Housing Bubble Bursting

Afuera

nesf wrote:

Subscription only afaik. I get the paper version anyway.

Edit: Found one bit of it: http://www.economist.com/opinion/displaystory.cfm?story_id=9587517

There's more in the magazine itself.

Thanks.

SimpleSam06

Gurgle wrote:

Was there ever a time when a single person on an average wage could afford to buy a house by themselves?

I'll answer that with one word: "housewife". This was the standard occupation for the vast majority of women in Ireland until relatively recently. Prior to the 1990s, single breadwinners (and homeowners) in families were the norm. Of course with this new influx of salaried workers, the banks elected to expand lending criteria to thoroughly tear the arse off the property market.

Once those bright sparks in the banks click they can make more money lending mortgages to single individuals to purchase a house than they ever will by depending on couples, and with less risk, the balance will reassert itself.

Supercell

Gurgle wrote:

Was there ever a time when a single person on an average wage could afford to buy a house by themselves?

Absolutely they could.

The aul lad was a single earner in the civil service in the seventies and we were not rich by any means, yet I grew up in my younger years in a semi in Mount Merrion..not many single earner civil servants there these days..especially middle to lower level ones as he would have been in those days.

The problem is with many people these days is that they only have experience of housing in the last 10 years where it was always boom to the moon time. This was abnormal in a longer time perspective, many many people are just going to have to eventually realise this in the coming years.

TCollins

SimpleSam06 wrote:

I'll answer that with one word: "housewife". This was the standard occupation for the vast majority of women in Ireland until relatively recently. Prior to the 1990s, single breadwinners (and homeowners) in families were the norm.

Sad that those days are gone forever. Women wanted to work. They got what they wanted, which was great, but that single change to society was the killer inflationary event of the century. Housewives will never again be able to be just housewives and mothers. Most families nowadays require 2 wages. I dont see that changing in the near future at all.
The norm is to need two salaries to buy a house nowadays.

TCollins

TCollins wrote:

I dont see that changing in the near future at all.
The norm is to need two salaries to buy a house nowadays.

I agree - maybe it will overshoot down but when it settles I think dual wages will be the norm.

paulie.walnuts

My old man bought out house in the early 80's with just his wage (teacher so not loaded by any means) and my mother stayed home to mind the five of us children.
I think it's really sad that many mothers don't seem to have the choice to stay at home with the kids anymore and have to send them out to crèches or whatever.
I don’t think any career is more important than a mother being with her child during the first 5 or so preschool years. I’d live in the simplest house possible in the most unfashionable area and run a lime green 1990 fiesta to achieve this. Maybe I’m old fashioned and don’t get me wrong, not dissing working mothers as they have an extremely tough time of it.

Ryaller

TCollins wrote:

Sad that those days are gone forever. Women wanted to work. They got what they wanted, which was great, but that single change to society was the killer inflationary event of the century. Housewives will never again be able to be just housewives and mothers. Most families nowadays require 2 wages. I dont see that changing in the near future at all.
The norm is to need two salaries to buy a house nowadays.

Mum?... Is that you???

ronbyrne2005

The move of housewives into workforce is overplayed. Even in 80's/early 90's a high percentage of women of working age worked outside home part time or full time(something like 40%) and now its only around 70% .this doesnt equal anywhere near a doubling in income of average household. Plus when a mother goes to work costs of childcare and costs of working eat into the dual income.
I know loads of people who earned average wage and bought in nice areas in mid to late 1990's on a single wage as a FTB. People dont realise how mad it has got when a couple on above average salaries cant now buy as FTB's in such areas! This crash has long way to go . Prices are already down 10% since last year in my area which is good Dublin suburb a few km's from city centre with excellent infrastructure/amenties/private hospitals etc.

Just out of curiosity, what is the average wage? I don't believe it's particularly unusual for single people to buy homes by themselves.
I bought by myself in 2005, and was one of at least six people in my office who managed it that year.

I believe car loans, credit card debt and an inability to knuckle down and save has a bigger part to play, unless, of course, you're on really crap wages.

Edited to add: Back in 1970 when my parents bought their house only one wage COULD be taken into account for the mortgage. So dad lied and his boss 'added' a few quid to his salary. Mum was working too, but they lied about that.
So teling fibs to the bank isn't a 00 phenonemon!

chump

Deleted User wrote:

Just out of curiosity, what is the average wage? I don't believe it's particularly unusual for single people to buy homes by themselves.
I bought by myself in 2005, and was one of at least six people in my office who managed it that year.

I believe car loans, credit card debt and an inability to knuckle down and save has a bigger part to play, unless, of course, you're on really crap wages.

Edited to add: Back in 1970 when my parents bought their house only one wage COULD be taken into account for the mortgage. So dad lied and his boss 'added' a few quid to his salary. Mum was working too, but they lied about that.
So teling fibs to the bank isn't a 00 phenonemon!

Just out of curiosity where did you buy?
How much did it cost?

I believe the avg. industrial wage is ~ €32k
And a figure for average wage I saw somewhere was ~ €40k
Although there is no statistics on this in ireland. Only average wage in a partricular industry. http://www.cso.ie/statistics/earnings.htm


But you then must ask what is the average wage for a ftb (age bracket 25-35?) - significantly lower I'd imagine.

I would say that I think it is quite unusual for single people to buy a home as a ftb in dublin - from my experience of communicating with people.

chump

chump wrote:

I would say that I think it is quite unusual for single people to buy a home as a ftb in dublin - from my experience of communicating with people.

I know quite a few actually in that age bracket.
Their salaries would be better than the AIW though I'd say.Of 3 off the top of my head :
Ones a banker,the others a physio and the other is an engineer who has two properties now.
None of their parents would have been able to afford the deposits or remortgaged to help them either..
All 3 bought their properties in Dublin,though the engineers 2nd property is in the south of France.

SimpleSam06

TCollins wrote:

Most families nowadays require 2 wages. I dont see that changing in the near future at all. The norm is to need two salaries to buy a house nowadays.

That will change, and I'll tell you why it will change. The number of couples we'll say in this country is x. The number of married couples with stable relationships where both have jobs earning €30,000 to €35,000 per annum is a small, small percentage of x. Lets say for the sake of argument, a probably wildly overestimated 20% of x.

So you can sell mortgages to 20% of all of the couples out there. So in terms of cash, you are selling 40%, since its two mortgages for one couple.

But, you are now excluding 80% of your couples market, and 95% of your singles market from ever getting a mortgage. Not only does this crucify the fundamentals of the market completely (as we are now starting to witness), its plain thick in terms of sales.

Once prices fall to the stage where a single person can afford a reasonable home, you have now included the entirety of your market, and so can make many multiples of what you did when only married working couples could pay. You won't make the high numbers but you'll make a hell of a lot more numbers.

Its simple economic sense, and the banks will slowly but surely grasp it with their chubby little pink fingers.

Deleted User wrote:

Back in 1970 when my parents bought their house only one wage COULD be taken into account for the mortgage.

Bingo.

ronbyrne2005 wrote:

The move of housewives into workforce is overplayed. Even in 80's/early 90's a high percentage of women of working age worked outside home part time or full time(something like 40%) and now its only around 70% .

Have you got a link to support that? I found it quite difficult to find any hard facts on the matter, more or less just anecdotal evidence.

Imposter

Don't forget to also consider that wages in Ireland are quite high in comparison to other Eurozone countries. The rest of Europe will need to catch up or else Ireland is in for some major problems. But then with inflation running so high in Ireland how is that likely to happen!

chump

chump wrote:

Just out of curiosity where did you buy?
How much did it cost?

I believe the avg. industrial wage is ~ €32k
And a figure for average wage I saw somewhere was ~ €40k
Although there is no statistics on this in ireland. Only average wage in a partricular industry. http://www.cso.ie/statistics/earnings.htm


But you then must ask what is the average wage for a ftb (age bracket 25-35?) - significantly lower I'd imagine.

I would say that I think it is quite unusual for single people to buy a home as a ftb in dublin - from my experience of communicating with people.

I bought a three-bed semi in Dublin. I have a 70% mortgage on a 400,000 house.
I was a FTB at 28 years of age. Having said that, I earn substantially more than the average wage as quoted above.
But so do most of my mates, and they work in a variety of industries.

SimpleSam06

SimpleSam06 wrote:

That will change, and I'll tell you why it will change. The number of couples we'll say in this country is x. The number of married couples with stable relationships where both have jobs earning €30,000 to €35,000 per annum is a small, small percentage of x. Lets say for the sake of argument, a probably wildly overestimated 20% of x.

You really think so? Of all the married couples I know (quite a few!) I'd be sure there is a minimum of 65,000 euro coming into the house pre-tax, whether it be a single salary or with both working.
I'm not from a well-off background either, grew up in a working class area and would have pretty similar friends.

SimpleSam06

Deleted User wrote:

You really think so? Of all the married couples I know (quite a few!) I'd be sure there is a minimum of 65,000 euro coming into the house pre-tax, whether it be a single salary or with both working.
I'm not from a well-off background either, grew up in a working class area and would have pretty similar friends.

Anecdotes aren't really worth the pixels you read them on, to be honest. Heres a note about averages which I think is salient, however: If there are two men in a room, and one has two loaves of bread, the other none, on average they each have one loaf of bread. That doesn't help yerman with no bread, however.

A Dub in Glasgo

Forget average salary and think median instead.

I was offered a job in Dublin last year that paid €65k but I couldn't touch the standard of living I am used to over here as a single earner with a wife & kids to support. I decided not to accept the job.

gurramok

Fav slave & sceptics , 67% of the workforce earn under 34k p.a., that is the real fact from the budget.ie website.
The numbers of people in the workforce out there who have to be a couple and FTB to support the FTB side the of market just ain't there to buy that common starter 300k+ 1 bed apt.
Thats one reason why the bubble is bursting, its common economic sense.

Slydice

gurramok wrote:

67% of the workforce earn under 34k p.a., that is the real fact from the budget.ie website

I just went to http://www.budget.ie/ and it's a car rental website. Do you have the actual address?

http://www.budget.gov.ie/2007/downloads/TechnicalAnalysis.pdf

this is where he got that from I think!

The_Conductor

From today's Business Post:

A very public outburst by a well known US stock market commentator has fuelled concern there about dependence on the property market, echoing the situation in this country.

If you want to get a sense of the hysteria in US markets at the moment, you need look no further than the latest outburst from US stock market commentator Jim Cramer which can be viewed on YouTube, the video-sharing website.

Cramer, a co-founder of financial website TheStreet.com, is a former hedge fund boss best known for his straight-talking market commentary.

In what can only be described as a mad rant live on CNBC TV, Cramer slammed US investment bank Bear Stearns for speaking out about the problems its hedge funds were experiencing in the US sub-prime market, a move which he felt had added to the stock market woes in the United States.

But Cramer saved his real wrath for Ben Bernanke, chairman of the US Federal Reserve, whom he accused of not fully understanding how bad things are in the US markets.

A clearly enraged Cramer warned that about seven million people who took out mortgages at teaser rates (ie, cheap introductory rates) over the last three years were at risk of losing their homes now that interest rates have soared from historic lows of 1 per cent to the current rate of 5.25 per cent.

He said people were losing their jobs and their houses and that firms were going out of business while the Fed was asleep. He pleaded with Bernanke to cut interest rates and to relieve the pressure.

‘‘We have Armageddon in the fixed income markets,” he said. But Bernanke wasn’t listening or at least wasn’t heeding Cramer’s rant, judging by his decision last Tuesday to hold US interest rates at 5.25 per cent for the ninth straight month. He also failed to send out any firm signal that the Fed was contemplating easing interest rates any time soon.

It was a stark reminder to borrowers, lenders and investors that central banks won’t necessarily rush to the rescue when times get tough. The message from Bernanke is that he is prepared to allow consumers and businesses go to the wall in pursuit of his primary goal of keeping a lid on US inflation.

It is a lesson that we in Ireland are beginning to learn, as Jean Claude Trichet, president of the ECB, has been raising interest rates to keep inflation in the eurozone in check with potentially harmful effects for Irish borrowers.

The ECB rate currently stands at 4 per cent compared with a historic low of 2 per cent, while Trichet is widely expected to increase rates by a further quarter of 1 per cent in September.

It is true that interest rates here have not risen by anything like as much as in the US and that, while our property market has slowed, we haven’t seen anything like the carnage in the US housing and lending markets.

It is also true that some financial institutions remain reasonably optimistic about prospects for the Irish economy. The Bank of Ireland, for instance, recently published a bullish report telling us that we are the second wealthiest OECD country, based largely on the value of our residential property, a report which some observers may have found reassuring.

But international investors have been baling out of Irish shares in recent weeks, fearing that the Irish stock market is overexposed to financial and construction stocks, even as the housing market is slowing. They have learned their lesson in the US the hard way, and aren’t taking any chances on being burned again.

Meanwhile, many Irish analysts in recent weeks have taken a reality check and have been busy downgrading their forecasts both for the economy and for individual companies, while consumers are beginning to fret.

The consensus forecast for the Irish economy is now closer to 3.5 per cent growth next year, compared with 4.5 per cent previously.

Davy Stockbrokers, which has long been bearish on the Irish economy, has become noticeably more so. Last week, Davy economist Rossa White actually used the ‘‘r’’ word, when he talked of a ‘‘recession’’ in the Irish housing market.

Noting that the housing recession had not yet had much impact on economic growth, he nevertheless warned that the worst was yet to come.

White said housing starts were down about 40 per cent from their peak this time last year. He reckoned it would be another nine to 12 months before that fall in housing starts feeding through to lower employment and potentially softer wage inflation, which would affect consumer spending in 2008.

Over at Goodbody Stockbrokers, the picture painted by analysts was also grimmer than usual. Last weekend, it revised its growth forecast for next year from 3.5p er cent to 3.1 per cent, largely on the back of a cut in new home completions from 70,000 to 60,000. Fewer home completions mean fewer mortgages sold, fewer bricks required, and fewer household fittings.

Once that logic sank in, Goodbody slashed its earnings forecasts for many Irish companies, despite the fact that ‘‘the companies don’t agree with our stance’’.

With the notable exceptions of CRH and Kingspan, Goodbody has dramatically slashed its earnings-per-share forecasts for building material and construction companies. It has taken the scalpel to housebuilder Abbey, slashing its eps forecast by 18.7 per cent for 2008 and 14.5 per cent for 2009, and issuing a ‘‘reduce’’ recommendation on the share.

It has also cut its eps forecast for housebuilder McInerney by 17.5 per cent for 2008 and 9.3 per cent for 2009, and has reduced forecasts for building materials and DIY group Grafton by 8.9 per cent next year and 5.9 per cent in 2009. Meanwhile, the forecasts for sanitary ware maker Qualceram have been cut by 18.8 per cent for 2008 and 13.7 per cent for 2009.

Goodbody has reduced its eps forecasts for Anglo Irish Bank by 3.1 per cent for 2008 and 4.6 per cent the following year. It has also cut its forecasts for Bank of Ireland by 2.9 per cent for 2008 and 6.3 per cent for 2009. Other banks to have their eps forecasts cut include IFG and Irish Life & Permanent.

The analysts make the point that a lot of the downside risk has been factored into the share prices already. Even so, the scale of the downgrades in earnings forecasts is substantial, and tends to confirm that the fears of investors in recent weeks may well have been justified.

Meanwhile, consumers appear to be wising up to the implications of the downturn in the housing market, judging by the fact that the IIB and ESRI reported last week that the mood among consumers in July was the gloomiest for almost four years.

But we have yet to see Irish commentators so apparently worried about the state of the economy that they lose the rag on TV. If you want to know what that looks like - or if you just want to see something amusing - check out www.youtube.com/ watch?v=GKZgfrsItmw

chump

smccarrick wrote:

From today's Business Post:

A very public outburst by a well known US stock market commentator has fuelled concern there about dependence on the property market, echoing the situation in this country.

If you want to get a sense of the hysteria in US markets at the moment, you need look no further than the latest outburst from US stock market commentator Jim Cramer which can be viewed on YouTube, the video-sharing website.

Cramer, a co-founder of financial website TheStreet.com, is a former hedge fund boss best known for his straight-talking market commentary.

In what can only be described as a mad rant live on CNBC TV, Cramer slammed US investment bank Bear Stearns for speaking out about the problems its hedge funds were experiencing in the US sub-prime market, a move which he felt had added to the stock market woes in the United States.

But Cramer saved his real wrath for Ben Bernanke, chairman of the US Federal Reserve, whom he accused of not fully understanding how bad things are in the US markets.

A clearly enraged Cramer warned that about seven million people who took out mortgages at teaser rates (ie, cheap introductory rates) over the last three years were at risk of losing their homes now that interest rates have soared from historic lows of 1 per cent to the current rate of 5.25 per cent.

He said people were losing their jobs and their houses and that firms were going out of business while the Fed was asleep. He pleaded with Bernanke to cut interest rates and to relieve the pressure.

‘‘We have Armageddon in the fixed income markets,” he said. But Bernanke wasn’t listening or at least wasn’t heeding Cramer’s rant, judging by his decision last Tuesday to hold US interest rates at 5.25 per cent for the ninth straight month. He also failed to send out any firm signal that the Fed was contemplating easing interest rates any time soon.

It was a stark reminder to borrowers, lenders and investors that central banks won’t necessarily rush to the rescue when times get tough. The message from Bernanke is that he is prepared to allow consumers and businesses go to the wall in pursuit of his primary goal of keeping a lid on US inflation.

It is a lesson that we in Ireland are beginning to learn, as Jean Claude Trichet, president of the ECB, has been raising interest rates to keep inflation in the eurozone in check with potentially harmful effects for Irish borrowers.

The ECB rate currently stands at 4 per cent compared with a historic low of 2 per cent, while Trichet is widely expected to increase rates by a further quarter of 1 per cent in September.

I couldn't read any further than that

SkepticOne

This time moved to the front page of the Sindo.

Put your house on Bertie

So the biggest pyramid scheme of all time is coming undone. Someone had to call a halt to the madness. The sub-prime credit squeeze, which is at the heart of all this, was kind of an accident waiting to happen.

Essentially it seems that people were giving out mortgages to anyone. The people giving the high-risk mortgages didn't give a damn because they were selling on the debt to hedge funds.

Apparently the debt was ending up in situations where the guys who were buying it from financial institutions were borrowing money from those same financial institutions to buy the debt. Honestly, only financial people could really understand how it all made sense. Because it would seem loopy to you and me.

You and I know about money but these guys know about the real stuff, which is financial instruments, money that doesn't actually exist, notions of debt and money which are traded around the place with the guys who buy and sell it. It seems illogical to us, but these guys know the score.

They also knew we had to have a bust. That is one of the laws they cling to.

Since the start of the boom, they have been predicting and planning for the bust. There we were, happy in our ignorance, enjoying the boom, but the scientists knew better. Not only did they know, for example, that property prices had to go down at some stage, they actually did everything in their power to bring them down.

Again, you and I know nothing about these matters, but you and I, in our ignorance, would have said that property depreciation was not a good thing. The dismal scientists knew better. Apparently it is desirable for people's major asset to be depreciating in value. It makes you wonder if we're better off knowing nothing.

Because the stuff these guys know doesn't seem to be worth knowing.

Given that they have now wished us into this recession, we need to figure out how to handle it. When people start laying siege to the banks wanting to get their money out, and when there is unrest on the streets, you need strong leadership.

Strong leadership is, of course, a euphemism for dictatorship and luckily it just so happens that we had the foresight in the recent election to put a dictator in place. In the last two weeks Bertie Ahern has dispensed with the Cabinet and has taken charge of the situation. Cowen and the rest of them are on holidays and Bertie has basically been running everything directly from Parknasilla in a pair of runners and a golf jumper.

So the sky is possibly falling in, but don't worry. Bertie is on the case and the trains, at least, will be running on time.

chump

SkepticOne wrote:

This time moved to the front page of the Sindo.

Tell me that's the big man who wrote that?

funny how pathetic it is

Victor

ronbyrne2005 wrote:

The move of housewives into workforce is overplayed. Even in 80's/early 90's a high percentage of women of working age worked outside home part time or full time(something like 40%) and now its only around 70% .this doesnt equal anywhere near a doubling in income of average household. Plus when a mother goes to work costs of childcare and costs of working eat into the dual income.

Note that employment has gone from 1.2m to more than 2m and that average household size has dropped from over 4 to about 2.5.

ixoy

Deleted User wrote:

I bought a three-bed semi in Dublin. I have a 70% mortgage on a 400,000 house.
I was a FTB at 28 years of age. Having said that, I earn substantially more than the average wage as quoted above.
But so do most of my mates, and they work in a variety of industries.

Really? Because most people I know of our age (28 too) aren't earning anything like what I suspect your figures must be and we'd be spread over a number of industries as well. This is borne out by the reports quoted above, which keep make me wondering then how a FTB house at 300k, with current interest rates, can possibly be bought by a single-income on the average wage...

Hell even if they hit the 65k (combined or single), people would still be struggling to get mortgage approval for anything greater than the back-end of commutersville (assuming they didn't want to live on the breadline each day). It again doesn't seem sustainable for those attempting to find a footing for themselves.

nesf

ixoy wrote:

Hell even if they hit the 65k (combined or single), people would still be struggling to get mortgage approval for anything greater than the back-end of commutersville (assuming they didn't want to live on the breadline each day). It again doesn't seem sustainable for those attempting to find a footing for themselves.

Assuming they are/have to be in Dublin. It's a bit more realistic elsewhere, though still very high.

patrickolee

ixoy wrote:

Hell even if they hit the 65k (combined or single), people would still be struggling to get mortgage approval for anything greater than the back-end of commutersville (assuming they didn't want to live on the breadline each day). It again doesn't seem sustainable for those attempting to find a footing for themselves.

But it was always hard for anyone on an average or below average wage to get a house. Apart from a brief period in the late 90s to early 00s, when wages shot up. Maybe we've returned to normality?

digitally-yours

The QUALITY of the houses ! and the prices

More and more complaints are being received in my office about the pyrite infill disaster affecting new housing on the North Fringe in Baldoyle and Clongriffin. Residents in these and other Northside and Westside estates have been devastated to learn from Menolly Homes in recent weeks that a problem mineral called pyrite has been used in the floors and foundations of vast new estates. Young householders and mortgage payers are dismayed at this incredible development and there is extreme anxiety at the reconstruction and insurance implications of the news from Menollys.

Pyrite or iron pyrite was formerly known as "Fool's Gold" and is an iron sulphide which expands if it is exposed to air or water and reacts with oxygen and water to form sulphuric acid. Residents in Drynam Estate in Kinsealy were informed by Menolly Homes that many households would have to be re-housed for ten weeks while the ground floors of affected homes were excavated and removed down to a depth of three metres. Two weeks ago we learned that Menolly developments at The Coast Baldoyle and in Beauparc, Clongriffin were also being tested to see if a similar problem was emerging from the flooring infill used in new houses at those locations.

It has been reported in the media that the quarry which supplied the defective infill is located in Dublin 15 and is owned by the Irish Asphalt division of the Lagan Group. I have previously called for a full audit of the infill materials produced by this quarry including a detailed report on all housing and apartment developments and all other building projects in which it was used. It is reported for example that the Lagan Group was a partner company in the Dublin Port Tunnel. I have asked Acting Dublin City Manager Philip Maguire to confirm that no infill material from the quarry concerned was used in the Port Tunnel's construction.

A major problem with the investigation of this matter is that the Department of the Environment and the offices of the Dublin City and Fingal County Managers inform me that the implementation of the Building Regulations is "largely self-regulatory" - which seems to mean that there are no checks whatsoever by these three responsible public bodies. Likewise the invigilation of planning permissions (often for vast new urban projects) is often paltry or non-existent. Residents in The Coast, Baldoyle complain that they heard of the problem from the media and not from the developers who are still completely legally responsible for their estate. Many of them (often with very young children) are now facing moving out of their homes for two to three months and they are rightly demanding that their homes are efficiently and fully restored and that they are fully compensated for this unbelievable hassle.

I am grateful for the initial responses on this matter from Fingal County Manager David O'Connor and Acting City Manager Philip Maguire but Minister John Gormley has been conspicuously silent. Given the appalling implications for the lives of perhaps thousands of our constituents I am very disappointed that Minister Gormley has refused to take charge in this unprecedented disaster. He needs to order a full and urgent enquiry of this matter, ensure that a programme of testing and reconstruction is rolled out in affected estates (before developers build any new homes in these areas) and immediately order the closure of the affected quarry and the completion of a full tracing audit of the quarried material.

In Ontario, Canada an earlier occurrence of this problem led to company collapses and serious political fallout. Minister Gormley by his inaction may turn an extraordinarily serious problem into an economic and political crisis

http://www.labour.ie/press/listing/1185462153521733.html

It was in newspapers too over the weekend
I am sure the property companies are keeping it under the carpet so it dosent effect the already falling sales.

There are about 2500 appartments and houses waiting to be sold !:eek:


Legal Team ready to take on developers !!!!
http://www.lavellecoleman.ie/practice-areas/pyrite.asp

SimpleSam06

ixoy wrote:

which keep make me wondering then how a FTB house at 300k, with current interest rates, can possibly be bought by a single-income on the average wage...

Borderline criminal lending practices.

patrickolee wrote:

But it was always hard for anyone on an average or below average wage to get a house. Apart from a brief period in the late 90s to early 00s, when wages shot up. Maybe we've returned to normality?

We just spent the last three pages discussing that Patrick.