mnc

Very tasteful, if your interior décor tastes are a conundrum of Walt Disney World, Marie Antoinette and Daniel O’Donnell!

Anyone need a house with "room for a pony?" (Had better dig deep) Seriously overpriced rural bungalows At these prices, I would hope that green wellies, Barber coats and Range Rovers are thrown in!

Darling and Ritchie are still playing at Pin the Tail on the Donkey; but they are not even getting close!

If it sells this year, it will be because of it's history, those Cregagh Estate houses are brute ugly to say the least. Seems an odd way of marketing what is not so much a house to move into but a possible tourism shrine to 'The Belfast Boy'. An aucion might have been more appropriate? Maybe one of the Belfast bus tour/Black taxi tour companies will buy it and give exclusive tours to their passengers? Now there's a good business move!

If all of these houses had gone onto the market in the same week, perhaps there would be some price continuity. What you will probably find is that some have been on for a year, and some came on last week. Asking prices are in total disarray because of this, it's best to just ignore them until they reach the point that they are all based on recent sales figures.

I want to know the connection between Vision Property Agents and Vision Express, Extra Vision, Vision Computers, Vision Magazine, BT Vision,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,?

It's not hard to see why estate agents are feeling the pinch now after so long without income. I don't actually believe the tale that they made a fortune during the brief boom (most people know that commission rates fell rapidly in the competitive market) and it is also probably the case that most of the estate agent's investment were in property too, and those investments will now be in trouble too. Let's take your typical small local estate agency for example: Rent and rates £15,000 Staff £40,000 plus Cars £10,000 Stationery £Hundreds? Heat, electricity, phones, mobile phones £thousands? Advertising £thousands? Equipment and depreciation? Repairs and maintenance £thousands? Lets call it £90k per year plus, and that’s before the owners take a penny. At a commission rate of £1,000, that means selling over 100 properties per year, just to break even. Even at a busy sales time, especially after tax, this typical sort of business won’t have had much to put by for a rainy day, let alone a couple of years of zilch income.

These investors will inevitably wrestle down some selling prices, to even lower levels than the low asking prices.

These investors will inevitably wrestle down some selling prices, to even lower levels than the low asking prices.

I suppose that would depend on the landlord giving you consent? You should maybe talk to these guys to see how a connection like that can be made Zen

I am loathed to revisit this thread once agin, but I have to make the point that I believe that Pooler EA might well have made a valid statement here. The BTL investor actually does seem to have revived his interest in the property market much quicker than the increasingly bewildered FTB, many EA's are saying this. In no way am I suggesting that this will have any immediate effect on the market, but the volume of property advertised for sale is unsustainable and the level will fall sooner or later, so even if the BTL investor is paying over the odds he is still enjoying more choice than ever before, and probably, ever again. We will have to watch Pooler's 'bargain' properties very closely to see what happens with these listings.

Cable is probably the way forward, however, once you have it installed you have pay for instalation, and sit out the full term before changing again, and you might be missing out on some deals which use the BT phoneline, Keep shopping around and get yourself the right package for your needs and pocket.

To vision NOT Vision. Hey mate, I hope that the EA complaint won't stop you from posting on this forum, god knows it could do with some contrary bull blood just to shake it up at times! I do feel a nana second of sympathy sorry for this EA all the same, they must be really nagged that they opened their estate agency just in time to enjoy the frightening downward spiral of the property market in Belfast. It can't have been much fun for them, despite the bulging portfolio of property on their books, from which they will probably never see any return. Boo, hoo, EA tears! Maybe they hadn't much Vision after all?

I am not suggesting that they have a greater insight, I am suggesting that they might well be active. The investor activity we saw before might not have been sensible all of the time, but it still happened.

Vision, I am too young to remember, but I do know from family history that to own the family home was a privilege afforded only to a well off few, up until the 1950's and beyond. By the time the 1970's happened it was commonplace to own ones own home, almost anybody could afford to buy existing ex rental stock as well as new built, and when Maggie made it possible to buy the Housing Exec rental you lived in, being able to afford to buy became a right to all, part of the culture. As I have read on this site, it is true than most of the smaller housing of Belfast was built purposefully for the rental market and never intended to be owner occupied. As home ownership progressed it became oversubscribed in the end, and that helped to force prices up to unaffordable levels. why that was is for many reasons, the peace dividend and an optimistic feeling of prosperity. Affordability is a modern concept that people came to expect, and in the end it was an overcooked concept that Europeans yet still cannot understand because so many of them still rent like our grandparents and great grandparents used to. Even if property become more affordable again due to price falls, it has to be probable that a larger proportion of people here will be forced to pay rent or will choose to, instead of the more expensive mortgage repayment.