Some sellers don't want to sell

Intriguing little piece on the property pages of The Irish Times today via a report by magazine Property Week…

[The magazine’s analyst/journalist said] some of the properties owned by property investors were advertised to give the impression to their bankers that they were “trying to get their finances in order”.

These investments were priced up to 17 per cent above the levels advised by the agents involved, and were “clearly intended to repel buyers and just make it look like action is being taken so that the vendors can protect their financial positions”.

Here’s the original report. A stand-out quote;

Apparently, there are quite a few properties on the market owned by property investors (e.g. bankers) or developers who are merely going through the motions in order to placate the lenders managing their finances but with no real intention of selling at current market prices. From what we can gather, it may be that in order for them to continue to get favourable treatment from the institutions, they know they must at least be seen to be trying to sell assets and those assets must retain a certain value as collateral in their finances.

Tangentially related; Barry O’Halloran reports today that some developers are after more taxpayers’ money. Which is, in essence, them admitting they’re utterly financially screwed. Which brings me to another report published in the last few days by Property Week under the headline ‘Property market magic numbers’...

In Dublin;

  • 4500 properties have come onto the market since the new year (180 per week)
  • 2336 properties have gone sale agreed or sold (95 per week), many of which have been on the market since before the start of 2010.
  • So supply is still outstripping demand by almost 2 to 1.
  • The resulting downward pressure on prices is about 1% per month

    • Right…

    Oireachtas Bills 1997 – 2010

    We frequently hear talk of how much (or how little) legislation is passed by the Oireachtas. We also hear about Bills languishing at Committee Stage for years. Unfortunately the Oireachtas website isn’t very useful for discerning any patterns or where Bills are, or when exactly they were introduced. In an attempt to make this much clearer, we (excellent Alexia is keen to help, and we need more help from readers) are going to try and build a spreadsheet that at least contains the current state of affairs, and included all Bills introduced since 1997. You can see what we’ve pieced together so far, and it is by no means complete or exhaustive.

    Oireachtas bills 2010, 2009

    If you want to help, please get in touch. Future applications would include using the Google Charts API to map legislative processes digitally.

    State-owned companies

    As part of an ongoing process we will be publishing the company accounts of all State-owned companies. Some of these accounts may be published in some form already, but we have gone to the CRO to get the most recent set of accounts and B1 certificate. This will involve dozens of companies but should make a useful reference archive. You will see the accounts under the “Finance – State-owned companies” category above.

    Gogarty's vote

    Pat Leahy in the Any Other Business column in the Sunday Business Post today…

    Green deputy Paul Gogarty appears to have determined a new method of voting in the Dáil chamber, superseding even the swanky electronic voting system that was introduced some years ago and still causes some deputies problems.

    When the motion of confidence in the government was put to the House last Tuesday evening, Gogarty responded not by the customary ‘‘Tá’’ by which deputies orally indicate their positions before a formal vote. Instead, the TD gave an enthusiastic thumbs-up signal to the Ceann Comhairle.

    Mind you, he then appeared to answer ‘‘Níl’’ along with the opposition deputies. Irrepressible is the mot juste.

    Transcript from speech by Finian McGrath on the motion of confidence.

    Finian McGrath: […] For this reason, I have no confidence in this Government. This is the reality for many people on the ground. It is about credibility, competence and confidence. I might add that I do not necessarily have confidence in some of the other parties who cannot make up their minds on particular issues and do not know where they stand on these matters.

    I have in the past made some unpopular decisions in regard to banking but I did so in the national interest.

    Paul Gogarty: Hear, hear.

    FM: Unlike others, I do not play politics with the economic future of this country. The Government must accept responsibility for its part in wrecking this economy […]

    Interesting.

    Also, later in the debate…

    PG: The two parties favouring an election would be seriously inconvenienced if one were called. Voters would be given the choice between an incompetent Fianna Fáil Administration and a bland uninspiring Fine Gael alliance with their Labour Party clones, chips off the old block. It would be the Dolly alliance.

    Pity it wasn’t an electronic vote, eh?

    Well worth reading McGrath’s speech in full too.

    Digest – June 20 2010

    Who knows how it goes?

    HOME

    New online-only news site, Dublin Observer. Early days but good to see.

    McWilliams in the Sunday Business Post…

    This fundamental economic truth seems to evade our politicians. They don’t seem to realise that the more blank cheques they write to shore up the European banking system, the more they are burdening us with future taxes. This tax burden causes the economies to contract more. Writing cheques to bail out Europe’s banks won’t help anyone, apart from the creditors of the banks – who should suffer anyway. This is how capitalism works.

    The lender is as culpable in a crisis. Was that not the capitalism you learned too?

    Constantin Gurdgiev on the extension of the bank guarantee.

    Gerard Cunningham walks along the canal with his camera.

    Telegraph photoshops the border into NASA image. Ye’wah? Via Skin Flicks.

    Letter to the editor in the Irish Independent from a Declan Doyle.

    Words like nepotism, largesse and cronyism are employed by polite and civilised society to convey its discomfiture with immoral conduct.

    But the times in which we live demand that we develop a language and attitude more fitting to both describe and challenge the enemy Ireland faces today.

    Very simply, public life has been criminalised.

    We need to ‘man up’ as a nation and admit this…

    Political editor of BBC Northern Ireland blogs on the release of the Saville Report.

    WORLD Continue reading “Digest – June 20 2010”

    O’Neill judgment

    Back in 2007 Gary Fitzgerald, a junior counsel, sought Cabinet records from the Department of An Taoiseach relating to carbon emissions under the European Environmental Information Regulations. The Department refused release of some records on the basis of constitutional Cabinet confidentiality. The Commissioner for Environmental Information ordered the release of the documents, but An Taoiseach appealed the matter to the High Court. The question in part related to whether the European Directive (which includes a mandatory release element in relation to emissions into the environment) took precedence over our Constitution – and also on how the Directive was transposed into legislation (SI 133/2007). An Taoiseach won the appeal, so the information will not be released. See Irish Times report here.

    The full judgment is here: