Do you need a 'Reality Check'? Property prices rationalise.

According to Britain’s largest property portal Rightmove.co.uk sellers need a ‘reality check’ when selling their according to a story published by Reuters. In the UK the unsold property stock has reached record proportions, currently it is seeing 35,000 per week come online, rightmove have about 90% of the property listed on the market on their site so it’s an even better indicator than our own versions which would be daft.ie and myhome.ie.

They have said that people need to embrace ‘smart pricing’, here we have taken to calling this ‘priced to sell’ or ‘price adjustment’ but in the end of the day the message is clear, drop your prices if you want to sell. The interesting aspect of the rightmove analysis is that many of the people advertising property are trading up and although they want to buy at a bargain they want to sell for the highest price attainable, its an interesting juxtaposition.

I think we are seeing the same thing in Ireland with sellers hoping for high …

Read More →

The Banks want to issue a slap on the wrist to those pesky HedgeFunds!

Irish Banks are considering legal action against several hedge funds in the belief that they gave false information about them in order to drive down their stock price and therefore make money by short-selling their stocks. If the regulator didn’t hammer the banks for the several million euro that the Irish Consumers were ripped off of in various debacles from account fees to forex charges then why should they get involved in this row?

The Regulator is there to enforce proper conduct in the Irish market, if the hedge-funds in question are not based here (chances are their administration might be though) then they will have little recourse, further more, the Irish Banks should be levied more if the Regulator does get involved, Irish Financial institutions have to pay for 50% of the Financial Regulators budget requirements, if they are going to be called in as inter-company police then the levy on firms using them for that purpose should increase. …

Read More →

What are the best mortgage rates? Mortgage Interest Rates explained.

What are the best Irish mortgage rates? What are interest rates and where do they come from? These are all good questions and in today’s post I hope to answer some of them.

Often I find that people call me and ask ‘what’s the best rate’ and then there is silence on the other end of the phone as they await an answer. The truth is that at any given time there is a ‘best mortgage rate’ out there, but normally there are restrictions surrounding it which inhibit the ability for most borrowers to avail of them.

We have come out of eight rate hikes which began at the end of 2005, and in an upward rate market people often feel that their old loan has become expensive, in fact it’s not necessarily the case that the ‘old loan’ is exceptionally dear, its that the rate market has gone up and therefore the cost of all loans has gone up, when we talk about the greater ‘debt burden’ that’s what we are referring to, because car loans, higher purchase, leases, …

Read More →

I (almost) feel sorry for the banks. Making sense of the credit crunch

If we are to look at where the subprime crisis came from and where it seems to be going (which is bulls-eye straight into a recession) you can see that one of the biggest casualties are the banks. Banks never get sympathy, but they should – at least a little maybe.Why? Well, if you have a pension it’s likely that indirectly you own part of a bank, if you have a bank account then you are using the service they provide, a service which helps to protect your money and gives you conveniences like ATM card withdrawals etc. In fact, unless you were miss-sold a mortgage at an exorbitant price and you are about to have your home re-possessed then there is no reason to ‘hate banks’ really, but if you ask people on the street – and to my detriment I actually did this – not many of them (in my test pool of 10 people on Pearse St. Dublin 2 it was 100% true) really care much for the bank, including …

Read More →

The ECB won’t cut rates? A central bank doing exactly what it should.

The Fed is still trying to bail out the US economy, there must be a fundamental belief there that a recession is the worst thing in the world. Personally I would feel that the 1,000,000 lives lost in Iraq outweigh the damage a recession might do but for some reason the efforts to end the war pale in comparison to what politicians and policy makers are willing to do to avoid an economic downturn.

Bear Stearns was bought for $2 a share by JP Morgan Chase, their stock price was about $38 recently, and the money to do the bailout was Fed backed. In fact the Fed is evoking laws designed during the great depression to lend direct to banks.

The USA has recession aversion, it’s almost like the economy there is one giant dog dry heaving to Pavlov’s recession bell. The issue is that the budget still has to be met, these bailouts cost money and the money …

Read More →

The ECB won't cut rates? A central bank doing exactly what it should.

The Fed is still trying to bail out the US economy, there must be a fundamental belief there that a recession is the worst thing in the world. Personally I would feel that the 1,000,000 lives lost in Iraq outweigh the damage a recession might do but for some reason the efforts to end the war pale in comparison to what politicians and policy makers are willing to do to avoid an economic downturn.

Bear Stearns was bought for $2 a share by JP Morgan Chase, their stock price was about $38 recently, and the money to do the bailout was Fed backed. In fact the Fed is evoking laws designed during the great depression to lend direct to banks.

The USA has recession aversion, it’s almost like the economy there is one giant dog dry heaving to Pavlov’s recession bell. The issue is that the budget still has to be met, these bailouts cost money and the money …

Read More →

With stocks going down and gold rising fast is it a ‘golden’ opportunity to buy gold?

Gold recently surpassed the $1,000 per ounce mark which was (in the past) a kind of financial landmark that would be mentioned along with flying pigs ‘yeah right! And Gold will be a grand an ounce!’ – you get the picture. But now that its a reality, along with oil being over a hundred bucks a barrel is it time to give one of mans oldest financial instruments a second look?

Gold like anything is driven by the market and that’s why it crossed the $1,000 dollar mark, and at the same time Oil hit the $110 barrel mark, that’s partly due to the gold/oil/dollar correlation which was mentioned (and graphed) in a previous post.

Commodities have been in an 8 year bull run and for some reason they have not been getting the press attention they deserve until perhaps the last year, and it still hasn’t topped out? Why? The situation that we have today is that we are in a different economic environment than we used to be, partly because the worlds economy is no longer US-centric. There …

Read More →

With stocks going down and gold rising fast is it a 'golden' opportunity to buy gold?

Gold recently surpassed the $1,000 per ounce mark which was (in the past) a kind of financial landmark that would be mentioned along with flying pigs ‘yeah right! And Gold will be a grand an ounce!’ – you get the picture. But now that its a reality, along with oil being over a hundred bucks a barrel is it time to give one of mans oldest financial instruments a second look?

Gold like anything is driven by the market and that’s why it crossed the $1,000 dollar mark, and at the same time Oil hit the $110 barrel mark, that’s partly due to the gold/oil/dollar correlation which was mentioned (and graphed) in a previous post.

Commodities have been in an 8 year bull run and for some reason they have not been getting the press attention they deserve until perhaps the last year, and it still hasn’t topped out? Why? The situation that we have today is that we are in a different economic environment than we used to be, partly because the worlds economy is no longer US-centric. There …

Read More →

First Time Buyers can’t catch a break

First time buyers are being told ‘now is the time to buy’ in the papers. I think it’s time to spell out a few home truths for the prospective buyer just so that they are 100% sure of what they are getting into. Buying a home is fundamentally a good thing, doing so without knowing the facts however is not.

Firstly, property is in a downward market at the moment, that’s not opinion, its a fact. You can dress it up as a ‘re-adjustment’ a ‘balancing out’ or an ‘inter-cusp reductionary period’, heck, call it ‘my granny’ for all I care, it’s still down, plain and simple. So if you put an offer on a property and an Estate Agent tells you ‘you have to sign soon or you’ll lose the place!’, then lose it (unless they accepted an offer so low you have to snap at it!) no guilt, no apologies, and don’t you dare pay full asking price! The current Irish property market favours the buyer not the seller. I would even advise our clients to offer below …

Read More →

First Time Buyers can't catch a break

First time buyers are being told ‘now is the time to buy’ in the papers. I think it’s time to spell out a few home truths for the prospective buyer just so that they are 100% sure of what they are getting into. Buying a home is fundamentally a good thing, doing so without knowing the facts however is not.

Firstly, property is in a downward market at the moment, that’s not opinion, its a fact. You can dress it up as a ‘re-adjustment’ a ‘balancing out’ or an ‘inter-cusp reductionary period’, heck, call it ‘my granny’ for all I care, it’s still down, plain and simple. So if you put an offer on a property and an Estate Agent tells you ‘you have to sign soon or you’ll lose the place!’, then lose it (unless they accepted an offer so low you have to snap at it!) no guilt, no apologies, and don’t you dare pay full asking price! The current Irish property market favours the buyer not the seller. I would even advise our clients to offer below …

Read More →
  1. Pages:
  3. 1
  4. ...
  5. 223
  6. 224
  7. 225
  8. 226
  9. 227
  10. 228
  11. 229
  12. ...
  13. 237
← Older Entries
  
Newer Entries →