We were really pleased about being chosen to discuss mortgages on Newstalk’s ‘Lunchtime’ show with Andrea Gilligan, it was part of a series called ‘project house’ which is helping people figure out how to buy a home. They needed mortgage advice and went to the experts!
When you talk about being in favour of ‘more property tax’ you quickly lose the room, but what if we had less income tax and more tax on immovable assets? This is a targeted wealth tax given the way that property and wealth are intertwined, it also means those with the most valuable homes would contribute more and could encourage down-sizing too which would help free up chronically under-occupied housing stock.
This can be an emotive topic, we understand that, but so is the plight of young people facing a market that isn’t affordable and a housing shortage that is driving prices to dangerous levels.
We were part of a discussion around Covid19 and mortgages on Matt Cooper’s ‘The Last Word’ show on Today FM yesterday. The other participant was Brian Hayes of the Banking and Payments Federation of Ireland.
For our part we were impressed with the fact that the banks have been able to do more than 2,000 mortgage restructures per working day since the pandemic driven mortgage breaks were announced. To put that in perspective, it took six years to do 100,000 restructures after the financial crisis. This time around that figure could be achieved in a little over two months, that is something to be commended.
Pat Kenny had Lorcan Sirr from DIT and Karl Deeter from our company on to talk about the property market in particular in light of the changes announced by the Central Bank.
The conversation covered many topics in the market and outlined where so many issues in housing are arising.
We were asked by Brian O’Donovan of TV3 to talk about the recent CSO figures which showed that house prices are falling but that in Dublin there is a different dynamic in non-apartment houses.
I have been talking for some time about a ‘rip off’ that the US will attempt to make against China, that it could take a belligerent form (default) or a traditional and less likely to cause a war option (devaluation of the dollar). It seems to be playing out and going for option two.
Competitive currency devaluations are alive and well in the world, why? Well, in early 09′ I wrote about it on the Paddy Power Trader blog:
It has been a while since I posted on the yield curve, the main reason was that I lost my daily treasury letter from Bank of Scotland when all of their reporting went back to the UK and the daily replacement by Lloyds didn’t offer sufficient time-line to give a full curve.
The interesting thing that has happened in the interim is that the rules regarding forward rate prices between mortgage rates and Euribor rates has disconnected, in the same way that the ECB and Euribor disconnected in 2007, by this I mean that it is fascinating to see the established relationship end but the implications are horrifying for borrowers because it has meant that their monthly payments have gone up at a time the ECB is keeping rates low for the purpose of loosening up the financial cogs.
Take a look at the difference between February of this year and today, we can see that the long term rates are coming down and that flattening of the curve means two things: the ‘new normal’ is predicted to be one …
The EBS is on the block and there have been countless headlines regarding the idea that debts might get written down by Wilbur Ross if the Cardinal Capital group (who he is backing) are the successful bidder. I have said that I doubt this will happen and will set out why in this post.
EBS carried out a PCAR (prudential capital assessment requirement) test in March 2010, it showed that they required €875 million in funding to come up to scratch. Thus far they received €100m in cash from the state and a further €250m in a promissory note leaving a gap of €525m to fill. The bids being touted are in the region of €550m meaning that whoever buys in is effectively bridging the gap and paying a small premium as well.
Take a look at a balance sheet and you’ll see that no matter what happens, that in the end assets=liabilities. That is an accounting identity, in our example we have a hypothetical bank which has assets and liabilities worth (for example sake) €100 million Euro.
Jim Chanos, the famous short-seller talks about government bailouts and whether or not they are very effective. A brilliant overview of the role of investors and how government bailouts are perhaps not the panacea they are flaunted as.
Brian O’Donovan of TV3 covered this story, which relates to a press release by the Financial Regulator.
