Housing Bubble Bursting

nesf

Shane&#8482 wrote:

The severity of drops may be localised, but just as on the way up, in the case of a fall there will be a knock on effect and all areas will be hit (if/when a drop occurs).

For instance if Navan prices fell by 20% the properties in Cobh will not look like such a good buy and may adjust to remain an alternative option.

I agree completely. I wasn't thinking in terms of "alternative options" but in terms of negative equity and things like that. Especially the effect on more rural areas that had a huge boom in population in the past decade and how a "not too bad" national picture could not seem like reality in a lot of places.

gurramok

gurramok wrote:

Have a look at the census data from April '06.

It quite specifically says that there are 40,000 unoccupied housing units in the Dublin city & suburbs(all council areas, that area with 1.045m peeps).

These are non-holiday homes, these are NOT temporarily absent by people, these are gaffs that the census guys got hard info from the neighbours that they have never been occupied.

To the man and woman on the street, not withstanding lack of occupancy due to movers/change of renters, most of these have been held by speculators, especially the ones in new apt blocks built during the boom.

Anyone living in a recently built apt block can verify the empty units lying idle for years.

I don't doubt your figures are correct but I have to point out something.
My father was a census enumerator last year. The enumerators called twice to any property that didn't answer on the first occasion.

If there happened to be a neighbour around, they asked if they knew if anyone was home - not "exactly hard evidence" of unoccupied property.
The third time they left the form in the door.
The majority of these homes looked lived-in, with cars in the drives and TVs going in the living rooms.

From my father's, and his group of enumerator's experience, there are a lot of non-nationals who were afraid to become involved in the census. They all had serious problems accessing apartment blocks also.

patrickolee

BlackIguana wrote:

Yes. But you KNOW (because you know the monthly data) that this puts a positive spin on things . At this stage reporting 'past 12 months' figures disguises the rise and then the fall (which looks like marking the beginning of a 'house price crash' IMO).

It is very hard to put a positive spin on these latest months data. But they're trying...........

Yes I accept that it is putting a positive spin on it by choosing a longer period to analyse the rise/fall. The point is that annualising the 0.8 fall into a 9.189 yearly figure, is just as much negative spin.

SimpleSam06

patrickolee wrote:

The point is that annualising the 0.8 fall into a 9.189 yearly figure, is just as much negative spin.

Nope, only if you take the monthly figures as discrete units, they aren't. You have to look at the trend. Its a vector, not a line, and the vector is heading south.

SimpleSam06

SimpleSam06 wrote:

Nope, only if you take the monthly figures as discrete units, they aren't. You have to look at the trend. Its a vector, not a line, and the vector is heading south.

The point is that if it keeps up as is, and doesnt get any worse then thats the annualised %

Spin? What ? Lets have a reality check here all of us. Who thinks property is NOT overvalued, Massively?

Is an apartment in dublin really worth 400,000 plus etc etc

Its nuts. This crash is only starting to rear its head, its been a year since it started and its been 10 years in the making. These current drops are going to be tiny in comparison to whats going to happen.

We havent even had the expected thousands of layoffs in the construction industry yet. Wait until that happens.
This isnt spin its cold harsh reality. Like it or not.

gurramok

Deleted User wrote:

I don't doubt your figures are correct but I have to point out something.
My father was a census enumerator last year. The enumerators called twice to any property that didn't answer on the first occasion.

If there happened to be a neighbour around, they asked if they knew if anyone was home - not "exactly hard evidence" of unoccupied property.
The third time they left the form in the door.
The majority of these homes looked lived-in, with cars in the drives and TVs going in the living rooms.

From my father's, and his group of enumerator's experience, there are a lot of non-nationals who were afraid to become involved in the census. They all had serious problems accessing apartment blocks also.

These units i'm talking about are the unfurnished ones, not the ones stacked with living quarters.

At the time of the census results being released, the CSO themselves pointed out that their guys got hard info of neighbours and management companys especially in apt blocks about who if any were living in a housing unit.

That contradicts what your Dad has done, there were also threads by boardies involved in this at the time and they verified their line of work as above and as officially said by CSO to the media.

Now, a neighbour would know if a gaff has been lived in or not for years, they are not stupid people.

patrickolee

My sister was an enumerator co-ordinator. What she has told me, backs up what FavouriteSlave says. From my own experience, living in her area, I know my next door neighbours house was counted as 'unoccupied', even though i know two people live there, on social welfare/disability. They didn't want to be counted, for their own reasons. BTW, they are both Irish. I wouldn't read two much into the census unoccupied figures.

gurramok

patrickolee wrote:

My sister was an enumerator co-ordinator. What she has told me, backs up what FavouriteSlave says. From my own experience, living in her area, I know my next door neighbours house was counted as 'unoccupied', even though i know two people live there, on social welfare/disability. They didn't want to be counted, for their own reasons. BTW, they are both Irish. I wouldn't read two much into the census unoccupied figures.

Well, if thats believable, i dunno, its hearsay as CSO themselves contradict on what you say about how the enumerators did their jobs.

Fact is, there are many unoccupied units in Dublin and the major cities that were built during the boom and were there for speculative purposes.

How many we don't know the exact figure, we do know that there are thousands.
Some of these have recently found their way onto daft/myhome, just by looking at the photos one can tell that they are unfurnished and not just recently completed, they were lying idle for years(build year helps reaching this conclusion:))

There are empties in the Gasworks, Docks area(Mrs Gurramok is from that area) and there are empties in Meakstown as well for example.

patrickolee

gurramok wrote:

Well, if thats believable, i dunno, its hearsay as CSO themselves contradict on what you say about how the enumerators did their jobs.

No reason for me to lie.

gurramok wrote:

There are empties in the Gasworks, Docks area(Mrs Gurramok is from that area) and there are empties in Meakstown as well for example.

I'm not familiar with Meakstown but the docks/gasworks area I would believe. Just walking around there at lunch time and in the evening you can see most of the bustle is builder based. Glad I didn't buy of those apartments. Did look at one, nearly two and a half years ago. They were pretty expensive even without parking. Priced way over other similar properties, even at the time.

gurramok

gurramok wrote:

These units i'm talking about are the unfurnished ones, not the ones stacked with living quarters.

At the time of the census results being released, the CSO themselves pointed out that their guys got hard info of neighbours and management companys especially in apt blocks about who if any were living in a housing unit.

That doesn't prove that apartments were vacant. It means that many apartment residents did not respond to enumerator's calls, or return a completed census form.

gurramok wrote:

That contradicts what your Dad has done, there were also threads by boardies involved in this at the time and they verified their line of work as above and as officially said by CSO to the media.

I work in the media so I'm pretty much up on CSO press releases.

gurramok wrote:

Now, a neighbour would know if a gaff has been lived in or not for years, they are not stupid people.

The CSO doesn't base stats on what random neighbours say. The stats are based on completed census forms.

SimpleSam06

patrickolee wrote:

No reason for me to lie.

How do we know that?

iguana

gurramok wrote:

Now, a neighbour would know if a gaff has been lived in or not for years, they are not stupid people.

Depends on how long the neighbour has lived there though. I can't tell you who lived on my street 18 months ago because I didn't live there. And apartment blocks don't tend to have long-term residents.

I'd take both the census figures and the anecdotal evidence with a pinch of salt. But if even 1/3 of the empty figures are correct that is still enough housing in this country for 300k people, if we assume an average of 3 persons per property.

daveirl

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daveirl

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nesf

daveirl wrote:

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Do they use the same counting methods? If they don't it's very hard to compare figures with a lot of accuracy.

patrickolee

daveirl wrote:

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Wouldn't say that is a safe assumption. We have a fairly 'special' social welfare system.

daveirl

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daveirl

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patrickolee

daveirl wrote:

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To be honest I don't know. But I do know it's pretty bad over here.

nesf

daveirl wrote:

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No, it could be that what's an empty for us is "occupied" or otherwise classified in Britain.

Though I don't know exactly how they carry out their census so I can't give you a definite answer.

iguana

I'd imagine council tax plays a part in the calculation of empties in the UK. Here council tax is paid by the occupier if it's occupied or if it's empty the registered owner is billed for it, though they pay a lower rate.

miju

with regards to the census would it be fair to say that at the VERY most there is an error rate of 10%. if that WAS the case then theres still some 260,000 vacant houses out there

i mean you could even bring the error rate up to 50% and the number of vacant houses would still make most **** their pants. its nit picking in the extreme IMHO

TCollins

Deleted User wrote:

I don't doubt your figures are correct but I have to point out something.
My father was a census enumerator last year. The enumerators called twice to any property that didn't answer on the first occasion.

If there happened to be a neighbour around, they asked if they knew if anyone was home - not "exactly hard evidence" of unoccupied property.
The third time they left the form in the door.
The majority of these homes looked lived-in, with cars in the drives and TVs going in the living rooms.

From my father's, and his group of enumerator's experience, there are a lot of non-nationals who were afraid to become involved in the census. They all had serious problems accessing apartment blocks also.

My brother also was a census enumerator and more or less said the exact same thing to me. Also said he had to mark as unoccupied those apartments which were finished that were in newly finished developments but were not all occupied yet (which is a normal process when a development phase is realeased i'm told).

Said that there were a lot of people who said they had never seen their neighbours but thought that someone lived there because there was noise now and again. This was also marked as unoccupied because there was not certainty that the place was occupied.

I lived in an apt for two years before and never saw the next door neighbour ever. I just heard the door opening and closing every few days.

I live in Dublin and i cant say i've seen to many unnoccupied properties on my daily travels. But then i dont peer in the windows to see if there is furniture, so i cant say for sure.

Its half way through 2007 now. There has been a huge influx of immigrants since the census. Rents are sadly rising a lot. Both of these factors would say to me that an awful lot of empties would now be not empty.

I would have thought if there were lots of empties that they would now be rented because they are hard to sell, but im paying through the nose for rent still.

chump

We're sharing tales now are we?

Well in the apartment complex I live in there are unoccupied apartments. Been unoccupied for quite a while. And my father is a priest.

stepbar

A lot of them are unoccupied for tax reasons especially the section 23's.

A Random Walk

I've a friend living in Smithfield in one of the big apartment complexes. That place is new and is largely empty from what I can see, at night the place is a ghost town and many of the apartments have no lights on.

SimpleSam06

chump wrote:

Been unoccupied for quite a while. And my father is a priest.

Well my cousin Jim who was minister for construction a while back told me, in confidence mind you, that every house in Leitrim, is, on average, unoccupied.

Any chance we could drop the anecdotes and stick to the facts? Unless all of the doubters happen to have been out with every census enumerator over the last few years, your opinion of how well they did their job is fairly worthless.

stepbar

SimpleSam06 wrote:

Well my cousin Jim who was minister for construction a while back told me, in confidence mind you, that every house in Leitrim, is, on average, unoccupied.

Any chance we could drop the anecdotes and stick to the facts? Unless all of the doubters happen to have been out with every census enumerator over the last few years, your opinion of how well they did their job is fairly worthless.

Your cousin Jim mightened be too far wrong TBH. Damm section 23's :mad:

TCollins

SimpleSam06 wrote:

Well my cousin Jim who was minister for construction a while back told me, in confidence mind you, that every house in Leitrim, is, on average, unoccupied.

Any chance we could drop the anecdotes and stick to the facts? Unless all of the doubters happen to have been out with every census enumerator over the last few years, your opinion of how well they did their job is fairly worthless.

Talk about the pot and the kettle

You have no reason to believe me. But i dont really care.
You wouldnt believe me anyway even if i introduced you to my bro. Even if you yourself were a census enumerator i think you would start making the stats up to cover your side of the coin.
I've never seen anyone in any forum so polarised and ignorant of the facts than yourself.
Im sure others have noticed this too.

SimpleSam06

TCollins wrote:

I've never seen anyone in any forum so polarised and ignorant of the facts than yourself.

I find the last resort of the desperate, when their back is against the wall, is personal abuse. Rather than sinking to that level and dragging everyone else down with it, post reported.

If you have any facts, feel free to post them, and I'll be delighted to discuss them.