News of the World: Money expert on Debt

IRELAND is in payback mode at the moment. As a country we’re experiencing “deleveraging”, which means that many people are using most of their money to pay back excessive borrowing. However, that practice only puts cash into the banking system and not the real economy.

This is because banks aren’t lending — they’re too busy using the cash to put out fires within their own institutions. There are 786,000 Irish households with a mortgage, and six per cent of them are in trouble. The vast majority of that six per cent haven’t paid the bank a single cent in more than six months.

SOLUTION

Our Government-led solution is to encourage that to continue. They’ve made it almost impossible for banks to repossess homes — Labour’s solution of a two-year moratorium on repossessions reeks of “delay and pray”. A further 24,000 mortgages have been restructured and are still not performing, while 35,000 are only staying afloat due to a change in their conditions — mainly by not paying back the loan, only servicing the …

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Irish Mortgage Brokers and MyHome.ie on TV3’s ‘The Morning Show’, 2nd March 2011

We were delighted to feature again on TV’s ‘The Morning Show with Sybil and Martin’ (although Brian was sitting in for Martin) on their monthly property slot.

This week we spoke about the necessity of price drops to get a property sold, it is likely the single most important factor, it is also overlooked that there is often a carry cost or opportunity cost loss if sellers don’t drop prices.

Next month we are likely to cover ’empties’, that will be a fascinating show worth tuning in for!

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The first time buyer conundrum, to buy or not to buy?

At the moment in Ireland there is a conundrum for first time buyers: should you buy now and potentially over-pay on purpose?

It’s an unusual one and it partly related to property prices, it is a combination of taxation changes that will occur from the start of 2012 and expectations of interest rate changes from both banks and the ECB.

The argument of ‘rent or buy‘ is well established, we produced report on it with Peter Stafford (now of the IAVI/SCS) and Frank Quinn of Senior College Dun Laoghaire, but this is different – buy now or buy later isn’t taking the default of renting as an assumed continuous option, rather it is a case of delaying for the sake of market timing.

The changes in tax are on the tax expenditure side, namely TRS (tax relief at source).

Currently it is applicable to a maximum of €10,000 p.a. and the rates applicable are …

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KBC move to 90% LTV

This is a very healthy sign for the mortgage market, and in our opinion it could mean that 2010 might mark the low point for credit that we have been watching out for.

In 2009 KBC under-lent, they had €1bn and didn’t lend out anywhere near that, they are also here to stay, and prior to the crisis they had about 1/8th of the market share. The fact that they are rolling out a higher loan to value is a very confident sign that

Banks have a few internal policy tools to control lending 1.    Curtailing the amount of lending – we see that already, mortgage lending is about 85% down from the peak of 40bn p.a. , peak wasn’t exactly a gauge of normal, but half of that would be normal, and even on that basis it’s down 75% – that story still has to play out 2.    Rate increases: this has the same effect as central bank rate increases, it reduces lending and everybody has increased their margins by at least 1% in the last year, you and …

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Everybody pays, even the innocent

There were many innocent parties to the credit fuelled property bubble, they are generally those who didn’t borrow, or who carried no debt, choosing instead to live frugally, and if they used debt they used it wisely. Many of these people are at the polar ends of the age spectrum, very young (who don’t even have access to credit) or much older (who have paid off their mortgages), something we will all need to get used to though is the fact that everybody is going to pay for the mess left behind, this goes farther than NAMA.

The process I am describing is already under way, the very payments system (our financial infrastructure), is going to be used to generate economic rent from the people of Ireland in order to bring in more profit to banks so that they can repair their balance sheets. This price will be paid by the taxpayer outside of the bailout money already being supplied on our behalf. This will be even paid by people who manage to …

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The emotions of investing – Tanker shares

I have always liked shares, learning about them, finding out what various companies do and trying to spot trends, it all goes back to the time I spent in Chicago, I worked at a bar next to the board and many of the clients were options traders, then of course the annual stock traders convention was also hosted on the south-side at McCormick Place and apart from loving to drink those folks loved to share information, in particular with barkeep schmucks like me, because most of the highly successful traders didn’t have degrees from MIT or in some cases any university at all, most of them were gutsy practical types who read situations and made a call based on their belief, the kind that Krugman talked about in one of his recent articles.

Anyway, I still base a lot of investment decision on gut instinct, the technical analysis tells you certain thing, and for traders who can watch the hammers and candles all day that’s great, but for a …

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USA: Failed mortgage modification programme

Kudlow talks to Christian Weller, Center for American Progress and Dan Mitchell, Cato Institute on the topic of debt relief and mortgages in the USA, the argument for straight out write-downs on mortgages is compelling, and yet so too is the argument for allowing the market to work. Sometimes believing in the free market is seen as a ‘dirty thing’, but the side effect of trying to manage an economy from every aspect is also a bad thing (look no further than the former Eastern Bloc). Somewhere in the middle is a fair and sustainable path, but ideology bias is usually in the way before the conversation passes go, for that reason you will favour one speaker over the other quite often from the outset. However, ideology doesn’t actually get results, it is merely the platform from which a concept is launched and the better path would be to have an operational model to prove the point – although that isn’t always practical.

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Ways to reduce the asking price when buying a property (part 1)

Today we will cover some very practical tips which may help you get a better price when you are looking at a property. We suggest you take this list and print it, then as you are looking at a property check the various sections and use it as a rationale for your asking price, there may be things that were overlooked as well, so at worst this will help to ensure you don’t make unnecessary errors in deciding whether or not a certain property is good or not.

1. Is the garden in need of work? – If so you could ask that they either correct it or that you want more money off, a garden is generally a good selling point so if it is not well presented it can be a ‘red light’ telling you to go through the place with a fine toothed comb.

2. Does the fencing/walls need repair? – again, if there are any issues ask that they are remedied or they can discount the price by what it may cost to put the issue …

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Banks are not competitive?

Roger Bootle notes that markets do quite well at the end of a recession and at the start of a recovery by drawing the benefits of the future down into the present. Roger has a lot to say on the topic of banks, in particular that of banker bonuses – he states (and we agree) that when banks become ‘too big to fail’ they essentially are oligopolies and hence they are able to pay so well. From an Irish perspective the domination of AIB and BOI put some stock in this theory.

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