We were asked to take part in an interview on Primetime about house prices and whether or not they were starting to show signs of falling. Our view is that they will fall in time (probably in a damaging way) but that it won’t be soon because supply is still above demand and price indicators like rents are still rising. This is damaging for first time buyers and those stuck paying high rents.
The Today Show with Sean O’Rourke had us on to discuss an article written by Charlie Weston in the Indpendent about the strong level of cash buyers in the Irish property market. Marie Sherlock from Siptu the trade union was also on, what followed was a robust conversation where there was some interesting debate but also a lot of agreement on the problems, symptoms and solutions to the ills of the Irish property market.
We have been working for quite some time on creating an online mortgage process. The first time we did this was about 12 years ago but that was too far ahead of its time and the banks basically laughed at us. That has changed and now in 2019 we hope to make the proposition of an online mortgage process a reality, we’ll make it possible for people to do most of the process over their phone in an easy to use mobile environment. Stay tuned and we’ll let you know when this choice becomes available!
We were pleased to see our points about property tax on the Tonight Show on VMT given time to get worked through. The full show is available online at Virgin Media.
"If your income went up 100% would you want more tax money? Of course you would. So stop being hypocrites." – @karldeeter disusses property tax and asset millionaires. #TonightVMT
The Tonight Show, Monday to Thursday at 11pm on Virgin Media One. pic.twitter.com/Cl2cYxpxXW
— The Tonight Show (@TonightVMTV) January 15, 2019
People often discuss economic incentives in terms of ‘sticks’ and ‘carrots’, it’s an adage that refers to getting a donkey to work, you use a carrot to entice it forward or a stick to give a more coercive physical encouragement.
When it comes to property tax the rules in Ireland are damn near shambolic. Our property tax rates are some of the lowest in Europe, for that reason under-occupancy reigns supreme and nobody has to pay the price for it other than those who are on the outside looking to get in (ie: mostly renters).
We have a tendency to under use property, this isn’t just well to do older people living in big houses on their own, it happens in low-income homes too, to an extent that you just don’t see in almost any other well run European country, in fact, elsewhere almost the opposite is true. (see the table below).
In fact, when it comes to people in the lowest quintile of income, we are exceptional because many of them own their own homes outright, this is …
In this discussion the way that council houses are used was discussed, the piece is very topical because there are serious overcrowding issues in many council houses where you have five or more people crammed into a one bed home while other people in council owned houses occupy four bed houses on their own. Our view is that this is a national emergency and for that reason the people in these situations should swop with one another.
(click into the blog post for the video) We were really happy about taking part in panel on the Late Late show on RTE to discuss the rented sector and some of the issues being experienced in it at the moment.
This was an interesting conversation that we took part in, it wasn’t about mortgages or property for a change! It was about whether political correctness has gone too far. Karl Deeter was asked to discuss this from the perspective that perhaps it has, as a believer in freedom of speech he argued that it has along with Larissa Nolan and saying that it hasn’t was done by Collete Browne of the Independent and Peter Kavanagh from the Green Party.
We were pleased to take part in an interview on The Tonight Show with hosts Ivan Yates and Matt Cooper on Virgin Media TV. The topics raised were fiscal responsibility and public sector wages. Karl Deeter was making the point that with such a good economy we should be planning for when things aren’t good and running a tight fiscal ship.
We took part in a panel discussion about the ‘take back the city’ campaign. While we are in favour of solutions to housing shortages, taxing dereliction and land, we are not in favour of taking people’s property. This has to be balanced against why property rights were established in this country and we also questioned why they went after private property rather than the abundant and abandoned state owned property which includes council owned homes that are not being used.