Ireland and Massachusetts (USA): Compare and Contrast of Jobseeker’s Allowance

Unemployment is a stressful time of one’s life. The fear of not knowing where your next paycheck is going to come from, and if you are going to have enough to put food on your table, is very real for many people. I will examine the different government allowances in Ireland and the United States to see how these countries compare and contrast when helping out their unemployed when they are finding their next jobs.

In Ireland, Jobseeker’s Allowance is a type of payment that Ireland government pays the unemployed. The allowance payment is a means-tested payment, meaning an unemployed individual would have to fall lower than the average of specific income qualifications. This allowance payment is paid out by the Department of Employment Affairs and Social Protection (DEASP). To qualify, one must:

Be Between 18 and 66 Be Unemployed Actively be seeking work (with proof) Satisfy the means-test Be a proven habitual resident (living in Ireland with some permanence)

In order to satisfy the means-test, the DEASP observes your personal cash income, savings and other assets. However, the DEASP …

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Housing Update and the Coronavirus

At the beginning of the year, Glenveagh Property, an Irish home building company, had shares increase by over 2%. The shares rose due to an increase in house sales and company revenue in 2019. The company achieved these increases because they had significant sales of homes for first-time buyers, where there still remains a high demand. Glenveagh Property reports the company generated revenues of €284 million, which presents an 240% increase from 2019 to 2020. In addition, the company had a 200% increase in homes built from 2019 to 2020, stating the company built 844 new homes. Finally, the company reports that they have reduced its risk in its 2020 construction targets. 

While Glenveagh Property’s positive report for the year of 2019 and hopeful outlook for 2020 are optimistic signs, the housing market may continue to grow with an improvement of the Coronavirus. On Tuesday, 11 February 2020, Zhong Nanshan, the head of China’s National Health Commission team investigating the Coronavirus, stated in an interview that the infectious virus may be over in April of 2020. Nanshan said the disease …

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What Brexit Means for the Housing Market.

How will Brexit affect the Ireland housing market? A question wondered by many citizens in Ireland, especially those currently active in the housing market.

Though not all bad, the housing market could be negatively impacted by the loss of international buyers.

As the nation watched as the British pound lost value by 10% with the referendum result being announced, and has dropped even more since then, housing in Ireland just got significantly more expensive for British buyers.

With current housing prices already being considered too high, for all buyers, international or not, the prospects of buying just got much more difficult for anyone newly searching.

The Irish Times reported recently that 60% of buyers of top-end homes are international, while 40% being more specifically from the UK.

By top-end homes, the Times is reporting numbers of €1 million and over homes. Meaning, the rest of the market, while without statistics from the Irish Times is also highly diluted by foreign investors.

Citizens looking to permanently move should not have much of an impact in their quest to buy as it …

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U.S Housing Giants Continue Losses

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are known to be “too big to fail”….at least that’s what the U.S had said up until the 2008 financial crisis.

In 1968 Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac had become a government-sponsored enterprise, a term insinuating that the government would always be there to bail them out if needed.

In 2008, the government was there to do just that.

With extreme lending of subprime mortgages, the economy quickly began to fail. Individuals were able to get mortgages they were unable to repay, something that would have been easily foreseeable, had the lenders set stricter requirements.

In this time, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac had borrowed over $187 billion. And now, finally, they have repaid to the full amount and more…leaving the Trump administration to decide what to do next.

With reporting of a fourth-quarter net loss, it is obvious they have yet to recover to pre-crisis standards, and neither is it surprising that they are looking for taxpayer help with the new tax bill that has been passed by the trump administration.

This crisis begs …

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How does the German mortgage market work?

The German mortgage market is facing a complex period with increasing competition and a smaller population that is eligible for a mortgage because the country is rapidly aging. Of the more than 82 million inhabitants, 50 million in the age group are 20-64 years old. But in 13 years, in 2030, there will be only 34 million Germans who are young enough to receive a mortgage.

Although Germany is the largest mortgage market in Europe after the United Kingdom, the German housing market is different from the rest of the EU market. According to Ilse Helbrecht and Tim Geilenkeuser from the Humboldt University in Berlin, the Germans feel much less committed to their own house than the British, Italians or Spaniards.

Only slightly more than half of the families own the house in which they live. The main reasons for this are a large range of affordable and high-quality rented apartments and a tax system which is not preferred by tenants. Some provinces have set up incentive schemes for first-time buyers, but they are small businesses. Mortgages are offered by …

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An increase of housing demand for millennials in the US

Real estate is on millennials to do list despite the stalled wage growth and housing market fears in the United States.

The National Association of Realtors show that the amount of first-time home buyers increased 3 percent year-over-year. They made up of 33 percent of the home mortgage market in May.

First-time home buyers can be categorized as someone who has not owned a home in the past three years.

Fannie Mae statistics shows that first-time home buyers make up of 42 percent of all home mortgages from January to April which is up 2 percent from 2016.

As interest amongst the millennials is rising in home buying, whether or not that will be a good idea is at question. The Federal Reserve just raised their interest rates which will affect the millennials in search for a …

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Bank of England raises counter-cyclical capital buffer to 0.5%

Bank of England announced to lenders that it is raising the country’s counter-cyclical capital buffer from 0 to 0.5% to mitigate pressures from increasing consumer credit. The counter-cyclical capital buffer is a requirement on all banks, lenders and investment firms to keep a certain level of capital when credit growth is excessive. To a certain extent, this buffer is able to insulate banks from the cyclical growth and downturns of the economy. Bank of England’s decision reflects its interests in slowing down credit and lending in the British economy.

 

By raising the counter-cyclical capital buffer to 0.5%, British banks must increase their held capital by over £11.4 billion over the next 18 months. The Bank of England also has the intentions of further increasing the buffer by 0.5% to 1% by the end of 2017 to combat increases in consumer credit and lending. The counter-cyclical buffer has only been used once in the UK, but was quickly revoked due to stagnate economy conditions during the immediate aftermath of Brexit.

 

Bank of England’s Financial Policy Committee warned that there …

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How Do American Mortgages Work? Part 10: How does Western European Mortgages Compare

Relating this series to the Western European mortgage market, as fixed-rate mortgages are most common among America while variable-rate mortgages are the most common in Western Europe. This is because Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac insure their mortgages. This means it does not affect the lenders if the interest rate rises on a fixed-rate mortgage. It is so, because the mortgage market in the United States relies more on the secondary mortgage market than on formal government guarantees. Comparing home ownership rates between the United States and Western Europe, they are fairly similar but higher default rate in the United States. Mortgage loans are mostly non-recourse debt where the borrower is not personally liable in the United States.

With Ireland’s typical interest rate being higher compared to other Western European countries, theorist claim it was from the popularity of Tracker mortgages. Tracker mortgages being locked in at 1% higher than the European Central Bank (ECB) Rate, when the ECB rate hit 0% lenders were contractually obligated to have the borrowers’ interest rate at 1%. Since the lenders need to make …

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How Do American Mortgages Work? Part 2: How the Secondary Mortgage Market was Created

Like the housing bubble in 2008, there was a growing popularity in the residential housing market which therefore created a housing bubble throughout the 1920’s. Before the crash, there were four common financial institutions to obtain a mortgage from: commercial banks, life insurance companies, mutual savings banks, and thrifts. These would typically have 5 year balloon loans or 10 year amortization loans with families having a hybrid of the two loans.

The Great Depression started by a stock market crash in 1929, there was a huge economic downfall that lasts for 10 years spread throughout the Western world filled with great disparity and no work. By 1933, the economy fell 27%, unemployment reached 25%, and wages fell 42%. The Great Depression was not just affecting Americans but the banks as well. Laws preventing banks to invest their client’s deposits were not in existent yet so a majority of the banks’ money were in investments. When the stock market crashed the banks’ money went along with it. With the Economic downfall left little to no income for most of the families, …

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What Brexit Means for the Irish Economy: a pro and a con

With UK Prime Minister Theresa May failing to win a majority in elections last week, the fate of Brexit negotiations have become even more up in the air. It is likely that she will be forced to give concessions the opposition, and thus take a softer stance on the terms of Brexit. Despite the specifics of the negotiation still being uncertain, it has become obvious that the Irish Economy will be hurt by declining trade with the UK and will at the same time benefit from the relocation of multinational corporations from the UK to Ireland.

The UK is one of the top destinations for Irish exports. In 2015, 12% of Irish exports went to the UK, valuing at $12.9 billion. However, Brexit will force terms of trade between the UK and Ireland to be re-examined. While Ireland will definitely try it’s best to keep trade with the UK as open as possible, with declining consumer spending in the UK and the falling price of the pound to the euro, Irish goods …

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