On the 25th of August we were featured on RTE’s ‘Drivetime’ with Mary Wilson to discuss Home Choice Loan which is a state run mortgage lender. The state lender has only done 21 loans to date or about 3 loans a year.
There are many reasons that HomeChoiceLoan should be popular but in practice they are not lending and there are many questions about the validity and use the scheme has.
We were happy to see that our concern about social engineering was mentioned in an article in the Sunday Independent by Brendan O’Connor, the quote is below.
Or does the Central Bank think it’s desirable? And why has the Central Bank taken it upon itself to decide that Irish people should move to renting property rather than buying their own house? Mortgage broker Karl Deeter has suggested the Central Bank is indulging in social engineering. What other shifts in how we live would the Central Bank like to introduce you wonder. Perhaps a one-child policy?
The issue of social engineering was first raised by us in the consultation process when it began in 2014, specifically we said this was a concern in the following two quotes taken from our submission:
This policy will ensure that many people fall prey to a policy that in protecting banks hurts their future wealth. We are, and will remain, strongly opposed to measures that have societal engineering outcomes such as this.
And later we also said that
For people who don’t have rich parents …
The recent liquidation sales have possibly started a new trend in the property market in Ireland, one whereby there is an increasing divide between the valuations in different types of property, we have long been saying that the only market worth considering is non-apartment second hand homes in cities, the liquidation sales have reinforced this belief.
While we may be part of Europe, when it comes to living spaces we believe that Irish people favour houses to apartments, we have not crossed that particular Rubicon just yet and unlike our European counterparts, there is still a wish to own the land under the dwelling, over time this may change, but with the exception of the bubble-times the overwhelming mortgage for a first time buyer was used to purchase a house and not an apartment.
The situation regarding the property market in Dublin (for instance) will likely be one where apartments are seen as a totally separate market, in the past many newly built apartments were not priced on a totally dissimilar basis to houses of comparable square footage in the …
There is much in the news about private equity firms and various banks being ‘in talks’ about how they may work together (translation: some type of potential merger of parts of the business or total merger). Every bank seems to be in the spotlight right now and rumours are rife while fact is thin on the ground.
Every headline of every paper carried a bank story today, it is almost like society has moved from its fixation with property to a fixation with banks and their core tier 1 capital. If we mentioned Basel II accord a year ago people would look at you funny, today that and other terms akin to it are entering daily discussion at an alarming rate.
There is (as of today) no certainty that banks are going to merge, fail, succeed, or do anything other than what they normally do, however, if we were to make an assumption that at least three or four banks were to merge …
