yelims

http://www.magico.ie/files/admin/uploads/W153_Field_2_47312.pdf heres latest report from Irish Auctioneers and Valuers Institute alot of figures, 20% drop in 2009 alone apparently these are based on actual selling figures not asking prices as measured by all other reports, unlike UK theres no registry, history of actual selling prices theres a 20% discreptancy between reports done on asking prices and this report, so that leads me to believe that property is selling on average at 20% below asking prices

the whole welfare bill was 20 billion for 2009 there are hundreds of schemes from childrens allowances to lone parent payments, back to work, you name it and unlike the UK fraud is not investigated as vigorously, the minister doesnt even want to admit that there might be fraud not detected by her department there are people Ryanairing in from Poland to collect welfare also we had 150,000 unemployed during the peak (most of these are chronic dolers who didnt bother getting a job when there was plenty and companies had to import foreigners to fill positions), that number is approaching 500,000 now here are CSO stats up to 2005 http://www.cso.ie/statistics/expend_social_welfare.htm when it was 12billion since then an election, boom and bust have occured and its now at 20billion and despite cuts its gonna get larger this year http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/breaking/2009/1209/breaking62.htm

Lisbon has nothing to do with Eurozone, its a political treaty, very little economics and there lies your problem, you are thinking in term of countries while the ECB is setup to span several countries ECB views the countries in the eurozone as one its independent from political meddling (tho im sure the germans have a large say somehow in it) and as history has shown has been far more responsible than BOE or FED (see top right of this page and historical interest rate charts) as far as ECB is concerned, all the countries in eurozone are one, same interest rates etc this works for and against some countries at some time, for example rates going up now be bad for Ireland, alot of institutions in eurozone are now making use of "special facilities" you are also mixing up EU and Eurozone, one is a subset of other, most of EU money that came in was structural (roads) or agricultural funds as for NAMA, who knows how much the bag is worth, hence why I dont agree with it, but it certainly aint zero, the banks have to transfer all large loans good and bad to it the whole thing is setup in hope that prices for the portfolio will go up to similar levels in few decades, whether itll happen i dont know can i do anything about it now? no i wont be voting these ******* in ever again anyways NAMA is a once of that might not lose much money or breakeven the welfare/public sector costs are recurring year on year costs that are adding up quick

Heres how NAMA works banks transfer their loans to NAMA, 75 billion of loans and get 54 billion euro in return, the difference is written of by the banks NAMA manages the loans for few decades and pursues the debtors to pay it up , most of these are commercial property loans and theres land, building etc as collateral, a third of these are outside Ireland (UK,east europe, dubai ) so your prices staying high is indirectly helping Ireland NAMA goes to ECB and gets the 54 billion over that period at 1% (or less), 1% is alot less than current 3-5% that irish government can get from selling bonds or banks from ECB for that mater as the loans are repaid the debt + interest is repaid to ECB under the optimistic scenario being painted whole thing will break even ( ) but that scenario relies on prices going back to peak level sometime in next 2 decades another problem is how many of these loans transferred are trully toxic and will never be paid back, even after being chased thru courts any losses from NAMA will have to be picked up by taxpayer, and gains (unlikely) will got into tax kitty it all depends on prices returning to peak again and rent yields being high so to sum up the whole thing is a way of cheaply tapping credit from ECB at below official rates by placing the taxpayer as guarantor i dont like or agree with whole thing, but i hope that explains it? NAMA has nothing to do with Lisbon Treaty, Ireland is a member of eurozone and would have remained so with or without Lisbon Treaty? do you understand? the 2 have nothing to do with each other so you are tripping over yourself trying to make sense of them is there are democratic authority controlling the Bank of England or the FED?

same, i took it to myself 2 years ago to learn why im being screwed and what to do about it, also interested in wider world situation hence why im here where many interesting threads exist its not on that graph, NAMA only came in effect last month, its a once off 54billion cost (or 2 years of current public sector expenditure), tho the money is coming from ECB for that, also i do not agree with NAMA the banks should have been left to sort out their mess, without NAMA property prices (especially commercial) would have fallen much more and there would have been fire sales i think defense spending is about 700million, most of it spend on various UN missions a large portion of that expenditure graph (the other bit) is mostly infrastructure construction, thankfully we now have some sort of decent motorway network and rails were updated, going forward alot of projects are on hold now it looked like it was gonna be 30 billion for 2009 hole, but recent estimates put it at just under 25 billion > more there http://www.rte.ie/business/2010/0105/exchequer.html its a fair amount thats being racked up and interest rates are high compared to Germany etc, your not too far of on GDP measure > https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/ei.html tho GDP figure is rather warped here as alot of money gets washed thru here due to low corpo tax no its not gonna be pretty and there have been cuts already, people are emigrating, tho alot of people are literary tied to their houses now assuming more will be cut (and theres still plenty of fat) and more taxes collected things can at least move onto the right track and default can be avoided (im an optimist ) and sure if a default does occur and things get badTM well i hedged myself by picking up a place with land, tho other people will hurt like the girl in the opening post it pains me alot seeing how recklessness by people and government has led to this despite warnings, and i hope theres a lesson learned one way our another

the money (and alot of it) was coming from once of stamp duty and capital gains taxes (FTBs are exempt to 135K still) on the sale of houses billions of it! now that construction is dead and the property market is limping that money well has died, and the difference (25billion in 2009) had to be borrowed these 2 graphs (note: these are a year old now , to start of 2009) would better explain things expenditure income as you can see there has been crazy increases in welfare and public costs based on one of tax receipts not sustainable hence why this needs to be rectified to return to normalcy the last decade has been a mirage

i understand and see where you are going first of all most people here dont pay tax and are outside tax net check this out > http://www.ronanlyons.com/2009/04/27/are-irish-workers-undertaxed/ while of course i wont like to pay more taxes seeing that most half the employed dont pay any tax is rather disturbing a sudden cut thru a default like you propose would definitely lead to riots on streets, at least now people are being weaned of the state tit and facing reality unlike the UK, Ireland has more exports than imports, and these exports have risen as costs have fallen, while imports have fallen even faster (luxury cars and crap) so sooner or later a bottom will be found also remember there are no property and water taxes here, one of the reasons for such a bubble whats happening now is a half way between whats happening in Iceland and whats happening in UK, on one hand theres a complete collapse on the other hand theres a "business as usual" attitude and denial that something has to be done simply because some people think they can print their way out of it thats one possibility

you missed option 3) which is whats happening now and is a mix of 1) and 2) the government doesn't have to default since their expenses can be brought down in line by simply sliming down (something the unions will fight against tooth an nail) and our Debt:gdp ratio is still one of the lower in EU > http://www.ntma.ie/NationalDebt/debtGDP.php that 25 billion a year gap can be bridged by bringing expenditure down to 2004 levels, it wasnt too bad here around 2004 also ECB are engaging in a sort of indirect printing by lending 54billion for NAMA at almost no interest things are crashing in value (thread title) but not in an Icelandic clifface style, hence not doing as much damage to the healthy parts of the economy the people//businesses that are hurting are anything construction related or setup to serve construction, allowing 25% of your gdp to come from construction alone was crazy to begin with of course but if welfare is not cut then theres no incentive to go and work, once again i would like to remind readers that welfare recipient here gets: * unemployment benefit @ 200e a week * rent allowance @ up to 100e a week * free healthcare (private sector employees have to pay few K a year to insurance) * clothing and heating allowances here and there * child benefit (for everyone employed or not) which increases the more kids you have why go and flip burgers for 300 a week when you can have a steady income doing nothing? even cutting to 100 a week is quite livable on here (which is still well above UK welfare rates) and would save about 10 billion yes it is, and the spiral will stop once wages and costs start approaching reality, its still cheaper to go to North Ireland to buy things, but this is changing once theres no need to cross the border thats when we know we hit the bottom

of course and wages are falling, the reason they got so high in first place is because they got pushed up by 1. high house prices 2. high cost of living 3. large welfare expenditure 4. trade unions pushing for higher wages year on year, even as recently as 2009 and the government letting them run wild the country was caught in an inflationary spiral now its all unraveling tax income and house prices have already fallen 5-6 years wages are falling, with many people becoming unemployed or working part time welfare has fallen but very slowly cutting welfare in half would go along way to removing the need to continue to borrow so much, so will reducing the wages of public sector workers who are paid on average 50% more than private sector employees one way or another the above 2 imbalances will have to be rectified welfare recipients here receive almost 3 times more than UK, while public sector workers are 2ice as better of as UK counterparts thats a crazy situation to be in the whole of the private sector has responded quickly to this recession and wages have comedown, while the tradeunion protected public sector is afraid to face the music

@leicestersq the whole problem with Irish economy can be summarized in few graphs fat government as the construction sector imploded (which was an unhealthy 25% of economy at one stage) the tax recepits went back a few years, while expenditure hast kept climbing expenditure as of last budget has finally being tackled and is now dropping, it will take few years and further cuts in expenditure for the books to balance out, but balance they must as per eurozone rules the euro membership is forcing our government to act in a responsible manner, and thankfully prevents them from wasting any more money on buying votes consumption and investment are falling by billions of euro in 2009, while government is not providing a stimulus – it did that during the boom years and has no capacity to do it now. Public sector pay represents about 10% of GDP, while social welfare expenditures amounted to almost 15% of GDP in 2008. these have to be tackled

i understand, on net balance Ireland has got alot of money from EU since we joined, the UK on other hand payed in more than it took in alot of people got lied to during Lisbon 1 here, and some of these lies were of the outrageous kind, needless to say none of it materialized Lisbon passing makes it easier for UK or any other country to leave now, as theres a clear set procedure now but anyways thats politics Irish banks were taken over and still run by crooks, if it wasnt for us being tied to larger stabler countries, our debt spread would have went stratospheric and no one would have lend that 25billion euro (or equivalent) that was needed to run the country and cover the tax shortfall in 2009, whether you are a eurosceptic or not, the money did materalise, otherwise all of welfare would have had to be scrapped leading to real misery and public sector cut in half leading to all sorts of other problems, being tied to eurozone buys us some breathing room to tackle these 2 problems over a longer period it literary is a matter of bringing welfare and public spending under control, both grew at 3-4 times the rate of inflation for about a decade (especially in election years when increased welfare was used to buy votes, but there was money back then from once of stamp duty income) there has been no legilstation yet, and no one jailed for the criminal activities that took place in our banks good, im delighted that our fuctards of a government dont have this power anymore and its held by more sensible and responsible germans otherwise it would have been printy printy road to hell, zimbabwe style good point, the people who took on debt will and are suffering for it, let there be a lesson in there for them as for eurozone i dont know what will happen but, eitherway the people who took on debt will suffer and rightly so a deflation is exactly what this country needs, prices for everything went beyond ridiculous and whats worse that meant loss of competitiveness (as seen by people driving to north to do shopping) this is a painful but needed return to norm, we tried the anglo-american model of debt driven internal spending and it has failed miserly, the country needs to and is moving to the original model of export drive growth that we had in 90s when there was a real boom that wasnt based on debt but increased productivity and exports we will have to keep an eye on Greece, they have not made any effort to address the problems, while we have taken somewhat smaller steps in cutting the fat in welfare and PS Lisbon has nothing to do with eurozone or economics for that matter, despite what tabloids in UK say swimming alone in the atlantic wont help, we tried that before in this country and those were the darkest decades we had in 20th century, no being aligned to sensible export driven countries like germany and returning to the original source of wealth which was exports in the 90s is the only way forward leaving the euro wont help since all the debt would remain in euro, not to mention overnight the New Irish Peso would become second tier currency ( which people know is created specifically to devalue ) while everyone would continue using the stronger euro, in my own business i would continue to use dollars and euro if such were to happen simply because thats where the customers are, making the euro illegal to force the people onto the Irish Rouble would cause civil war as people will not willingly become poorer yeha and hence why there is alot of pork chopping left to do we need Thatcher like character who is willing to go in with a chainsaw and skin the kitty

its being cut slowly but surely, down to 200 a week now (not including other allowances like rent, heat or free healthcare) but its still more or less makes more sense to sit on dole than get a min wage job in mcdonnalds (where only foreigners bother getting jobs), min wage job at full week works is about 300 euro a week, doesnt make much sense to get hands dirty for alot of people yet the personal bankruptcy is certainly draconian, whats worse is alot of people didnt know about that, it was stupidity on mass scale alot of the big builders/developers piled on debt in their companies names and are now walking away from huge debts, the ones that gave personal guarantees (and hence signing away protection afforded by company bankruptcy laws) are really screwed now and are being dragged thru courts, tho its hard to squeeze blood out of a rock i hope personal laws do change, whats worse is the average man on the street doesnt realise or call for change in these laws, it really is tragedy of the common people most realize that without the euro we would have still got into huge debt on an Icelandic scale, the money was pouring in from everywhere not just eurozone (who repeatedly warned about the madness) not to mention most of our trade is still with eurozone and people got used to using same currency when traveling/doing business being tied to a more or less well run sensible economies like Germany is a plus at moment, otherwise we would have ended up like Iceland except on a bigger scale and alot more misery people dint not vote on Lisbon for economic reasons or promises of bailout (well maybe few idiots did) most of it was very political, you had far left and far right extemist groups alongside the likes of UKIP who got involved pushing for a NO making rediculos claims that the end of the world would come, tanks would role in and all children would be aborted, noone in their sane mind could take these claims seriously pushing people away from NO vote heres the reason why Lisbon was a YES http://www.housepricecrash.co.uk/forum/index.php?showtopic=127004&st=60&p=2178360entry2178360 http://www.housepricecrash.co.uk/forum/index.php?showtopic=127004&st=60&p=2178380entry2178380 there wont be a collapse of eurozone (despite what telegraph predict every week), more than likely they will just turn on the printing presses as last resort, unlike UK that card hasnt been played yet as i said earlier the economy still has a strong exporting pluses, the main problem is paying down debt and slimming down welfare, public sector fat, once this happens i dont see why the economy cant get back to slow but steady export led growth like the 90s, with affordable housing the state has to pay 1 billion for the church child abuse cases to victims, the Church with its gold and marble lined churches doesnt have to pay for its abuse of children, very very perverse, these people got raped and now their taxes will go to pay for their own abuse anyways here are the debt spreads

Value (€bn) of Ireland's residential property, 2007-2009 180 billion euro has been wiped of the Irish property market already some might say this funny money didnt exist in first place even if we had our own currency, that would have been alot of money to print for a small country, in order to prop up property market in UK (which is much larger economy) your QE is about 175billion pounds now? more on subject here http://www.ronanlyons.com/2010/01/07/asking-prices-down-up-to-43-irish-property-market-loses-e180bn-in-value/

i dont know about EU alot of people are ******ing of to Australia, that seems to be a growing trend --------- this article here more or less lays out how it works (it aint pretty) http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/finance/2009/0327/1224243539618.html

well firstly theres quite a generous welfare net to fall into if SHTF at the moment there is company bankruptcy, your company goes bankrupt you walk away, cant be director for few years afterwards, alot of large developers are doing that now owing millions and billions now personal bankruptcy here is different (im not a lawyer) and any lawsuit usually ends up in court where a judge decides how best to settle things its defaintely not as easy as UK, or as simple as US where you just hand back key and bankruptcy is part of the culture these strict bankruptcy laws are probably the worst bit about this whole story, there are hundreds of thousands of people in negative equity who cant walk away from it the bankruptcy act is here > http://www.irishstatutebook.ie/1988/en/act/pub/0027/index.html for any lawyers among us its not a simple as declaring bankruptcy, someone has to start a case against you and it will endup in court where its up to a judge to decide what to do > http://www.ehow.com/how_5020092_declare-bankruptcy-ireland.html

source > http://www.irishcentral.com/story/news/kellys_corner/Fixer-upper-of-an-Irish-house-drops-by-300000-in-two-years.html madness

interesting times indeed, but there were warning lights blinking, alot of people chose to ignore and signed the paper yes NAMA is a terrible joke which will mean our children will be paying for this the ******* in government will never ever get elected again, so they are doing slash and burn now of the economy there is no personal bankruptcy in ireland, you cant hand in keys to bank only way out is to hand in key and leave country and not comeback :angry: there were already huge losses, 25 billion hole in 2009 alone the bond spreads are already one of the highest in europe, up there with greece right now alot of people here dont realize how precarious the situation is ECB lent to NAMA at very very low rate of 1% or something, so yes its a sort of bailout the country could get back on its feet tho as exports are strong and growing, while imports got hit hard 20billion is spend on welfare alone and another 25 billion on public sector (thats double of what it was a decade ago), slashing these somewhat can cover the 25 billion hole in finances

actually i already bought recently 2500 square foot, 4 bed detached with few acres land, 25KM from Galway, next to new motorway and train-station for 180K, spending another few dozen to convert large attic into home office, in cash (tho mortgages were offered to me in this day and age) i dont need debt the houses around here were worth 500-700K only 2 years ago, the smaller one next door is still for sale now for 18months at 450K you can buy houses here now at cost price, or buy land and build youself, plenty of good craftsmen out of work and willing to bite hand off to do some work this bubble has effectively wiped out a generation, i warned many friends not to get involved and wait, so did many economists calling me a "tool" for being sensible makes you sound like a tool the writing was one the wall here long ago, it was either a lifetime of debt or emigrate

thats a good question the banks were lending like crazy to anyone who moved, i had to refuse offers over and over expecting that it will end in tears they were trying to outdo each other to see who can pour most money away it was that crazy! i happened to rent in dublin at peak of this bubble , 1500 a month rent for a georgian terraced house in D6 that was for sale for 3million (mind you the place was falling apart and badly in need of renovation!), now same places in D6 are down to 1million which is still crazy price

not yet, but getting there alot of people are waking up to the fact that reality without someone-elses money to spend (credit) and being in debt up to necks is not fun alot of people in the 25-35 age group are now effectively shackled to their homes with the heavy stone of negative equity, unlike UK and US personal bankruptcy is inexistent here (due to strict personal bankruptcy laws)

50% down, another 20% or so to go? source http://www.independent.ie/business/personal-finance/property-mortgages/economic-downturn-wipes-50pc-off-value-of-homes-2011066.html notice how they try to spin it as positive near the end of article fecking vested interests! know they claim that they "expected" this, what happened to the "soft landing" and "prices can only ever go up" anyways this has effectively wiped out a generation here source http://www.independent.ie/national-news/a-lot-of-people-my-age-got-sucked-in-by-the-hype-2011065.html navan btw is 60KM from the shithole that Dublin is on one of the busiest roads in country, alot of people are prisoners in commuter hell now

50% down, another 20% or so to go? source http://www.independent.ie/business/personal-finance/property-mortgages/economic-downturn-wipes-50pc-off-value-of-homes-2011066.html notice how they try to spin it as positive near the end of article fecking vested interests! know they claim that they "expected" this, what happened to the "soft landing" and "prices can only ever go up" anyways this has effectively wiped out a generation here source http://www.independent.ie/national-news/a-lot-of-people-my-age-got-sucked-in-by-the-hype-2011065.html navan btw is 60KM from the shithole that Dublin is on one of the busiest roads in country, alot of people are prisoners in commuter hell now

his not an economist, hes a journalist (and an ex central banker ) we call him the village idiot since all his articles are about self whoring and trying to sell his books, even if that means contradicting himself week from week, and the people who read his populist crap usually have short memories and the ones who listened to the likes of him during the boom and got into shit. yeh good summary like someone else said earlier it was a complete ******ery yes their wages got cut somehow and are now at that level as i said before on this site addressing the fat Welfare and Public sector systems would solve our problems for example welfare is 20 billion a year, cut all of that and we then almost closed the 25billion a year hole in finances (public sector doubled to 25 billion in few years before) http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/breaking/2009/0710/breaking58.htm public sector workers earn on average 47% more than their private sector counterparts here are stats from central statistics office > http://www.cso.ie/releasespublications/documents/earnings/current/psempearn.pdf

yeh NAMA is a big elephant in the room here 54 billion euro big without it there would have been absolute carnage and fire-sales, unfortunately our incompetent rules decided to prop up their buddies in construction, for which they will never again be elected yes goldplated potatoes they offered me a mortgage i refused as i bought with savings they then tried offer a company loan, but refused again since managed fine without their debt money before, a business with no savings for a bad day and that needs credit to survive should really close down, thats capitalism for ya

sorry for harsh words, what else to call someone who sees an outlier and extrapolates from there apologies to both of yee there are plenty of cases like that and people still putting up property at crazy asking prices, they will just not sell barely anything is selling as is nowadays and theres definitely no lack of supply, they build enough houses to keep the market stagnant for decades, and some counties have enough land rezoned residential to last until next century prices are still by all measures way above norm and have a bit to come down, but at least they are coming down swiftly and theres no hocus pocus money printing being done to hide the sad state of affairs but yes shopping around there are plenty of nice property in good areas with plenty of land in case the SHTF thats if you want a nice home to live in, forget about investing that horse is dead yeh some people are still in Denial, or serious negative equity you should have been here 2-3 years ago, prices have already fallen 45% to an average of 230K (once again asking price, no one knows except Revenue the real selling prices) the average salary is about 35K, tho 70K is not unheard of especially in public sector who are insulated :angry: teachers start in 36-40K here compared to 23K euro equivalent in UK (which is crazy and will defiantly go down) its an absolute murder now and the feckless are being weeded out, which is great, i hope some ******* around here learn a lesson in life and about gambling in property so theres no repeat of the madness that occured