Flash
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Posts posted by Flash
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Evidence please. Or is it just an unfounded opinion?
Just experience. Of course, I can't provide evidence of that experience, but there are plenty of history books out there.
You're the one suggesting racial purity here. Many nationalists care little for race, but welcome anyone who'll join the community and do their bit, especially this one.Again, my experience is somewhat different. Most will form an opinion of you as soon as you've opened your mouth.
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A nation is made up of cultural values as much as it is made up of genetic similarity.
Would you be happy with the major political decisions for your country being made in another country that had different cultural values?
We have evolved as tribal pack animals. By nature we look after our own. Given a chance, other tribes (or countries if you prefer) will exploit us if they can for their own gain.
When in history hasn't this been the case?
What makes London (IMHO) one of the world's greatest cities is its cultural diversity. People come from all over to live there and call themselves "Londoners".
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When nationalists talk about what is best for their country, they generally mean those countrymen that are white, christian and have the right accent.
Does your average Scottish or Welsh nationalist really give a toss about a Pakistani that's been living in Glasgow or Swansea for the last ten years, that pays his taxes and sends his kids to school there? I doubt it.
Nationalists are generally flawed individuals who think that nationality is more important than personality or talent.
I feel the same way about Little Englanders, as I do Welsh, Scottish and Irish nationalists. Most people that say "I'm proud to be X, are implying that they are glad they are not Y". There's a very fine line between nationalism and bigotry. I hear it here in Ireland all the time. Nationalism is a scurge that can only hold a country back and render it second-rate.
Perhaps one day we will have home DNA testing kits and some "ethnically pure" nationalists will get a real shock when they find out who they really are. Hey, perhaps some of my "Irish patriot" friends landed here with Cromwell?
Can't we just concentrate on being good Europeans or Citizens of the World even?
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Don't get into arguments with fools. Onlookers may not be able to tell the difference.
And, more pragmatically, in my yoof I have variously tried to argue with religious types and anti-science types, until I once overheard some very good advice from someone who's job was to argue with some of these people: Dont bother - people like this cannot be argued with in the way that grown-up people understand it - they are not interested in your opinion other than as an opportunity to tell you theirs.
That is so true.
I always steer clear of house price discussions now. You can't win an argument with an ignorant person. All these people understand are soundbytes. They don't even have a basic knowledge of finance. I know BTL "investors" here in Ireland that don't even know what a rental yield is.
If you wish to argue with them, you have to talk in soundbytes too unfortunately. i.e. if someone says "Rent is dead money", just reply with "..and so is interest."...and so on. But as I say, I don't argue anymore. It's all too tedious. I doubt anyone will approach you in a few months time and say "Yeah, you were right all along".
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Still, if house prices are dropping fast then service cost inflation should also drop as people won't need massive pay rises to buy houses. Plus the companies will be able to hire all those builders who are going to be out of work and cut the pay rises they hand out.
Interest rates this year will easily hit 4% - double where they were just over a year ago. Debt servicing costs are going through the roof and the public sector unions will demanding big pay rises. Indebted business that are struggling to retain operating margins are attempting to pass costs on customers, hence the 9.1% service inflation.
It doesn't look good, and there is no easy way out. Economic growth could well grind to a halt as more foreign investors get spooked about the cost of doing business here.
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FYI, Castleknock is a very desirable part of Dublin (near Foxrock, where 'Hopeful' AKA 'Desperate in Dublin' is trying to sell).
How well do you know Dublin exactly?
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Yep, 3.5% still seems amazingly low
It isn't if you were mortgaged to the hilt when rates were 2% just one year ago.
Do the math. That's why Dublin prices are falling.
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The Irish economy was built in the digital telephone infrastructure put in place in the 1980 and early 1990s - way before any other country in Europe could manage it.
Telecoms in Ireland is a joke.
http://www.siliconrepublic.com/news/news.n...ryid=single7198
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The text below has popped up on a couple of other boards. It seems to describe pretty well what is happening here.
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One small step for rates….one giant leap for repayments
Why some buyers have seen housing costs rise nearly 50% in the past year.
The housing market is stalling. Anecdotal evidence suggests that houses are taking longer to sell than this time last year and the number of For Sale boards is increasing. So what’s happening? Shouldn’t the combination of a booming economy, full employment, SSIA spending, low interest rates and unprecedented levels of immigration see these houses being snapped up? For the answer, step back just 12 months and imagine you are a Dublin house buyer.
It is August 2005. You spot a perfect little semi-detached for €500,000 and decide to go for it. You must move fast, the market is red-hot and prices are rising. You have only enough deposit to cover the stamp duty and other moving costs, but your friendly high-street bank offers you a 100% interest only mortgage on the full €500,000. The mortgage rate offered is 3.5% (fixed for one year) and your monthly payments are €1,458 – steep, but just about affordable.
Now roll forward 12 months to this August. The housing market has risen dramatically with industry figures suggesting that prices have jumped 15%. An identical house next door then goes on the market. “Offers over €575,000” the agent says, and you congratulate yourself that you’ve netted €75,000 in a year. But despite your own house selling in a matter of days a year ago, this one sits there for weeks with no offers. Why?
Put yourself in the position of a buyer today paying the asking price of €575,000, again on a 100% interest only mortgage. You will need to borrow 15% more now, but there’s another, much bigger problem; The European Central Bank have tweaked their base rate four times since last December, from 2% to 3%. Your lender has moved its standard mortgage rate accordingly from 3.5% to 4.5%*. You know this yourself because soon your own fixed rate period will end, increasing your repayments to €1,875 per month and it’s going to hurt. But by cutting back on luxuries, using the bicycle more and the car less, and booking a cheaper holiday, you can still scrape it together. And besides, you’ve “made €75,000” on the house, so it’s worth it, right?
In just 12 months the affordability picture has changed dramatically. A year ago you moved in for €1,458 per month, but now the buyer finds that the repayments will be €2,156 per month, thanks to a 15% increase in the purchase price and a 28% hike in the standard mortgage rate from 3.5 to 4.5 per cent. This represents a total increase of 47.8% on the cost just one year ago. Another way of looking at this is that if interest rates had remained unchanged, the increase in monthly repayments is the same as if the purchase price of the property had risen from €500,000 to nearly €740,000 in just one year!
Now if your nerves can stand it, let’s jump forward another year. It is now August 2007 and interest rates have eased up another 1%. Even assuming flat growth of 4.5% in house prices (in line with inflation in the economy), the property is yours for a staggering €2,754 per month, nearly double the price of two years ago. With buyers now very aware of further interest rate rises ahead, it is no wonder that the market is stalling.
* Bank of Ireland, standard variable mortgage rate, September 2006.
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Oh, I'm not saying I believe it. I'm just amazed that so much money could be spent on something that's not that funny. It's certainly linked to an upcoming Irish rightmove site - and a free iPod - very reputable.
I guess you need to be here in Dublin to appreciate how surreal this place is when it comes to property - Amateurs with zero business acumen and Euro signs in their eyes are becoming obscenely rich with no effort whatsoever. It is truly bizarre beyond words. I found the video hilarious because I KNOW that some here WILL be sucked in by it and will be chomping at the bit to get on board regardless of how much it costs.
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Can someone confirm that is a spoof - the video/website look very expensive for a spoof.
Well if you believe the giraffe only zoo, surely the bit about flooding during the rainy season (all year round) might have you wondering?
Second thoughts. If you believe it, why not register? I want to find out what happens if you do.
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It's off the scale, mad, madder, utter madness, frothing at the mouth.
Absolutely fantastic! That had me for a while. I could watch that over and over.
The wierd thing is, there's an on-line registration form?!? That's bound to suck a few muppets in. What are they going to do with that info?
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This is not a joke - it is from today's Irish Times property porn supplement. I stopped finding this stuff funny a long time ago, now I just despair.
Is there anywhere else in the world where the investment case is this ridiculous?
Worth the Investment?
Edel Morgan
The address: 44 Pembroke Gardens, Ballsbridge, Dublin 4.
The agent: Gunne Residential.
The property: four-bedroom townhouse for €1.4 million, representing a cost of €10,769 per sq m (€1,000 per sq ft).
How much for an investor? The repayments on an 85 per cent mortgage at a buy-to-let tracker rate of 4.17 per cent APR over 25 years would be €6,343 per month. On an interest-only loan the repayments would be €4,066 per month.
How much for a residential buyer? At AIB's discounted tracker rate of 4.11 per cent APR, the repayments over 35 years would be €5,397 per month. Repayments at AIB's standard variable rate of 4.33 per cent APR would be €5,886 per month.
On a 100 per cent mortgage at AIB's one-year discounted tracker rate of 4.11 per cent over 35 years, the repayments would be €5,866 per month for the first year.
Potential: prime rental location. This property could fetch a rent of around €2,500 per month.
Verdict: the rental return doesn't come close to meeting the mortgage repayments on either an 85 per cent annuity or interest-only mortgage. Only for an investor looking for medium to long term capital gain or a residential buyer.
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From Post #10
Get the tenant on a 12 month lease.......take the loss but treat them well and hope you can get them to renew at a bumped up rent or hope market strengthens.The thing that leaps out is the use of the word 'hope' twice in the same sentence. Only an inexperienced amateur would offer advice like that.
As the market begins to turn, the amateurs will just hang on 'hoping' that the things will improve, whereas the professionals understand when to cut and run.
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Now getting back to our under-30 Stakhanovites - the worker bees who drive the economy, commute, stick their kids in creches at 7am and collect them at 7pm.These are the very educated workers that Enterprise Ireland drones on about, but whose standard of living is compromised by the housing scam which enriches our soon-to-be-retirees and impoverishes our most productive workers.
How will they pay for ever-rising house prices? More importantly, what business will pay them to keep up with the housing market? What level of productivity will they have to achieve simply to allow their wages to match the 15 per cent increases in property prices? Yeah, you guessed right, it won’t happen.
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Err, Ireland is a country - true, more or less.
The Irish are the race that inhabit that country.
So, as I said, no racist cr@p about the Irish please.
Have you listened to any sports pundits in Ireland over the last two weeks? There's not much peace and love towards the English at the moment.
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Let keep this thread going.
This is out from Goodbody Stockbrokers this morning. The Credit Unions are in trouble with the Regulator. It seems they've been lax with their lending criteria and have mounting bad debts....
In an interview in one of this morning’s newspapers, the Financial Regulator has indicated it haswritten to the boards of directors of 26 credit unions to examine what action they should take to
deal with high levels of bad debts. The have to respond by the end of the summer. The regulator
indicates that figures provided by these credit unions raised serious issues for them. This
development follows the release a few weeks ago of a confidential report for the Irish League of
Credit Unions indicating that many credit unions are ignoring mounting credit problems among
their members. The report indicates that the delinquency ratio in almost three-quarters of the 448
credit unions analysed in 2003 was above the league’s guideline target of 5% and that some
credit unions have very significant adverse ratios.
For those of you not familiar with Credit Unions, they are prevalent throughout Ireland and almost every major town has one.
Even I'm shocked that this has happened already. I didn't think we would hear news like this until next year, when interest rates have really started to bite. Perhaps things are even worse that most of us have imagined.
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So it comes down to the obvious: selling a buy-to-let property.
You have to feel sorry for her, having to relinquish her god given right to be a landlady.
It could be worse. She could be a tenant that has no property assets to sell because they've been priced out of the property market.
And that brings me to my main questions:
What does her balance sheet actually look like?
Does the total asset value not cover the liabilities or is her problem that she's simply overstretched on cashflow?
Is she really up sh1t creek or she just another attention seeking drama queen with no real problems at all compared to some people in this world?
I simply don't know. But when she moans that she is going to have to sell the BTL it makes me wonder what some people in the developing world (I'm sure some are reading it) make of all this.
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If house prices were to fall, would you sell your residential
property investments? (Q.11)
Getting on for nine out of ten respondents to this question (87%) said
they would not sell their residential property investments if house
prices were to fall with more than another one in ten (12%) being
unsure whether they would or not.
Only a tiny minority of 1.5% said that they would sell their residential
property investments if house prices were to fall.
This does not surprise me - a classic emotional response. It is a similar story in the stock market. Many private punters just hang on to loss making trades hoping that their investment will bounce back and in the meantime it just falls lower and lower. It is important with any investment to divorce yourself from emotion and be prepared to admit when you've got it wrong.
It's actually a silly question because it assumes a fall has already happened without stating to what degree or time period it applies. I suggest they insert the word "about", so it would read "If house prices were ABOUT to fall, would you sell your residential property investments?" I suspect the result would then be very different.
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Does anyone have any idea what planning law is like in the Republic of Ireland?
frugalista
Yes. If you have some development plans simply meet your local councillor for drink and discuss the matter. In most cases you'll find him very accommodative and you'll almost certainly get what you want.
Oh, I nearly forgot, don't forget to bring a rolled-up newspaper containing a stuffed brown envelope and leave it on the bar on your way out.
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Of course the UK nor Europe is reliant on the USA whatsoever and Cherie Blair is a looker!!!
Phwaar!
wonder if she wears the wig for Tony?
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The Germans are feeling confident, watch out Ireland and Spain. What if they win the World Cup?
European Bonds May Drop on Expectations ECB to Raise Rates More Than Twice
June 28 (Bloomberg) -- European two-year government bonds may extend their longest losing streak since November on speculation the European Central Bank will raise interest rates more than twice this year.
Traders have lifted bets the ECB will act, helping push two- year yields to the highest in almost four years this week, as reports showed German investor confidence rose to a 15-year high and ECB policy makers said they may accelerate the pace of rate increases. An industry report today showed consumer confidence in Germany rose to the highest in almost five years.
``The danger is that the market will have to keep pushing up its rate expectations,'' said Anthony O'Brien, an interest-rate strategist at Barclays Capital in London. ``We could see yields moving even higher.''
The yield on the benchmark German two-year bond, among the most sensitive securities to interest-rate expectations, rose 1 basis point to 3.58 percent at 10:12 a.m. in London. The price of the 3.25 percent bond due June 2008 fell 0.02 or 20 euro cents per 1,000 euro ($1,255) face amount, to 99.38, according to Deutsche Bank AG. Yields move inversely to prices.
GfK's confidence index, based on a June survey of about 2,000 people that aims to forecast household spending one month ahead, climbed to 7.8, the highest level since November 2001, from a revised 7.0 in the previous month, the market-research company said in an e-mailed statement today.
Bonds have been hurt this quarter as traders raise bets ECB policy makers will lift borrowing costs from 2.75 percent as the region's economy expands. Ten-year debt is set for a fourth straight quarter of declines, the longest losing streak since 1999, according to Bloomberg data.
`Nothing to Stop'
The yield on the December interest-rate futures contract has risen for seven consecutive days, indicating traders are raising bets the ECB will boost rates twice more this year.
There is ``nothing to stop'' the ECB from taking a ``more aggressive'' adjustment to borrowing costs ``should the need'' exist, Garganas said two days ago in an interview in Basel, Switzerland. ``I would not rule out a higher adjustment to rates than 25 basis points,'' nor quickening the pace of increases from once every quarter, he said.
Garganas said today at a conference in Athens that interest rates are ``historically low.'' Fellow ECB council member Yves Mersch is scheduled to make a speech in Luxembourg today.
ECB President Jean-Claude Trichet said yesterday the bank will continue to do what's necessary to ensure price stability as the region's economy expands.
The Ifo economic research institute in Munich said yesterday its confidence index, based on a survey of 7,000 executives, rose to 106.8 from a revised 105.7 in May. It reached a 15-year high of 105.9 in April. Economists expected a drop to 105, according to the median of 44 estimates in a Bloomberg survey.
Italian Business
A separate survey showed Italian business sentiment unexpectedly improved in June to the highest in 5 1/2 years. The Isae Institute's confidence index rose for a 13th month to 98.9 from a revised 97, the institute said today in Rome.
The yield on the three-month Euribor contract due in December 2006 has risen 16 basis points this month to 3.63 percent.
The contracts, traded on the London International Financial Futures Exchange, settle to the three-month euro interbank offered rate, which has averaged 16 basis points above the ECB's benchmark rate since the 1999 introduction of the euro.
Germany today sold 4.1 billion euros of additional five-year bonds, the Bundesbank said. The 3.5 percent notes attracted bids worth 1.8 times the amount sold, up from a so-called bid-to-cover ratio of 1.5 in the previous auction on April 26.
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What's the prize, a gold-plated rear view mirror?
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Direct property investment (as opposed to packaged indirect investing in pensions etc) affords a lot of control and in my opinion is'nt that risky, afterall you get to own something real.
'Smart money' does'nt rely on big institutuions to do all the work. No serious entrepeneur Ive ever met relies on silly pensions et al. They carve thier own mine.
'Smart Money' also understands liquidity. There is a huge risk leveraging yourself in an asset that you cannot sell in a bear market. I would rather own the shares of a property developer than hold property directly.
So dogbox, did you ever by into that German property play, Speymill? I topped up recently.
Anti-english Attacks Kick-off In Pembrokeshire And Powys, Wales
in House prices and the economy
Posted
Exactly. The English can then support every one of the above and be happy if they win. The rest can support anyone playing England and be happy if they lose. It works well.
Bless our cultural differences.....