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Love of Australia or fear of what's happening at home
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Only been here a few months and Australia seems to be flying, though with the mass emigration to Australia that will follow Irelands recent news and people flocking from all over Europe to here do you think Oz will end up where Ireland is in 4-5 years?. There is hardly enough jobs to go around?.
Just looking at the property market over here it looks to mimic Ireland 3-4 years ago?. Surely it has to go bust at some stage!.
I don't understand how someone can buy a 1 bed apartment in Sydney for 1.5 - 2 million and then expect to make a return on it charging $600 a week rent. Like if you get a mortgage THAT big and you are getting 30 odd grand in rent a year, how the hell do you pay off the mortgage?
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Only been here a few months and Australia seems to be flying, though with the mass emigration to Australia that will follow Irelands recent news and people flocking from all over Europe to here do you think Oz will end up where Ireland is in 4-5 years?. There is hardly enough jobs to go around?.
Aus has a pretty controlled migration program that operates on a sliding scale. certain no. of visas per year per type of visa. Most skilled programs can be shut down or seriously curtailed at a moments notice. This happened to a certain extent already with the wait time being put on skilled independent and the cancellation of some already in the systemJust looking at the property market over here it looks to mimic Ireland 3-4 years ago?. Surely it has to go bust at some stage!.
I don't understand how someone can buy a 1 bed apartment in Sydney for 1.5 - 2 million and then expect to make a return on it charging $600 a week rent. Like if you get a mortgage THAT big and you are getting 30 odd grand in rent a year, how the hell do you pay off the mortgage?
You dont - negative gearing and they are usually an investment purchase. I think for the whole the million dollar one bed unit is rare. Say top end $600K but there are all sorts of reasons people will do it. Outside the boutique areas though you are correct they will get hit and historically do in 7 yr cycles - 4 yrs up 3 yrs down or no growth . Certain areas, in my 16 yr experience, are nearly ring fenced. Stagnent prices are a bigger fear for these areas and most are already paid off so a loss on a sale can be used to the vendors own end.0 -
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Only been here a few months and Australia seems to be flying, though with the mass emigration to Australia that will follow Irelands recent news and people flocking from all over Europe to here do you think Oz will end up where Ireland is in 4-5 years?. There is hardly enough jobs to go around?.
Just looking at the property market over here it looks to mimic Ireland 3-4 years ago?. Surely it has to go bust at some stage!.
I don't understand how someone can buy a 1 bed apartment in Sydney for 1.5 - 2 million and then expect to make a return on it charging $600 a week rent. Like if you get a mortgage THAT big and you are getting 30 odd grand in rent a year, how the hell do you pay off the mortgage?
for one, the aussies are delighted with the immigration of qualified talented young people. Ireland might not care that thousands of its best are leaving in droves but Australia is welcoming us english speakers with open arms. They still pay thousands for residents to have kids and want to increase the population not decrease it.
Construction activity at the moment I would argue is hardly sustainable in Oz, neither are house prices. The banks however are very tightly regulated as the GFC proved, there wont be an Anglo style collapse (though I'd like to know how vunerable the Aussie banks are to the European bonds market which I would argue is on the verge of collapse). The raising of interest rates by the banks was welcome really last week despite the hollering from the property supplement heavy media (sound familiar..), hopefully this has the affect of cooling down house prices. As long as the construction activity is mainly infrastructure based e.g. water, rail, roads, airports etc then things should be fine. Be aware everyone that noone is forcing you to buy a house so dont do it. There are other ways to make money.
Still though long term even if the Chinese demand for iron ore etc decreases they still have the minerals in the ground for a rainy day for another 200 years or more. The major cities are all in need of urban renewal, if they wanted to kickstart construction down the road they could offer tax breaks to do up places like bondi road which are dumps frankly. While Kevin Rudd's plan for a 'big Australia' has been watered down all evidence is that construction activity will increase even more before falling.
If 80k people do apply for WHV this year then its not really a problem, in previous years backpackers came with BOI type loans "when we start making it you do to...." and boozed around Oz for the year no problem. The Aussies are actually worried about their tourist numbers with the strong A$ so I cant see too much opposition to the WHV programme. The WHV is only for a year anyway - maybe they will start checking more for proof of funds but I doubt it. Things are different now I guess as more of us use the WHV are a step into resident visas. The skilled occupation list was stripped down a good bit last year (solicitors got the boot), they will continue to strip this down if the job market demands it. As mentioned by others a sponsored visa gives you 28 days notice if your employers lets you go. If things begin to quieten down all the Aussie govt needs to do is tighten these regulations. But yes I must start getting my 175 application moving, that 28 days notice to leave is some risk to be carrying.
All evidence is though that for the short term any visa tightening isnt likely to occur - there is a huge shortage of tradespeople and particularly engineers in the country. There is a movement now for a fast tracked visa for those industries in urgent demand, they are talking about reducing the timeframe for trades from 4 years training to 18 months. Irish people since they are English speaking, generally educated and hardworking and bound to travel and spend money all around Oz will continue to be in demand here imo.0 -
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While horses starve and people work without wages, a village near Cork in the south of Ireland reportedly lost 30 men last weekend, all headed to England and Australia. Lucy Carne examines how the fallout of a collapsing economy in the Emerald Isles is forcing thousands to seek greener pastures.
"There are people who have beautiful houses and a car but no food. All their spare cash goes on the mortgage" 'We need some luck right here, luck and a miracle," the young restaurant owner says.
Luck is big for the Irish, but as the nation struggles to keep its head above water in a whirlpool of record unemployment, deficit and a disintegrated property market, any luck has long been washed away.
On a Saturday night in a plush Limerick restaurant in the nation's southwest, the room is empty but for a table of two tourists.
The glossy menus have been put in storage, replaced with typed pieces of paper offering just three simple meals.
"We couldn't keep up with the costs of buying all the produce," the young owner says. "No one is eating at restaurants. We can't even pay our staff. They're just working for nothing now in the hope money comes in soon."
In Cork in the south, horses are starving to death.
More than 20,000 horses have been dumped this year, many dying from hunger on golf courses outside the city or so emaciated they must be put down.
For this nation of horse lovers, whose people own the highest number of the animals per capita in Europe, horses were the first to be bought as a sign of wealth in the boom and the first to be scrapped when the sudden slump arrived.
In the capital, Dublin, the new poor are swarming to food banks and shelters. Two years ago the Capuchin Day Centre fed 250 people a night. Today they must serve warm meals for 520.
"There are people who have beautiful houses and a car but no food," the centre's Theresa Dolan says. "All their spare cash goes on the mortgage."
The land of the smiling eyes was dubbed the Celtic Tiger for emulating Asia with its impressive financial growth thanks mainly to foreign investment, particularly from the technology giants Dell and Google.
Three years later and the Irish Republic is in a ruin of empty-pockets and barren banks.
Unemployment went from 4 per cent to 14 per cent. House values dropped 60 per cent.
The burst property bubble left the banks infected with bad loans, forcing the Government to prop them up. And in the final gaping wound, Ireland this year ran a budget deficit equivalent to 32 per cent of its E200 billion GDP.
Signs of shakiness emerged in September when Ireland's Central Statistics Office announced gross domestic product dropped 1.2 per cent from the first three months of the year.
Forecasters were confused. It was meant to have grown at a 0.5 per cent rate, extending the brief Irish economy expansion seen earlier in the first quarter. The weaker than expected prognosis triggered the euro to drop and prices of Irish bonds to plummet.
But it wasn't until November 18 that deluded Ireland finally stopped insisting it was fine.
After the Irish Government tried to hold up the banks, they became responsible for all the banks' debts, which were unfortunately several times more the economy's output. Foreign investors became nervous and started pulling their money out of the banks, losses grew, and politicians started sweating.
With the bitter aftertaste of Greece's financial collapse earlier this year still lingering, the European Union governments became highly agitated with Ireland's instability. Ultimately it was the European Union which pushed Ireland into admitting it was in crisis and to accept a bailout.
Last Sunday they agreed on an E85 billion rescue package to contain the fallout and show
the Euro-sceptics they could handle any problems.
Irish Prime Minister Brian Cowen also last week outlined a desperate austerity plan involving E15 billion of cuts to state spending, reducing the minimum wage, axing 25,000 jobs and hopefully earning an extra E1.9 billion from raised tax.
"This is not a rescue plan," prominent commentator Fintan O'Toole said during mass protests last Saturday. "It is the longest ransom note in history: do what we tell you and you may, in time, get your country back."
With a third of the population aged under 25 out of work, the tough, some say unrealistic, measures in the rescue plan are predicted to push people out, particularly young people.
"The younger generations have all grown up thinking its normal to be loaded," a 28-year-old Dublin TV presenter, who asked not to be named, said. "We need to realise there is nothing normal in a family owning three houses.
"The Depression has set it. We really know we're in trouble, the worst we've seen in our lifetime."
As University College Dublin professor Declan Kiberd said of the prevailing atmosphere: "Nobody knows what will happen next - not even our leaders.
"We walk as a community in darkness down a strangely unfamiliar road, into a new landscape for which there are no maps."
The Irish have a history of stoic survival. When a crisis hits, they flee. During the Potato Famine in the mid-1800s, more than one million Irish left their homeland.
Between 2010 and 2015 more than 200,000 Irish will emigrate, Ireland's Economic and Social Research Institute said.
The exodus will mainly be young people to Australia, New Zealand and England, according to the research body.
Australia has already had a taste of this exodus with a record jump in Irish migrants in the 12 months to June 30 this year. More than 3000 Irish people permanently migrated to Australia in that period, which was a 21.6 per cent increase on last year, according to the Department of Immigration.
In addition to the number of migrants is a "huge number" of working holidaymakers on temporary visas who "will switch and try to stay", according to Migration Expert senior Australian migration consultant Rebecca Matanle.
"Previously it was more positive and Irish people were attracted to Australia's lifestyle and climate," Ms Matanle said. "Now it is more driven by the fact that people feel they have no future. There are a lot of people in Ireland thinking "That's it, I'm done'."
One village near Cork in the south of Ireland reportedly lost 30 men last weekend all headed to England and Australia.
"Ireland needs young people with energy to take the country in a different course, but they are simply having to leave the country," Cork teacher Liam Young, 28, said.
Ireland's Shadow Minister on Foreign Affairs Sean Barrett said the skills drain was a massive failure that needs to be urgently corrected.
"I hate to think as a country we are not capable of looking after our people," the Irish Fine Gael politician told News Limited.
But while the bailout pushes people to cross borders in search of stability, the biggest concern is that it may knock over the debt dominoes of Europe.
On Monday, 24 hours after the bailout was announced, the euro dropped to a two-month low and the major European markets plummeted sharply.
The EU clearly has a tough job convincing the world it can handle its finances.
The major fear is the risk of financial contagion that Spain and Portugal will join Ireland and Greece to become the PIGS who have been too greedy in the EU trough.
Like Ireland, Spain and Portugal have overwrought finances coupled with high unemployment and unstable governments. Both are expected to raise their hands for bailouts soon.
Yields on Spanish and Portuguese long-term debts - an indicator of how much the market would charge to lend governments money - are trading near their highest levels since joining the eurozone in 1999.
This sends a loud message that the world's markets have unrelenting concerns the eurozone cannot handle its debt.
Whether they can prop each other up or the European house of cards tumbles, is still unknown, but it will take more than luck to see them through.
P52 of Sunday Telegraph0 -
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