What Does It Take To Topple The House Of Cards?

[Belfast Boy]

My quibble here is with the on-going support for the banks. Whats not in dispute is that the banks made the loans to the developers that have since fallen into the toxic category. No argument can be made about the banks not being able to foresee this occurence as, if anything, there was no-one better placed to do this (it was in their own best interests to have been more cautious). So, the issue with NAMA is that it will take the assets from the banks, alledgedly allowing them to return to "normal" operation. That's not temporarily propping them up while alternatives are put in place, that's simply having the tax payer foot the bill for their mistake and hoping against the current reality that the true cost (when it's finally realised) will be lower than it currently looks like it will be. At best this is selecting an option for a (very) protracted period of discomfort over the option for a short term period of extreme discomfort. Given the choice I know which of these options I'd go for. I'd rather get it over and done with up front so that the work on rebuilding (forgive the pun) can start properly.

Excellent post. The bit in bold is spot on. The idiots in charge have no idea what is coming and are just wanting to be seen to be doing something. The banks are probably 'advising' the government what to do. So you can be sure that it is in the banks interests and not in the interests of the rest of the people of Ireland.

Apparently there was a report written by 26 economists saying that NAMA is a really bad idea. Anyone else heard of that report. I can't find it.

Edited August 4, 2009 by Belfast Boy

[Belfast Boy]

Woodzer-we are all sickened by the activities of the banks and the whole ponzi scheme housing crisis funded by them.However letting a bank go is not an option because you would get:

1.total panic and people withdrawing their money

2.possible failure of other banks

3.chaos and anarchy as whole system failed

Not in any of our interests.It could still happen but probably not as likely as 12 months ago.Everyone here should be aware that this is much bigger than a housing crisis / overpriced issue.

I doubt that it is in our interest to save the banks in the way that is being proposed

I think that full bank nationalisation would cost the taxpayer less in the end, rather than what is being planned. Is that what Sweeden did? Nationalise all the banks. Fire all the senior bankers. Restructure the banks with new regulations to prevent a repeat of the same problems.

The people who didn't do anything to prevent this crisis are still in charge. How can they be trusted to fix the mess they didn't see coming?

[Rare Bear]

But the fun has not even started yet in the Republic. EU interest rates are set for Germany and France, not for Ireland and when they rise it will be in response to German recovery not Irish needs.

[bearsrus]

http://www.rte.ie/news/2009/0804/carrolll.html

the firesale thats needed has been put on the long finger again.

[BelfastVI]

I doubt that it is in our interest to save the banks in the way that is being proposed

I think that full bank nationalisation would cost the taxpayer less in the end, rather than what is being planned. Is that what Sweeden did? Nationalise all the banks. Fire all the senior bankers. Restructure the banks with new regulations to prevent a repeat of the same problems.

The people who didn't do anything to prevent this crisis are still in charge. How can they be trusted to fix the mess they didn't see coming?

I agree. On day one that is what they should have done. Nationalise all the banks. However this dosn't remove the bad bebt, it brings it totally onto the taxpayers books. NAMA is proposing the, privatly owned banks take a write down on the debt. Whether that is a 20, 30% or more has yet to be determined. Remember most of these loans would have been at 80 or 90% LTV. So the developer had already put in, and lost the other 10 to 20% so a 30 write down on the loan could be a reduction to perhaps 50% LTV. I agree this is still higher than today's OMV. But the developer and the bank has had to take that 40 to 50% write down.

If the government was to take over the bank I don't think they would want to fire all the senior bankers with all the knowledge. The head and a few around him may, for symbolic reasons go but that would be it. Who do you replace them with?

As for the new regulations. I understand these were all in place and were relaxed, country by country by the various governments to ease growth. So in reality the government, the people you want to take over the banks have there share of the blame here too.

Edited August 4, 2009 by BelfastVI

[woodzer]

As for the new regulations. I understand these were all in place and were relaxed, country by country by the various governments to ease growth. So in reality the government, the people you want to take over the banks have there share of the blame here too.

This is a valid point, and full culpability does not belong with the bankers. It's valid to say that someone else should have be watching over them and, in reality, what happened was that everyone thought it was someone else's responsibility. Truth be told the buck stops in two places however - the executive level of the banks for making the "strategic decisions" and with politicians for setting the rules of the game. It's unreasonable to expect the man on the street to understand the complexities of international finance (I know it gives a sore head even just reading about it) so part of the issue here is clarity. Any solution to this will have to involve changes that reduce the potential to hide dodgy decision making behind the smoke and mirrors of dense jargon and the requirement of guru level knowledge of mathematics and specialized fields. I'm sure the hedge fund managers and speculators out there would scream at me for saying such but part of the reason for this whole crisis is due to the difficulty involved in calculating risks relating to complexity financial instruments.

[VedantaTrader]

You have hit the nail on the head(highlighted in Bold). This is exactly what NAMA is designed to do. Can it do it, probably not but it will attempt.

The banks take a hit here and the developers are wiped out but the losses to the government will be deferred and hopefully reduced. How is this a bad thing? This is not supporting failure. It is accepting it and stepping in to sort it out.

The Bank of Ireland shares should be wiped out to zero, that has not yet been the case...How about the bondholders? Have they been wiped out yet? I suspect not. So why should tazpayers who never put a penny or a cent into this bank be left with the bill before the people who took the prospectus and invested in Bank of Ireland corporate debt bonds? I don't understand this thinking...

The only reason that the taxpayer is being stitched up with this bill, is that no one else wants to buy these toxic assets at the prices that would avoid bankruptcy. I mean they are already bankrupt in all but name. So of course taxpayers are left to pay over the odds for assets that no buyer can be found for...If taxpayers are to be protected and this rhethoric that they could be a good investment for taxpayers was so true then why not let the market take over these assets? The simple reason is that if they were marked to market the banks would go under in a flash as they are not worth a fraction of what banks "need" to value them at. No one in the private sector will buy at prices that would prop up the banks.

I m sure someone in the private markets would buy these assets up, perhaps at 20 cents in the euro, who knows? And therein is the problem, no one can know the price of these assets, the true price if tax payers are there to artificially prop up prices.

Lehmans was allowed to go bankrupt, yet Lehmans had its good assets taken over by other institutions. Barclays being a prime example. Barclays bought the trading, stock analysis side of Lehmans, which is by all accounts a healthy part of the Lehmans. This helped contribute to Barclays recent profits, and they are hiring 2000 people to staff these assets bought over from lehmans...

So these bailouts and what they purport to do are the biggest pile of bull I ve heard. They are protecting the elite and the rich and the people at the top. People are still losing their homes through reposession who have BOI mortgages, is this not true? So how are these bailouts helping them. Why do these people not get a bailout? I m not saying this is what should happen, but would this not be a true bailout of the banks and the assets? As it would mean the banks would still be made good on the loans, as we the taxpayer step in to pay another mortgage, hence proping up prices. Yet these bailouts are not doing this.

If HBOS had been allowed to go bankrupt, they have still very good parts of the business, namely retails banking, credit cards, savings etc etc, all very profitable businesses. Are we saying that letting these entities go bankrupt would mean that no one would take over these good assets and they would be rebranded or perhaps kept the same? These parts would not disappear, they would still exist. The bad parts should be liquidated and all shareholders and bond holders should be wiped out, this has not happened. Instead LLoyds has been weakened by being forced by government to take over HBOS. So now we have two weak banks. When the government decided to bailout Northern Rock, then people took their money out of RBS, Barclays, B+B and put it in Northern Rock, and these banks were weakened further due government actions...Intervention by government has never been a good thing...

One only has to look at Japan to see this...

I m sure BOI have many such assets in the business that could be taken over by someone else, and the rest of the bad loans should be liquidated, the bad assets. Making everyone foot the bill for the minority stinks IMHO.

Edited August 4, 2009 by VedantaTrader

[shipbuilder]

The Bank of Ireland shares should be wiped out to zero, that has not yet been the case...How about the bondholders? Have they been wiped out yet? I suspect not. So why should tazpayers who never put a penny or a cent into this bank be left with the bill before the people who took the prospectus and invested in Bank of Ireland corporate debt bonds? I don't understand this thinking...

The only reason that the taxpayer is being stitched up with this bill, is that no one else wants to buy these toxic assets at the prices that would avoid bankruptcy. I mean they are already bankrupt in all but name. So of course taxpayers are left to pay over the odds for assets that no buyer can be found for...If taxpayers are to be protected and this rhethoric that they could be a good investment for taxpayers was so true then why not let the market take over these assets? The simple reason is that if they were marked to market the banks would go under in a flash as they are not worth a fraction of what banks "need" to value them at. No one in the private sector will buy at prices that would prop up the banks.

I m sure someone in the private markets would buy these assets up, perhaps at 20 cents in the euro, who knows? And therein is the problem, no one can know the price of these assets, the true price if tax payers are there to artificially prop up prices.

Lehmans was allowed to go bankrupt, yet Lehmans had its good assets taken over by other institutions. Barclays being a prime example. Barclays bought the trading, stock analysis side of Lehmans, which is by all accounts a healthy part of the Lehmans. This helped contribute to Barclays recent profits, and they are hiring 2000 people to staff these assets bought over from lehmans...

So these bailouts and what they purport to do are the biggest pile of bull I ve heard. They are protecting the elite and the rich and the people at the top. People are still losing their homes through reposession who have BOI mortgages, is this not true? So how are these bailouts helping them. Why do these people not get a bailout? I m not saying this is what should happen, but would this not be a true bailout of the banks and the assets? As it would mean the banks would still be made good on the loans, as we the taxpayer step in to pay another mortgage, hence proping up prices. Yet these bailouts are not doing this.

If HBOS had been allowed to go bankrupt, they have still very good parts of the business, namely retails banking, credit cards, savings etc etc, all very profitable businesses. Are we saying that letting these entities go bankrupt would mean that no one would take over these good assets and they would be rebranded or perhaps kept the same? These parts would not disappear, they would still exist. The bad parts should be liquidated and all shareholders and bond holders should be wiped out, this has not happened. Instead LLoyds has been weakened by being forced by government to take over HBOS. So now we have two weak banks. When the government decided to bailout Northern Rock, then people took their money out of RBS, Barclays, B+B and put it in Northern Rock, and these banks were weakened further due government actions...Intervention by government has never been a good thing...

One only has to look at Japan to see this...

I m sure BOI have many such assets in the business that could be taken over by someone else, and the rest of the bad loans should be liquidated, the bad assets. Making everyone foot the bill for the minority stinks IMHO.

Excellent points VT. As has been said before, but needs to be said again and again, these bailouts were nothing to do with saving the average joe and all about saving the necks of the rich. The average person in the UK has little net wealth, just debt and a wage. The truly rich derive their wealth from investments and assets - it is clear who is being bailed out.

The problem is that anyone with a house or a few shares in the banks sees themselves being on the same 'side' as the rich and thus can be conned into accepting the bailouts. Ah, the irony of capitalism - its driver is the eternal aspiration to be rich and part of that elite, yet so few will actually achieve it while the failures feather the beds of those already there.

Edited August 4, 2009 by shipbuilder

[Malthus]

Excellent points VT. As has been said before, but needs to be said again and again, these bailouts were nothing to do with saving the average joe and all about saving the necks of the rich. The average person in the UK has little net wealth, just debt and a wage. The truly rich derive their wealth from investments and assets - it is clear who is being bailed out.

The problem is that anyone with a house or a few shares in the banks sees themselves being on the same 'side' as the rich and thus can be conned into accepting the bailouts. Ah, the irony of capitalism - its driver is the eternal aspiration to be rich and part of that elite, yet so few will actually achieve it while the failures feather the beds of those already there.

Agree totally.

Imo the fallout from the banks actions and the following bust have only started to play out.

In the bigger picture historically such events have been the driver behind revolutions, and don't forget countries like Spain and even Ireland are at fairly new at the democracy game ( I know there will be various views on Irish history but it is a fact that democracy is fairly new and as various reports have shown there has been a fair bit of rule bending )

Aside from that I would love to be a fly on the wall to the conversations between the judge in this case and the developers political mates

[woodzer]

So these bailouts and what they purport to do are the biggest pile of bull I ve heard. They are protecting the elite and the rich and the people at the top.

Rather critical article of one of the richest men in the world that backs this point up completely...

http://blogs.reuters.com/rolfe-winkler/200...fetts-betrayal/

Obviously US-centric but the basic structure of the bail out has been copied across the affected nations.

[VedantaTrader]

Rather critical article of one of the richest men in the world that backs this point up completely...

http://blogs.reuters.com/rolfe-winkler/200...fetts-betrayal/

Obviously US-centric but the basic structure of the bail out has been copied across the affected nations.

Good find, yep, basically in a nutshell. I notice a kind of innocence in people much older than me in regards this, and people of all ages for that matter, including famly members, who say things such as, "But the government have lots of smart people working to them, surely they would know these things that you are saying also"...and therein is the problem. It is one of innocence, a euphemism perhaps for ignorance...

People generally believe that the government have their best interests at heart...

There is an exercise I like to do when I m thinking about these things...the future...I like to ask these questions and answer them in some way to myself. More for ideas rather than Nostramus type predictions

What will the world/society/the economy be like one week from now? This is quite probably quite predictable.

What will the world be like 3 months from now?

What will the world be like 1 year from now?

what will the world be like 3 years from now?

What will the world be like in 5 years?

The last one 5 years...I think it might be possible that sometime between 1 week from now and 5 years from now, people will wake up and realise they have been the "patsy" in this...What form that realisation will take can be left to the imagination and history. Riots, revolts, social unrest etc etc...

I think there will be a catalyst for this, who knows what that will be...

Edited August 4, 2009 by VedantaTrader

[Malthus]

Good find, yep, basically in a nutshell. I notice a kind of innocence in people much older than me in regards this, and people of all ages for that matter, including famly members, who say things such as, "But the government have lots of smart people working to them, surely they would know these things that you are saying also"...and therein is the problem. It is one of innocence, a euphemism perhaps for ignorance...

People generally believe that the government have their best interests at heart...

There is an exercise I like to do when I m thinking about these things...the future...I like to ask these questions and answer them in some way to myself. More for ideas rather than Nostramus type predictions

What will the world/society/the economy be like one week from now? This is quite probably quite predictable.

What will the world be like 3 months from now?

What will the world be like 1 year from now?

what will the world be like 3 years from now?

What will the world be like in 5 years?

The last one 5 years...I think it might be possible that sometime between 1 week from now and 5 years from now, people will wake up and realise they have been the "patsy" in this...What form that realisation will take can be left to the imagination and history. Riots, revolts, social unrest etc etc...

I think there will be a catalyst for this, who knows what that will be...

The short term memory of the population always amazes me , the population always assumes that what happened today will happen tomorrow when history shows constant changes

Ask the French , Russians etc what happens when politicians and their mates take too large a slice of the pie

[BelfastVI]

Good find, yep, basically in a nutshell. I notice a kind of innocence in people much older than me in regards this, and people of all ages for that matter, including famly members, who say things such as, "But the government have lots of smart people working to them, surely they would know these things that you are saying also"...and therein is the problem. It is one of innocence, a euphemism perhaps for ignorance...

People generally believe that the government have their best interests at heart...

There is an exercise I like to do when I m thinking about these things...the future...I like to ask these questions and answer them in some way to myself. More for ideas rather than Nostramus type predictions

What will the world/society/the economy be like one week from now? This is quite probably quite predictable.

What will the world be like 3 months from now?

What will the world be like 1 year from now?

what will the world be like 3 years from now?

What will the world be like in 5 years?

The last one 5 years...I think it might be possible that sometime between 1 week from now and 5 years from now, people will wake up and realise they have been the "patsy" in this...What form that realisation will take can be left to the imagination and history. Riots, revolts, social unrest etc etc...

I think there will be a catalyst for this, who knows what that will be...

Stirring stuff VT, but never underestimate the public's appetite for spin and, over time there ability (or vulnerability) to accepting it. Just talk to any American about the Gulf War.

Down south the government will have to face down the monster that is the welfare state. The IMF have told them to and they will have to do this. The problem for them now is that public perception will be that the poor are been hit to fund NAMA. I don't know how they are going to spin their way out of that one. That has the ability to cause up-rest.

[Rock-n-Roll]

Stirring stuff VT, but never underestimate the public's appetite for spin and, over time there ability (or vulnerability) to accepting it. Just talk to any American about the Gulf War.

Down south the government will have to face down the monster that is the welfare state. The IMF have told them to and they will have to do this. The problem for them now is that public perception will be that the poor are been hit to fund NAMA. I don't know how they are going to spin their way out of that one. That has the ability to cause up-rest.

wont just be the poor!

will also be the poor tax payer

even the rich tax payer

and then of course the farmers!

http://www.clarecourier.ie/article.asp?id=1489

quote

“While farmers appreciate the difficult budgetary circumstances facing the country, they are taking a totally disproportionate share of pain. The farming community is being singled out for particularly rough treatment,†he added

the west awake!

rock on!

[paul65]

http://www.rte.ie/news/2009/0804/carrolll.html

the firesale thats needed has been put on the long finger again.

One wonders exactly how poor todays AIB's reported figures would have been had the court not ordered temporary protection for Liam Carroll against creditors pending a full hearing next Tuesday.

From RTE today Wed 5 Aug: Eu900m AIB loss as loans deteriorate

From the Independent on Monday 3 Aug 2009: Tough questions for AIB over loans to developers

ALLIED Irish Banks faces tough questions as it unveils interim results this week on its exposure to a handful of major developers after it emerged that troubled developer Liam Carroll owes the bank over Eu1bn.

The country's biggest lender, which has Eu23bn of property development loans on its books, faces losing hundreds of millions of euro as the future of Mr Carroll's property empire hangs on a special sitting of the Supreme Court tomorrow.

The BBC reported £41m loss by sister bank up here, First Trust Bank, looks tame in comparison to these bigger numbers, Loss of £41m for First Trust bank

Interesting though that the First Trust Bank should come out and state that their figures reflected the "deteriorating conditions in the Northern Ireland economy." Oh so nothing to do with over optimistic loans to all and sundry then. Do they think we are all idiots?

Edited August 5, 2009 by paul65

[okaycuckoo]

Down south the government will have to face down the monster that is the welfare state. The IMF have told them to and they will have to do this. The problem for them now is that public perception will be that the poor are been hit to fund NAMA. I don't know how they are going to spin their way out of that one. That has the ability to cause up-rest.

Up north, I hear 50% of workers are employed by the state. Any troubles brewing there?!

Is either state viable?

[shipbuilder]

Up north, I hear 50% of workers are employed by the state. Any troubles brewing there?!

Is either state viable?

Not to get into the whole public sector debate, but they're certainly not viable now that the government holds the bad debts of property speculators and cuts need to be made as a result. Unfortunately the time to make cuts is hardly when the economy is already on its knees and unemployment soaring - not only the moral aspect of this (workers who have paid taxes all their lives and now unemployed are forced to take reduced welfare) but the fact that consumer spending takes a bigger hit as a result. Unemployment also being a result of the collapse of the property bubble fuelled by the speculators.....net result is that the average joe is shafted from all sides while the cronyism continues.

[BelfastVI]

Not to get into the whole public sector debate, but they're certainly not viable now that the government holds the bad debts of property speculators and cuts need to be made as a result. Unfortunately the time to make cuts is hardly when the economy is already on its knees and unemployment soaring - not only the moral aspect of this (workers who have paid taxes all their lives and now unemployed are forced to take reduced welfare) but the fact that consumer spending takes a bigger hit as a result. Unemployment also being a result of the collapse of the property bubble fuelled by the speculators.....net result is that the average joe is shafted from all sides while the cronyism continues.

Can we blame the speculators wholly for this mess? Can we blame the bankers?

To me the big sin in the middle of this is securitation. If a bank now sells a mortgage to a homebuyer they, more than likely hold that debt on their books for the duration of the term and earn interest on it and take the risk of default against it. End result they will now carry out the correct checks and balances against and balance up the risk. As a result, surprise every Dick and Harry can no longer borrow 8 times their self certificated income.

In the not too distant past the banks, and other lenders sold mortgages, put them in nice bundles assessed them as triple A, yes sir, and sold them on to our pension companies who gobbled them up as quick as they could get them. Result the banks couldn’t give two f**ks who or what they sold to people as they passed the risk on to another organisation. All profit and risk went off their balance sheet. The people selling/vetting the product never took the risk. This results in bonus driven systems that rewarded solely on volume. To me this is the sin that history will look back upon. Who allowed this to happen? Whoever invented this wrapper or product as they call it started the rot. Who give these products a triple A rating when the backbone to the product was self assessed or self certified income? Who allowed Financial Advisors (a butcher or plaster during the daytime or perhaps a failed estate agent) to sign off that they were satisfied that the income statements were verified. How O how was this allowed to happen.

I can remember my father putting on his best suit (he only had one) to visit the bank manager to ask for a loan. He worried about it for weeks before hand. Going over questions in his head. What happened that, what logic allowed these long standing institutions to let go of generations of safeguards and allow FP's, with no training and sometimes disputable histories to hold the keys to the safes.

Who do we blame, to me it is whoever changed or relaxed these regulations. I have no love or much smypathy for the speculators

Edited August 5, 2009 by BelfastVI

[yadayada]

Up north, I hear 50% of workers are employed by the state. Any troubles brewing there?!

b]No - 29.1% (2006, Central Statistics Office)[/b]

Is either state viable?

Probably not at present levels

Edited August 5, 2009 by yadayada

[woodzer]

Can we blame the speculators wholly for this mess? Can we blame the bankers?

Well, yes we can stack a large part of the blame on the banks. Banks have always known that they made the biggest profit from people that owed them money rather than investing the money that people kept with them. This was easy cash for them as all the had to do was sit back and take the regular repayments (with interest). The more they thought about it, the more they concluded that it would be nice to have more of their customers owing them money. Once they started down this road they went at it with enthusiasm. It's not just mortgages that are the problem here it's over drafts, credit cards, personal loans and every other form of lending that the banks offered. They pushed these to the max, actively encouraging people to borrow as much as the possibly could. They actively promoted the culture of indebtedness that is now causing so much suffering.

Of course once they'd pushed the market to it's safe maximum the pressure continued to keep trawling it for more. Greed and stupidity took over and they then started pushing it into the unsafe and unfair domains. They started lending people more than they could afford. On top of that they started applying dreadful and completely unjustifiable penalty charges (£30 to send out a letter to tell someone they are overdrawn!, Really? If that's the case I'm in the wrong line of work cause I could whip up hundreds of letters like that an hour). In many ways it didn't matter that these people where never going to manage to fully repay their debts, they would pay the interest (and penalities) and be in debt forever - the perfect customer.

For a long time this was even better for mortgages. The early part of a mortgage period is heavily biased towards interest payments. If they paid these for several years and then failed the bank could reclaim the house and sell it to make up the outstanding balance and all the interest payments were pure profit. While house prices are stagnant or rising this is a perfect little earner with the only winner being the bank. In fact I can remember reading an article that outlined that banks actually preferred these kinds of customers because they got their interest payments, they got the house and they got to sell it to someone else and start the cycle all over again.

Unfortunately you can only suck the life out of a market for so long. The good times have ended. Reclaimed houses can't even be sold, so the cycle is broken and the banks don't get their money back. Watch dogs and court cases are moving in on their penalty charges scam and their "revenue streams" are under pressure from all sides. Still, it seems theres money to be made of someone and bonuses to be paid.

[getdoon_weebobby]

Belfast VI - good post.

In Northern Ireland I believe the public sector provides work for 34 percent of those in employment, but every time I come across that statistic it is different. Im not a big fan of big government and think the amount of Public Sector jobs created since 1997 is crazy (my girlfriend is a radiographer in the NHS btw) and believe these jobs need to be slashed. Creating jobs to keep down unemployment is crazy. We need real jobs producting real goods/services.

If northern irelands wages really are lower than most of the rest of the uk (then why the feck were house prices amongst the highest!) then this should be used to norn irons advantage to attract investment.

I see the papers are in a bullish mood today. unbelievable how short term peoples thinking is.

[BelfastVI]

Belfast VI - good post.

In Northern Ireland I believe the public sector provides work for 34 percent of those in employment, but every time I come across that statistic it is different. Im not a big fan of big government and think the amount of Public Sector jobs created since 1997 is crazy (my girlfriend is a radiographer in the NHS btw) and believe these jobs need to be slashed. Creating jobs to keep down unemployment is crazy. We need real jobs producting real goods/services.

If northern irelands wages really are lower than most of the rest of the uk (then why the feck were house prices amongst the highest!) then this should be used to norn irons advantage to attract investment.

I see the papers are in a bullish mood today. unbelievable how short term peoples thinking is.

Yes I see the BT running with a bold title "Growth signs in housing market may signal the end of the recession"

Funny thing is, we are in a recession be cause we are told we are. 97% of people are still in a job etc. The flip of that is we will believe we are coming out of a recession when we are told we are. It doesn't matter if you think these stories are factually correct or not they have an effect.

Had a couple of investors on sites on Monday. First in years. The foreman told me they came in because Barkleys bank reported big profits. That a bank is reporting a profit would not have pricked my ears but these people are looking for these signs. Funny they didn't seem to notice the other three banks that reported losses. One swallow and all that.

By the way they didn't buy anything, but for me its encouraging.

I don't know who this Sean O'Grady is but this is the strongest statement any NI parer has come out with yet. At least he is saying that 'the housing revival, when it arrives, will be extremely subdued, restrained by rising unemployment and...higher taxes'

[getdoon_weebobby]

Yes I see the BT running with a bold title "Growth signs in housing market may signal the end of the recession"

Funny thing is, we are in a recession be cause we are told we are. 97% of people are still in a job etc. The flip of that is we will believe we are coming out of a recession when we are told we are. It doesn't matter if you think these stories are factually correct or not they have an effect.

Had a couple of investors on sites on Monday. First in years. The foreman told me they came in because Barkleys bank reported big profits. That a bank is reporting a profit would not have pricked my ears but these people are looking for these signs. Funny they didn't seem to notice the other three banks that reported losses. One swallow and all that.

By the way they didn't buy anything, but for me its encouraging.

I don't know who this Sean O'Grady is but this is the strongest statement any NI parer has come out with yet. At least he is saying that 'the housing revival, when it arrives, will be extremely subdued, restrained by rising unemployment and...higher taxes'

thats the thing when the rises genuinely do come theyll be for example 5% a year in line with inflation.

you really cant go much wrong waiting. theres less risk buying a year or 2 after the bottom than when you think we might of bottomed

[BelfastVI]

thats the thing when the rises genuinely do come theyll be for example 5% a year in line with inflation.

you really cant go much wrong waiting. theres less risk buying a year or 2 after the bottom than when you think we might of bottomed

Thats true. The only thing is you may pick off a better house now. Its a buyers market. Purchasers are picking over the best stock. There not much new stock being added. As prices have, in my opinion levelled in the new-build sector its simply the better houses that sell and the ones with smaller gardens, difficult parking, less storage etc that remain. In the old days they all sold off the plans but now people spend time going over and over them, they see the differences. I do believe you will be at similar prices, perhaps up a bit from over correction in places, next year but the best plots will be picked off.

Whilst there is some new build going on in the good areas (probably the best places to be buying) most sales, in the new-build sector are still from standing stock.

Get_Down, if you are starting to waver to the dark side and seeing the bottom, get out and do your dealing, whilst the builders still have their tongue hanging out. If they do get a bit of wind behind them they will be more difficult to deal with. You may well get a cheaper house in a years time, but that's just because no body wanted it today, they bought the better ones around it.

[getdoon_weebobby]

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