Office extensions in the docklands

The Dublin City Council has granted planning permissions to a business associated with billionaire Denis O’Brien for additional floors on an office building in the Docklands. In the beginning of 2019, Jepview Ltd had plans to replace the fourth floor penthouse inside the Malt House building. Jepview planned to build an additional four storeys to make a nine storey office building. However, the council determined that the plan may be excessive and Jepview reduced one of the planned floors.

The council revised plans earlier this year after the conservation officer revealed that effective development will consist of five floors of vertical extension over an existing 4 storey victorian warehouse building. The officer also stated that the proposed addition should be reduced by at least two storeys to ensure the glass extension remained appropriated.

The office deemed that getting rid of only one floor was sufficient. The vertical expansion grant of the Malt House building uses the city council planner. Specifically, the proposal”exhibits a distinctive contemporary design which will make a positive contribution to the subject site and Dublin’s urban fabric”. …

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Donhoe’s Investigation in Interest Cap on Loans

The Minister for Finance and Personal Expenditure and Reform, Paschal Donohoe, has begun investigating the idea of capping interest rates moneylenders can charge. The discussion of capping maximum interest rates has been brought up by the fact that moneylenders can charge insanely high percent annually on small loans. In other words, any licensed moneylender is able to set their own interest rate. There has been a recent push onto the Minister for Finance to create a interest cap on loans.

Why is the ability for licensed moneylenders to set their own interest rates an issue ? Interest rates determine the price at which individuals can borrow money. The higher the interest rate the more expensive it becomes to borrow money. The higher the cost of money the more difficult it becomes to borrow money and thus discourages investment. Ultimately, ability to set extremely high interest rates means borrowers will be paying a high price for money. The higher the interest rate set by a moneylender the higher the lenders profit will be.

In comparison most countries in the European Union …

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TodayFM Last Word features Irish Mortgage Brokers and Joan Burton to discuss bank taxation

We took part in a conversation with Matt Cooper on The Last Word about bank taxation with Joan Burton from the Labour Party. We tried to make the point that short term thinking about bank taxation is a mistake, that we are better off getting the maximum amount of money back to the state rather than losing bank value in order to score a short term political win.

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Today FM The Last Word features Irish Mortgage Brokers talking about Ulsterbank loan sale

We were happy to take part in a conversation on the Last Word with Matt Cooper about the recent Ulsterbank loan sale, Karl Deeter was there for Irish Mortgage Brokers and Mick Barry TD was also part of the interview.

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Government Ignoring Social Housing Plans

In a time of a severe housing crisis, Ireland is looking for any way to lift the market and help people into homes at a price they can afford.

Recently, however, there was a turn of events that no one saw coming. The government has been accused of buying private sector homes rather than building social housing.

In an attempt to relieve the country from the housing shortage, the strategy was all wrong. By building social housing, the nation would have seen an incredible increase in the supply of available housing.

Something that is desperately needed.

Darragh O’Brien, a spokesperson on housing, is responsible for the gathering of the statistics in which proved that for at least the last two consecutive governments there has been nearly 1 billion euro of taxpayers money spent on the purchasing of private sector homes.

The data gathered, dating back to 2011!

These findings provide good reasoning to accuse Fine Gael of being overall opposed to the building of social housing.

An opposition that many wouldn’t agree with due to the high numbers of people …

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Regulating mortage buyers is a political move not a sensible regulatory one.

Politicians are prone to playing politics, that’s a given. What is strange is that so few demonstrate a knowledge of the regulatory environment that banking exists in. While decrying a ‘lack of regulation’ they fail to see that loan sales are actually a result of regulation, the very thing they are saying they want.

If you have a long term agreement with a borrower that is a contract, it can and does stand the test of the courts. A fund buyer won’t seek to overturn that contract even though the loan is technically ‘not performing’.

This is an important point, if you got a split mortgage and it was agreed on a long term basis (as they are) then your loan is non-performing because part of the loan isn’t accruing interest. You are making payments in full on the other part, but it is less than the original contracted agreement. Any losses of interest are accounted for and already booked, but the loan itself is still going to be classified that way.

If somebody buys your loan they have to …

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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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Claire Byrne Live ‘The Paradise Papers’ explained 6th November 2017

Our compliance manager Karl Deeter was on Claire Byrne Live on RTE 1 last night to explain the ‘Paradise Papers’. This was a cache of documents that helped to expose tax avoidance on a large international scale. He explained the difference between avoidance and evasion as well as asking whether or not these papers were ‘good’ because if a person didn’t break the law should they lose the right to privacy?

These papers are likely to expose actual evasion and on that basis they need to be examined, we are confident that the news coming out of the Paradise Papers is far from over.

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