There is a semi ghost estate on my bus route. It is beside the M50 beside Finglas and an area called Scribblestown in murder news reports. The estate is opposite and beside a halting site.
This Heathfield estate seems less than half full. This week I noticed the sign they have flogging houses had a new banner on it. "NO DEPOSIT...NO WORRIES"
We have learned nothing.
That's a free market for you. The people who own those houses want to get rid of them. They are depreciating in value while costing money in maintenance. If I owned one I would be very motivated to rid of it and would do whatever I could to attract a sucker... sorry that should have been "buyer".
ReplyDeleteBut as soon as we started handing over money to rescue banks from their unwise loans we were not in a free market.
ReplyDeleteOne of the unwise things they admit to having done were 100% loans with no deposit. How are we back there again days after NAMA started handing over money to buy bad loans?
I see what you mean. But my point was really that it is the lender at fault here, not the people trying to sell the house. I think that's what you were saying anyway, but I got it arse ways.
ReplyDeleteI disagree that the property market has ceased to be a free market though. It has always been a free market and that is why prices went so high, driven by the lending practices of the banks during the boom.
When we bought our house we had to get a pretty big mortgage to cover it. If the banks had not been willing to lend it to us, we couldn't have paid that. If the banks had not been wiling to lend that money to anyone in our income bracket, none of us would have been able to pay that and the price would have come down to whatever the bank was willing to lend us. So the banks get to sell large loans, the property owners (developers) get large quantities of cash for their houses/flats and the government gets lots of tax revenue and loads of money moving around the economy, making them look good to the marks... sorry, that should have been voters.
If there is a lender still engaged in this sort of thing, then it should be pointed out. I'd say phone Gerry Ryan but...
The prices are still quite high in Heathfield, considering there are so many left to sell.
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