1. novice pete said...

We all have a part to play in accepting the new reality. The Government needs to get rid of stamp duty on residential property. They should do it for a year and then they should probably do it for another year. The banks need to start lending in a reasonable fashion and they need to create mortgage products that reflect the new legacy-cost-base nature of home ownership. They need to create longer-term mortgages and perhaps even mortgages that would allow people in negative equity to move out of properties they currently own and into homes in which they will live long term.

And meanwhile we can all only hope that when inflation does come, it will wash all our debt away with it.

3. little professor said...

@Novice Pete - if you think that's bad, have a read at one of his articles from early 2007, when the Irish crash was already well under way:

Shout from the rooftops: house prices are rising

This is not a popular thing for any newspaper to say, and indeed journalists have been lynched by their colleagues for less, but - whisper it - property prices are going to be OK.


This is a controversial and upsetting thing for many of you to hear but I'm afraid it could be true. You should be sitting down for this: the price of your biggest asset, which you struggled to buy and which you still struggle to pay for, is not going to go down this year.


In fact, according to most people making actual specific predictions based on the reality of our situation, as against people just generally muttering darkly, the price of your house will probably go up.


And it'll be five or six per cent this year, which is more than it would cost you to service the loan if you borrowed 100 per cent of the price, which means that in economic terms your house will pay for itself this year, at the very least.


Articles predicting gloom and doom are generally written by academics .Does the phrase "if your [sic] so smart why ain't you rich?" not come to mind here?


If these guys are such hot shots at predicting the markets, how come they spend their time in a job with no consequences? Where is the courage of their convictions? Why the disparity between the location of their money and their mouths? The consequences of their reckless article writing are all ours in the form of unfounded panic.


Furthermore the economy looks healthy, demand for houses will increase as we continue to add about 100,000 people a year to our population, and as there are less people per household, more households are needed for the same amount of people. And job creation continues apace too.


All of these actual factors point to a healthy property market. And by healthy we mean house prices going up, not some people's idea of healthy, which is house prices going down.

5. mander said...

Every few months or so some website or building society or estate agents -- we didn't care who -- would put out a press release announcing that property had gone up by ...

That is happenening in the UK, unsolicited financial advice from organizations with interests in property going up: This should be made ilegal because too many people have been fooled on the property ladder this way.