I’m shocked and stunned. The biggest business in terms of start-ups this year is the housing business. How is this the case when the dogs in the street are yelling that it is all going to collapse?
The latest figures come from Bank of Ireland and are being reported by RTE today.
Maybe the reality is that despite the shrill cries of the commentators, people think differently. Ireland is a place like that, it seems.
I have never bought into the George Lee / David McWilliams prophet of doom scenario
and now, 14 months since the wheels came off the bus, the calamatous crash hasn’t happened. House prices have softened and indeed come back a long way from expectations, but they haven’t lost 40% of their value, which is what was being said at the time. What I have noticed is that rental prices are now almost the same as the mortgage for many places and now that interest rates seem unlikely to go up further, there is an even larger disjoint between the commentators and the observations on the ground.
Anyway, the outlook is much more favourable now for first-timers than it was 12 or 18 months ago. House prices have come down a little, though the cost of servicing the lower mortgage is probably the same, but when interest rates turn around, there might be a small window for those who have put off their purchase to buy from grateful sellers.
2 users commented in " Housing sector most popular for start-ups this year "
Follow-up comment rss or Leave a TrackbackI don’t know Docky, there’s a rise in the number of folk being let go from the construction workforce and a whole lot of other folk stretched to the max. As a country we’re losing manufacturing jobs left right and centre and there are houses up around me that have been on the market almost a year now. I don’t side with the doom and gloom merchants, but I still think we’re vastly to reliant on the propery market to float our economy.
yep, you’re right that we are overreliant on the property market, but we are still getting new jobs and in my area - research - we seem to be creating a good few jobs. What IK hope will happen is that the interest rates begin to drop and this makes it a little easier for the overstretched people right now.
Anyway, we’ll see how it plays out over the next year or so. I don’t have any grasp of macroeconomics, I just feel that the economists have consistently cried wolf and it bugs me that they do.