New RTE programme "Burnt by the Sun" - Part 2 will be on Monday 18 May

I watched this tonight.

It was a history of Irish people investing in overseas property.

It's still amazing how stupid people were. Going to property expos in the RDS and writing out cheques for deposits to people they had just met.

Brendan

It was absolutely astonishing the amount of Irish people who invested abroad and got badly burnt during those few short years. Are they any estimates of the true figure involved here.

I can’t believe the woman who had the affordable housing deal. She got her apartment for €120k when it was worth €200k. She wanted to buy a place of the plans in Italy that turned into a nightmare. In order to get the €45k to pay her 50% deposit on the place in Italy, she had to give up the €80k break that she got from the council so she had to borrow that as well. She ended up owing €300k on an apartment that fell in value to €100k and it’s still in negative equity. And the place in Italy was shut down and seized for links with the Cosa Nostra!

Gordon. you couldn't make it up ...her whole life since must have been blighted by the nightmare of it.

I admired her courage to come on national television and tell her story. Like the other contributors on it, she was frank and honest and not afraid to admit her own culpability. Very well produced programme.

I disagree that her whole life since must have been blighted. She has certainly been scarred financially but money's not everything. She seems to have a good perspective on it and hopefully she'll be more fortunate in the future.

Fascinating programme and to be honest, a welcome break from non-stop Covid 19 programmes. Classic bubble and bust behaviour. We also shouldn't forget that plenty of people bought 2nd and more properties in Ireland itself and were just as naive. Yes, some people through no fault of their own ended up in negative equity but an awful lot of people over-extended themselves thinking a bubble would never burst.

Was it Ross O'Carroll kelly who famously joked about people buying appartments in Cape Verde without even knowing where the Cape Verde islands were?

Ah listen, the day I had a small farmer in very rural area tell me he was buying an apartment in Dubai I thought that's it so we've reached peak madness! He certainly had never been to Dubai or had no notion of going but it was a good investment apparently. At least it might have been better than Spain!

Have the programme on record (my wife wanted to watch the end of Hellweek)

I remember talking to someone who bought an apartment in Portugal off the plans at an Expo in the RDS. When more details were sent out, she said the golf course looked more like crazy golf and didn't proceed and lost the deposit "Sure, it's only €10,000" was her attitude. She dodged a bullet but was very blase about losing €10k.

Then there's those who invested in Bulgaria. A real case of FOMO. 'I've never been to Bulgaria, have no interest in going to Bulgaria but I want a foreign investment property. And the man in the RDS tells me the Russians like to holiday there.'

Money was being thrown around like confetti. Could you imagine buying your house without going to see it first? Lots of people were parting with hundreds of thousands of euro without even seeing where the property was?!!


Steven
http://www.bluewaterfp.ie (www.bluewaterfp.ie)

They quoted Eddie Hobbs a lot in passing. I reckon they will cover Cape Verde next week.

They also seemed to mention investing in India.

Brendan

I must watch it on the player tonight. I remember it well, we had just bought our house here, as prices here were going up by 5k a month. There were queues outside estate agents and foreign property expos. Luckily both myself and Mrs. Buddyboy are both risk averse, and looked in wonder at what some people were doing (we were being thrown money by the banks, but stuck to what we could afford, based on our then salaries.

When it all came crashing down, we were still plodding along happily.

As my father said, the most expensive five words in finance are "this time it's different".

No doubt it will happen again. A thought just struck me, I wonder will you have people saying, now that there is a lot of vacant property in Italy and Spain, it's a good time to invest. I'm slow to even type those words, but I suspect there are people who may think it.

We bought an apartment in Spain. It wasn't through one of those foreign property sales exhibitions in some Irish hotel. Ours was a far quieter affair. I don't know anybody else other than us who bought for investment only (i.e make money). It was towards our eventual retirement and we made no secret of the fact. Everybody else we saw buying in Spain was "just to have a holiday home in the sun" or "somewhere for to share with the kids and granchildren" or "to have a better quality of life" or some other goddawful lie. We knew where we wanted to buy after we did much research. What could go wrong?

Literally, we saw the Fruits of the Boom turning sour in what we called Fruits of the Gloom. As it worked out for us, it was a bad investment as money goes (the property lost €70K in value in the downturn). If you buy property in Spain it costs around €2K per annum (Community fees, Spanish taxes, local authority taxes) to run and that's before you pay for electricity, water, refuse etc. We had our homework done and this was not a surprise to us. Anytime we pointed this out to others it was fobbed off "you'd pay more than that to keep a mobile home in Wexford." However, it was only money.

When the excretion hit the fan (Sorry, I'm being mild here) there were so many luminous orange "Se Vende (For Sale)" signs in every road, the local authority banned them favouring pictures in estate agents front windows instead. We saw the dreams of many Irish evaporate in the Spanish sun. The traditional way of heralding your purchase was celebrated in buying a drink for the house and suddenly your were a property owner not only in Ireland but in Spain.

Do we use the apartment? Yes and look forward to each trip. Are we sorry we bought? Yes (bottom line). Remember ours was for investment. And before anybody points out "Hey Lep you're getting loads of holidays in the sun" and "Don't you spend winter months there?" - The answer is Yes on both counts, but we could spend the winters in Spain paying only €650 per month in rental with no worries regarding maintenance etc and not tie up most of the fruits of our labours over the years.

In coastal Spain the property market has not recovered since 2008. It has inched back at glacial pace to within €25K of our initial investment. Are we going to sell? - No, we love the place. Secretly, the first unofficial AAM meeting took place there a few weeks ago.

I covered my previous "investments" in our dormobile (converted P&T Fiat van with a mattress and two ring gas appliance); our caravan; our mobile home; our holiday home in the Wild Atlantic Way; our Spanish apartment in older posts on this forum (if you want honest reads then there you have my investment history).

Buddyboy said:

I must watch it on the player tonight. I remember it well, we had just bought our house here, as prices here were going up by 5k a month. There were queues outside estate agents and foreign property expos. Luckily both myself and Mrs. Buddyboy are both risk averse, and looked in wonder at what some people were doing (we were being thrown money by the banks, but stuck to what we could afford, based on our then salaries.

When it all came crashing down, we were still plodding along happily.

As my father said, the most expensive five words in finance are "this time it's different".

No doubt it will happen again. A thought just struck me, I wonder will you have people saying, now that there is a lot of vacant property in Italy and Spain, it's a good time to invest. I'm slow to even type those words, but I suspect there are people who may think it.

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A bad investment doesn't become a good one just because it is cheap

hi Leper, couldn't agree with you more. We go to Lanzarotte twice a year, and even if we were staying there for a few months at a time, it is still cheaper to rent a place for €650 a month than to buy. The figures never work in buying's favour.

The program tonight will make me feel very smug.

Peanuts20 said:

Was it Ross O'Carroll kelly who famously joked about people buying appartments in Cape Verde without even knowing where the Cape Verde islands were?

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I have met one or 2 of these unfortunately !

SBarrett said:

Then there's those who invested in Bulgaria. A real case of FOMO. 'I've never been to Bulgaria, have no interest in going to Bulgaria but I want a foreign investment property. And the man in the RDS tells me the Russians like to holiday there.'

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AIB invested in Bulgaria (to the tune of €200m+) in 2007/2008, then existed a few years later for the price of the debt attributable to their share of the company, writing off the investment in its totality. Is that as good as private property investors did I wonder?

I don't know what FOMO means. Perhaps this can be put down to my naivete?

My investment gained nothing (in fact it has cost me). No big deal though. Even I had a chance to have made a few bob. Within six weeks of buying the apartment a television famed hairdresser (from London) offered me €20K more than I had paid. Obviously, I was on my way to my first million and so I declined his offer. He is now a neighbour of mine in Spain (spends time 3 doors down from us) having paid €30K more than us for an identical apartment. Strangely, his wife's hair is usually in a dreadful mess. And more strangely, he continues to be a practising Roman Catholic and doesn't rent his place out. Nothing worse than having a neighbour of high principle.

But, some people did make money from Spanish property. Let's not forget that. If you bought towards the end of the recession where property could be picked up fairly cheaply you would make money now by selling. Even your rental income would be better than someone who remortgaged before the recession. So, let's not knock the idea (says he who knocked the stuffin' out of buying in Spain). In a nutshell, you can make money by buying in Spain but, you have got to be the sort of person that I'm not.

FOMO - Fear of missing out!
I know a builder who bought an apartment in Sunny Beach for cash.He has never been,never rented it out.
It's just not mentioned any more

The piece from uber posh Sth Dublin boy Trevor White at the start of last night's show where he says, a la Enda Kenny, 'the whole country partied'.
That really boils my blood. I didn't party, didn't buy an investment property, we had just the 1 car, 2nd hand etc.
We even did'nt go on holiday for 5 odd years at one stage when the kids started arriving.

No, we all didn't party :mad:

Delboy said:

The piece from under posh Sth Dublin boy Trevor White at the start of last night's show where he says, a la Enda Kenny, 'the whole country partied'.
That really boils my blood. I didn't party, didn't buy an investment property, we had just the 1 car, 2nd hand etc.
We even did'nt go on holiday for 5 odd years at one stage when the kids started arriving.

No, we all didn't party :mad:

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If you worked in the public sector you were given the benefit of Bertie's ATM.

If you worked in the private sector your employer benefitted from all that extra business.

Many people invested their surplus wisely during the booming have something to show for it, probably far more people than behaved foolishly and lost a lot.

You decided to sit out the period of greatest wealth in Irelands history. That doesn't make you particularly virtuous. At least some people got stuck in.

Delboy said:

The piece from under posh Sth Dublin boy Trevor White at the start of last night's show where he says, a la Enda Kenny, 'the whole country partied'.
That really boils my blood. I didn't party, didn't buy an investment property, we had just the 1 car, 2nd hand etc.
We even did'nt go on holiday for 5 odd years at one stage when the kids started arriving.

No, we all didn't party :mad:

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You're right Delboy, Everybody didn't party, but most did. Many of us came out of mortgages which hit 19.75% at various points. When the chance came, we did party and we deserved it.

I'm looking forward to Eddie Slobbs in the next programme.