David McWilliams’s show ‘Ireland’ looked at the issue of property prices here and asked if we are in a ‘bubble’. He spoke to Karl Deeter from Irish Mortgage Brokers about this who made two points. The first was that we are too late to change the outcome of the property cycle, the second was that the biggest land hoarders in the state is the state itself and that Government should release land to flood the land market and drive down the primary costs of construction.
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 …