when interest rates rose at 15% inflation was more so the real interest rate was negative! the inflation would eat away the mortgage in no time,theres no such levels of inflation to help todays ftb's! look at america where average prices are 5/6 times average earnings for a single person,in dublin the average wage is only 40k while average house is 400k ,ten times in dublin.
 
Am I right in thinking that the TSB/ESRI report for a particular month actually represents market activity (sale agreed prices) from a few months previous? If the figures are compiled from TSB data, it could relate to the mortgage drawdown date rather than deal strike prices for that month. So the reported growth for May represent deals done in Feb or March that are closing in May when the mortgage is drawn down.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Menu
Log in
Register