Current public sentiment towards the housing market?

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Can anyone convince me that a "major downturn" is NOT going to happen next year? I have been trying to convince family and friends to be prudent and get their finances in order to ensure they are not caught out - but sure enough they are not listening and that apartment in sunny beach in Bulgaria is just too tempting.

I seem to be on my own and am been ignored now by friends because I am too negative.

Someone convince me that Im being too negative and should spend,spend,spend like everyone else seems to be doing.

I know thats the problem with going against the grain!! I feel the exact same as that. But people dont want to hear the fundamental reasons why you should not buy now. They just think you are mad.

What do mean house prices are going to go down? Rent is dead money!! But you cant lose with property!! But I dont want to miss the out before its too late. But johnny down the road made a fortune with his house!! blah blah!!

The media, banks and EA's have everybody brainwashed in this country. Thats why it might take a bit longer for a crash to kick in. It is going to be so hard for most people to drop their asking price. They just wont understand the fact that the reason nobody is buying their house is because it is too expensive. They will struggle on for months giving out that nobody is coming to view it before they will drop the price. Sure property doesnt go down in value!!! Thats insane!!!!
 
is that why you were so interested in the IT's rationale for buying MyHome.ie, then?

No. I'm fascinated by the juxtaposition between the IT's coverage of a manic speculative market driven by ignorance and blind greed. And their self-appointed role as Ireland's quality newspaper, which would suggest a degree of aloof high mindedness. I loathe hypocrisy.
 
As the sentiment looks like it's now pegged firmly in the slowdown/crash side, I propose a new question: How far do you think things will fall?

There are three elements to that:

1) Assuming an over-reaction, what do you think a likely percentage fall is?
2) What sort of fall would return prices to sound fundamentals?
3) What time frame are we looking at for hitting the bottom, and then to the return to "correct" prices.

I bought in 2001. Since then, my property has gone up almost 100%. As far as I can see, none of that was merited, but the price I paid in 2001 seems like a reasonable price -- comparing it to what it would likely rent for.

I can see falls of 50% (bringing it back to what I consider a fair price) happening in the next 2-3 years. I doubt it'll fall quicker than that, but I could be wrong.
 
Here's another significant drop, this is the second time the asking price has been dropped on this one in Sutton:

Original Price: €835,000


New Price: €750,000
[broken link removed]=

It was at €795,000 for a few months in between.
 
I can see falls of 50% (bringing it back to what I consider a fair price) happening in the next 2-3 years. I doubt it'll fall quicker than that, but I could be wrong.
People seem to be dismissing the idea of 50% falls, but I agree with you that it's more than possible. If you accept the notion that rents versus purchase price is the housing equivalent of a P/E ratio, to return us to our long term average "housing P/E ratio" in Dublin would require a fall of at least 50%.
 
As the sentiment looks like it's now pegged firmly in the slowdown/crash side, I propose a new question: How far do you think things will fall?

How long is a piece of string? I'm assuming a correction of between 10%-30% of the next three to four years in nominal terms. That will be a 50% correction or more in real terms. Once things bottom out it is unlikely we'll see double digit growth in houses again for quite some time.
 
I can see falls of 50% (bringing it back to what I consider a fair price) happening in the next 2-3 years. I doubt it'll fall quicker than that, but I could be wrong.
I agree, 50% seems about right, although not in all areas. Some of the more "optimistically" priced properties could fall even further, while for good locations you might be looking at 20-30% dropoffs. This time next year the dust should be clearing, I reckon.
 
As the sentiment looks like it's now pegged firmly in the slowdown/crash side, I propose a new question: How far do you think things will fall?

There are three elements to that:

1) Assuming an over-reaction, what do you think a likely percentage fall is?
2) What sort of fall would return prices to sound fundamentals?
3) What time frame are we looking at for hitting the bottom, and then to the return to "correct" prices.

I bought in 2001. Since then, my property has gone up almost 100%. As far as I can see, none of that was merited, but the price I paid in 2001 seems like a reasonable price -- comparing it to what it would likely rent for.

I can see falls of 50% (bringing it back to what I consider a fair price) happening in the next 2-3 years. I doubt it'll fall quicker than that, but I could be wrong.

Net Yields on investment property in the 2-3% range at present. I estimate that they will rise to 7-8% over the next couple of years. (still low by historic standards) Oversupply, a sharp global slowdown and rising unemployment will play a part, a credit squeeze and emigration by guest workers and natives will add to the the markets woes. So a drop of approx 50% over several years.
 
Since i think i called the crash here first i am going to reiterate again my figure of a fall.

40% by xmas. Main Dublin market with the obvious exceptions. (i.e. leafy surburbs)
 
Since i think i called the crash here first i am going to reiterate again my figure of a fall.

40% by xmas. Main Dublin market with the obvious exceptions. (i.e. leafy surburbs)

Can see 40% eventually, but not by Christmas.

I know you've justified this before by saying that the 40% drop would take a few more months beyond Christmas to materialise, but I think the rest of us consider a 40% drop to have occurred when houses are actually sold for 40% less than their neighbours and not just when buyers would like/expect to buy them for 40% less but the sellers just haven't revised their expectations yet.
 
Personally I think even rents relative to salaries in comparison with other European countries are high. Coupled with the fact that a slowdown would result in unemployment, and less immigration and possibly even emigration I can foresee rents falling in real terms in the future.
So while I think that property prices should be 50% of what they currently are to be in line with current rents, I could foresee a fall in property prices above this - maybe 60-65% though obviously this would play out over 12-15 years.
At the same time, considering Irish people's love of property it might only fall to 50%.
 
I know thats the problem with going against the grain!! I feel the exact same as that. But people dont want to hear the fundamental reasons why you should not buy now. They just think you are mad.

What do mean house prices are going to go down? Rent is dead money!! But you cant lose with property!! But I dont want to miss the out before its too late. But johnny down the road made a fortune with his house!! blah blah!!

The media, banks and EA's have everybody brainwashed in this country. Thats why it might take a bit longer for a crash to kick in. It is going to be so hard for most people to drop their asking price. They just wont understand the fact that the reason nobody is buying their house is because it is too expensive. They will struggle on for months giving out that nobody is coming to view it before they will drop the price. Sure property doesnt go down in value!!! Thats insane!!!!

I seem to merge 2 topics to one to be honest and maybe that why Im seen as negative. I firmly believe that the property market built this country to the insane levels of debt its finds itself in, but I also this the property market will bring the people in this country to their knees and into a dark place for a term of at least 5+ years.

I think we will have huge job losses and it will all stem from the downturn in property. When I discuss this with people, they think Im mad and just think everything will either stay the same or just grow a bit slower.

Im trying to be positive (because my wife is sick of me going on about it), but I just think the country and its people are out of control and we have dark days ahead. This thread is really about how are live's are going to change for the worse over the next few years.
 
Here's another significant drop, this is the second time the asking price has been dropped on this one in Sutton:

Original Price: €835,000


New Price: €750,000
[broken link removed]=

It was at €795,000 for a few months in between.

This is something that really annoys me with Estate Agents.

This house is acutally in Kilbarrack not Sutton. Kilbarrack, Coolock, Donaghmede and Bayside have all disappeared over the last 5+ years. They've become Raheny and Sutton. Same with areas of Killester, Marino and all of Dollymount becoming Clontarf

Wonder how long they'll continute to get away with this in a falling market. They should be brought to book for false advertising at the very least.
 
This thread is really about how are live's are going to change for the worse over the next few years.
Well its an ill wind in fairness. Some businesses will do well, others will utterly collapse. How would you go about crash-proofing yourself (if this really is the last gasp)?
 
Since i think i called the crash here first i am going to reiterate again my figure of a fall.

40% by xmas. Main Dublin market with the obvious exceptions. (i.e. leafy surburbs)

Not sure by Christmas, but there's definitely room for 40% drops over the next 8/9 months - especially for 'stressed vendors' in 2Pac's (RIP) Back of Ballivor areas. But people who paid up for houses in desirable (to them) locations will likely just take the pain of IR hikes rather than realise losses - also must consider that anyone who bought even 18mths ago can probably take a 30% fall in the 'paper' value of their home.

My barometer is the following:
[broken link removed]=
Went on sale (private treaty) back at the start of July (bad timing) asking €1.65mio. Sat there all summer. Now it's being auctioned on 3rd Oct - AMV €1.65mio. Let's see what happens.......
 
Just to put a little bit more perspective on this discussion.

My aunt lived in Calgary during the 1980s property crash. She was chatting to me recently about the madness in Ireland and shares similar views to me.

We are re-living history here in Ireland. The young people my age have never experienced hard times, let alone mediocre times, and we're all expected to be wearing prada shoes now.

Calgary's economy was heavily dependent on the oil industry: In Ireland, I believe our equivalent oil industry is US FDI, the US economy, and the oil well of money that is German pension funds (borrowed at exceptionally low interest rates).

Anyway, here's the article below. Even the Canadians didn't learn from the hard lessons of the 1980s - greed is a funny thing.

http://www.calgarysun.com/cgi-bin/publish.cgi'p=129737&x=articles&s=lifestyle
Calgary Sun said:
Home prices are going through the roof in Calgary.

HAMMERED ... So you're going to buy a newly built home and quickly flip it for profit' Hold your horses! Experts say the desire to make easy money by buying and selling property is often a ticket to bankruptcy.

The average house price is now above $300,000 and we're closing in on Toronto. So rapid is the rise, the term real estate doesn't seem relevant any more? Unreal Estate is more fitting. In the Calgary Sun's five-part special series on residential realty, we're profiling this red-hot market. We'll examine where the market is and where it's going and we'll provide tips on buying and selling. As well, readers will gain insights on the pros and cons of the current home realty scene. Today, we look at how times can change on a dime.

The headlines of the day promised Calgary's good times would always roll.

But with the turn of the decade, homeowners in the city were heading into the 1980s' perfect storm of economic trouble.

And with the current housing boom, both economists and those who lived through the last bust are offering the following advice: Sure, be optimistic, but also be careful with your cash.

'We learned the hard way,' says Al Westman, whose former company B&H Homes was one of the casualties when the bottom fell out of Alberta's economy in the 1980s.

'There was literally hundreds and hundreds of houses on the market lower than we could build them at.'

High corporate debt, runaway inflation and interest rates soaring near 20% ' coupled with the then-federal government's National Energy Program ' led to massive layoffs and home and business foreclosures across the province as activity in the oilpatch ground to a halt.

And while he's quick to point out it's unlikely we'll be crashing into an economic iceberg anytime soon in Wild Rose Country, Mike Percy, a University of Alberta professor who specializes in energy issues and the area's economy, says slowdowns are a fact of life.

Our economy, though now more diverse, is also still largely dependent on energy prices, he says.

'Inevitably, there's going to be a recession ' the business cycle is not dead,' says Percy, adding all it would take is a major incident in the U.S. or China.

'When it's going to be and its severity is hard to predict ... in the absence of those types of things we can't control, the economic fundamentals look pretty good, but one has to be aware there is still going to be a turning point.'

Bank of Canada brass has indicated if inflation remains in the 2% range, any interest rate hikes should remain modest.

But even a minimal increase would hurt with city home prices currently rocketing through the roof.

In February, the average home in Calgary went for $304,560.

Assuming a downpayment of $30,400, or 10%, and 25 years amortization, monthly property payments at 6% are about $1,754, but at 8% that would rise to $2,092 and a 12% rate would cost $2,829.

In 1981, when many mortgages were a whopping 21%, owning that same house would have set you back about $4,600 a month.

Former Calgarian Brian Norton says he remembers buying a 2,100-sq.-ft. house in the Woodlands area in December 1979 and being stuck paying rates close to that when he renewed his mortgage a year later.

'At the end of that year, our rates went through the roof,' says Norton, adding mortgages had previously been closer to 12%.

'For several years, all we did was struggle to make those payments and we ran up a bunch of debts.'

Adding insult to the injury of his $2,000-a-month housing bill was the fact property values plunged because the cost of borrowing meant many people couldn't afford to buy ' and many of those who did defaulted and faced foreclosure.

'We couldn't have sold it and even got enough to pay the mortgage,' says Norton, now 66 and practising law in Kelowna.

'We were on a pretty tight budget then.'

About the same time, others, such as Elsie and Peter Moore, found $4,000 added to the price of their $74,000 Whitehorn-area honeymoon home literally overnight.

'There was just no way we could afford that,' recalls Elsie Moore.

When the then-newlyweds made their story public, another developer came to their rescue, offering to build them another house at the original price, and Moore says they were then able to weather the storm.

'The house wasn't built for five months after we got married, so
we lived with Pete's parents, but it
all turned out in the end,' Moore says.

'I just thought if we don't sell it, we're not going to lose anything so just hang onto it and hope things get better ' and they eventually did.'

Like the Moores, those who carefully control their finances will probably survive any future downturns, but those swimming in red ink hoping things will get even better will probably drown financially, Percy warns.

'Buying houses to flip and make quick profits in anticipation of ever-increasing housing prices is a ticket to bankruptcy in the longer term,' says Percy.

'They will get burned ' it's only a question of when, not if.'


Builders who balance their books well should also stay afloat, says Westman, who's now 78 and went on to help found his son Jay's firm, Jayman MasterBuilt.

'Today, nobody's carrying anybody's credit ... everybody pays their bills on time,' says Westman, adding Jayman maintains a financial buffer ' allowing it to complete any work it's already started.

'If we can't pay for them, we don't build them.'

------

- RICH PRICES LEAVE CITY'S POOR IN THE COLD

If nothing more is done to make housing in Calgary more affordable, those who help the city's poor say one thing is certain ' their business will continue to boom.

'There's no question about it,' says Dermot Baldwin, executive director of the Calgary Drop-In Centre.

'The market's giving us less options to place people and less hope for people coming in who could have otherwise made it.'

Baldwin estimates the client base at his centre is up about 15% from last year and with costs on even the lower-end homes soaring, the pool of people who qualify as poor in Calgary is increasing.

'I have a staff member who paid $480 for an apartment with free parking and cable ' the same place 3+1/2 years later, it's $780, plus you now have to pay for the cable and the parking,' says Baldwin.

Now the rush for homeless help isn't confined to the Christmas season, either, adds Diana Segboer, the Inn from the Cold Society's executive director.

'We have been full of families in March, which means no single women or single men are getting in ' we're definitely at an all-time high,' says Segboer.

Serious government help is about the only thing that will ease the crunch for the poor in this market, says Terry Roberts, president of the Calgary Homeless Foundation.

'The one big difference from the housing boom of the 1980s is interest rates are so much lower now ... however, with high purchase prices, land and construction costs that advantage is more than wiped out,' says Roberts.

'We're not keeping up now, but we hope the new federal government, and the province, will develop long-term affordable housing programs.'

-----

- NEW AGE TAXING ON SOME

Soaring house prices won't necessarily result in higher taxes for Calgary homeowners ' so long as your property isn't on the leading edge of inflation.

Deputy city assessor Roy Fegan says Calgary's Market Value Assessment system isn't designed to profit from rising real estate prices, and only those homes that increase in price by more than the city average will end up with a higher tax bill.

'We refer to it as revenue neutral ' if city council could operate on the same budget, with the same money, it would actually lower the tax rate,' said Fegan.

It comes down to where you live in Calgary, and whether your neighbourhood is rising in price faster than the average.

Each year, the city's assessors determine what the average price increase was for Calgary's 400,000 homes over 12 months, measured from July to July.

Between July 2004 and July 2005, the average increase was 8.4% ' homes that rode in price by more than 8.4% saw a tax increase, and those that increased by less, saw a tax decrease.

Because a select few communities are increasing in value faster than others, residents there are seeing substantial increases in the annual bills.

'When values increase, they don't increase uniformly across the city,' said Fegan.

'The city centre increases more than extreme suburbs.'

This year's tax bill, which will be mailed out in June, saw homes in communities such as Elbow Park and Roxboro increasing in price by more than 30%.

Because those desirable, inner-city mansions rose so much, it actually resulted in a tax decrease for 63% of Calgary homes.

What Market Value doesn't take into account is whether city council increases taxes in a given year.

-----

THEN AND NOW

- Energy Policy

The National Energy Program (NEP), enacted after the 1980 federal election by the government of Pierre Trudeau, was billed as a corrective measure prompted by a more than 150% rise in world oil prices.

It was designed to redistribute wealth, stabilize prices, and give Canadians more control over their own energy sector ' but it served only to plunge Alberta's economy into recession.

World oil prices fell on their own shortly afterwards.

Subsequent federal governments have vowed a program such as this will never be enacted again.

Analysts Goldman Sachs are sticking to their forecast the price of Alberta benchmark West Texas Intermediate crude will average $69.50 US a barrel, just shy of its record high, over the rest of 2006.

- Housing

In February this year, the average home in Calgary went for $304,560, up 26% from the same month in 2005.

The average local home resale price in December 1982 was $100,000 down $7,000 from the same month in 1981, but at the time some owners saw their property values crash by nearly 30%.

Housing starts in 1982 were 9,599 down from the 1978 record 15,382.

Total housing starts for 2005 were 13,667, down 2% from the previous year, but besting the 13,000 mark for an unprecedented fourth year in a row.

- Inflation

In July 1982, the consumer price index (CPI) in Alberta was 12.2%, compared to the national average 10.8%.

To stem that inflationary tide, federal regulators raised the Bank of Canada's trend-setting lending rate to nearly 20% ' meaning mortgages in the 21% range were common.

Currently, the national CPI, a measure of inflation used by Statistics Canada, remains in the 2% range and, as long as price increases stay in that range, the federal bank says rate hikes, if any, will remain modest.
 
This is something that really annoys me with Estate Agents.

This house is acutally in Kilbarrack not Sutton. Kilbarrack, Coolock, Donaghmede and Bayside have all disappeared over the last 5+ years. They've become Raheny and Sutton. Same with areas of Killester, Marino and all of Dollymount becoming Clontarf

Wonder how long they'll continute to get away with this in a falling market. They should be brought to book for false advertising at the very least.


Yep, area creep has been going on for years...

- Coolock has become Artane or Raheny
- Ballymun has become Santry or Glasnevin
- Eastern Swords has become Malahide
- Finglas has become Glasnevin
- Some of Artane has moved into Beaumont

Same on Southside...
- Ballybrack has become Killiney
- parts of Dundrum are becoming Stillorgan
- Sallynoggin moving into Glenageary
- Cornelscourt and Leopardstown edging towards Foxrock!

A better postal code system should sort all that out :)
 
Not sure how many people would be on for this but as I've seen on the popular UK website [broken link removed], they have organised pub meetings in some area's where posters (bull and bear alike) can meet up and discuss their favourite threads over a few pints.
PS. Could get messy if room305 and tententwenty get their beer fueled hands on each other.
 
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