Property prices and property costs, they are not the same, so do you rent or buy?

We have seen a growing trend in our brokerage of people getting mortgage approvals (mainly first time buyers) and not drawing down, this might indicate some pent up demand in housing – which if it comes will be regular houses as opposed to apartments – or it indicates fear of buying in general.

The thing that is pervasive is the ‘price’ of housing, and the idea is to wait until we reach the bottom. That is a perfectly rational concept, and when you are not purchasing over a long term then the price now (we’ll take from financial market vernacular and call it the ‘spot price’ of housing) is the main thing to focus on.

However, that is only one part of the ‘price’ because the majority of new buyers are not buying for cash. The other price is the price of money, the financing costs. We indicated in our annual outlook that banks would, in 2011 alone, increase rates by a further 100bps or 1%, that any bank which isn’t government owned will have variable rates in the region …

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Household lending is up

It’s kind of funny how you can pick things up anecdotally and then see official figures confirm your suspicions. In August we saw a good number of draw-downs, I called a few friends in other brokers to see what was happening with them and they said the same thing, bumper numbers (albeit by 2010 standards they are still horrific).

The high savings rate has translated into a higher level of repayment/prepayment on mortgages, in our annual prediction we said that lending would sit still or drop for this very reason, but that may yet prove mistaken if the trend continues.

2010 is the first time I can remember ever having a flipped season, normally nothing happens in the summer, the action is all in spring and autumn. However, the thing that every other broker said [and this goes for our firm too] is that August wasn’t necessarily ‘busy’, rather it was the flow through of all the constipated pipeline of the first half of the year. That isn’t exactly a beautiful connotation but …

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Mortgage Question: I have no savings, can I borrow a deposit?

The majority of lenders now insist that your deposit comes from a non borrowed source, and will decline your application if you plan to borrow it. The lenders who will consider your application will assess your application with the new deposit loan as a financial commitment which decreases the amount you can borrow on the mortgage, and because it is a short term loan it will eat into borrowing capacity much more than you may expect.

[eg: €100,000 loan over 30yrs costs c. €420 before tax relief, but one tenth of that, €10,000 at personal loan rates over 3yrs will cost c.€313 per month which would reduce the amount you can borrow by approximately €80,000!]

Short answer: You should aim to have your own equity in the deal via savings, if you borrow a deposit then you are running an additional risk and our firm are of the belief that this is generally not in the best interest of the borrower.

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US Real Estate roundtable.

CNBC hosted a discussion about whether home prices will go up in 2010, with Kenneth Rosen, UC Berkeley Haas School of Business; Matthew Garrison, The Matt Garrison Group and CNBC’s Diana Olick. The American situation is vastly different from that in Ireland but it makes for interesting comparison.

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NAMA uncovered

Yesterday the National Asset Management Agency (NAMA) legislation was brought out in the Dail (that’s the Irish Government buildings for our international readers) . We have put some of the developments into simple graphs to give an idea of the way NAMA will work and what the prices are as well as what they mean (for the pedants out there- they were drawn by hand to demonstrate the point).

So the total value of the loans is €68 billion, adding on €9 billion in rolled up interest – development accounts often had this factored into the end sale price, generally showing c. 15% profits (as a minimum) with the roll up included.

The €77 billion in loans will receive a 30% haircut (across the board) meaning the price paid will be €54 billion. It is important to note that different institutions will see larger haircuts than others, so it might be that BOI gets 20%, AIB 25% and Anglo 37% / INBS 42%, the 30% represents …

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Living in the past, Irish property prices.

Paul O’Connor of MyHat.ie and PropertyWeek.ie has written up a great post on the Irish property market, the single biggest hindrance in the Irish property market is that of it being totally non-transparent when it comes to sales prices, most of us would settle for some opacity but alas, even that is too much to ask for.

Here is Paul’s Take on it:

An auction is a sale conducted in public. As such, prices paid at auction have always been available to the general public, and until auctions themselves became a victim of the market crash, we had become used to seeing auction results reported every week in the property pages of the newspapers.

In contrast, a private treaty sale is conducted in private. It does not specifically imply price secrecy, just that you can negotiate a deal at your own pace …

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The Regulator is good for business… In particular State owned business

In browsing the site itsyourmoney.ie today I noticed something interesting. First of all there is a section for ‘savings & deposit accounts’ then a separate one for ‘state savings schemes’ (note SSIA’s are long gone), but the ‘savings schemes‘ are all really just deposits! Check out their rates too! lol.

If you go to ‘compare costs and benefits’ on deposit accounts you get a list, but in with the banks who shows up? An Post, so they are either a ‘state plan’ or they are not? Indeed it seems both apply, they have their own section, and they are also in with the rest of the financial institutions.

If you go to compare products and click on a high street bank name, it takes you to a page where it shows the product details of whatever that bank has on offer, however, if you click on the name …

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New build a loser?

Banks are now reducing the LTV they will offer for new build properties but not in the second hand market and today we will look at why they might do this.

To begin with there is the rationalising of price in new build developments, that doesn’t mean the prices won’t drop further, it means that many builders are pricing to the market and not to what they want them to be worth. This however, is a tricky proposition for banks who may be lending on said properties.

Imagine this, ‘Phase 1 selling from €365,000’, now just over a year later ‘Phase 2 selling from €250,000’ and these are basically identical or comparable properties. Values are (in essence) set by what a person is willing to pay for an asset, and in this example the properties are all now worth €250,000 irrespective of what price they sold at. This means the banks security has just dropped by a similar amount.

The market is witnessing the most spectacular falls in the new build area, thus banks …

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Balance Sheet Expansion

Tom Keene of Bloomberg talks about the Fed and the results we may see of the solutions being put in place by Ben Bernanke. He makes the interesting and valid point about Ben Bernanke being one of the best living historians of the Great Depression and why it puts him in the unique position of being able to navigate the situation the US economy is in. 50 beeps in the 10 year treasury equates to nine big figures on Euro Dollar, so going from $1.30 to $1.39. Tom also talks about savings rates. Great viewing.

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New trends in underwriting and credit

It is 2009 and one of the things we need to look at (at least from the mortgage market perspective) is the availability of credit. Many associations such as ISME and politicians such as Joan Burton have voiced strong opinion on the need for credit to be extended to small businesses. The same credit contraction is happening in lending for property.

While our firm, and almost everybody involved in the mortgage market accept that we are not at market clearing levels, the unavailability of credit for those who do wish to buy and are capable repaying their loans is going to cause an unnecessary distortion which will drive prices down further than is rational. Without getting too deeply into the reason for the credit contraction/deleveraging process which we have covered many times here before, the point of interest is the new brand of underwriting we are likely to see.

In the past people within the financial industry were looked upon favourably, not only due to the fact that they normally represented a …

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