Friday, May 1, 2009

Quotes of the Week

"They don’t understand why you have to put the assets into Nama when Nama is likely to leave the loans with the banks and manage them like a credit committee." (Anonymous accountant, quoted in the Irish Times, representing anonymous developers who are trying to prevent transfer of their performing assets to NAMA: concerned that the Government would take over commercial properties such as shopping centres, on which loans were being repaid, because they were offered as security for, in some cases, smaller property development loans.)

"When called in to give their professional opinion on a property and its value, agents will make all the right sounds while avoiding saying anything which may later be used against them. In other words, they avoid giving any opinion on the possible sale price until they have first established precisely what price the vendor expects their property to achieve." (Isabel Morton, The Irish Times)

"Tenants are wise and are bargaining hard for discounts on advertised rent. Invariably they get the reductions, as it’s a renters’ market out there." (Irish Times article)

"As a long term proposition property is still a perfectly good asset class, the dotcom crash didn’t mean people stopped sending emails and despite the property crash living in a house/apartment still remains the most popular choice. The advised view (from our firm at least) is for home buyers to make solid long term location decisions that they can, and for investors to run the numbers to determine their target buying prices rather than looking at the market and trying to model your investment to work within the framework of current asking prices." (Karl Deeter of Irish Mortgage Brokers)

"It will take longer here to clean it up but that doesn’t mean that you can’t do good business during this period." (Swedish estate agent, Agneta Jacobsson, addressing Sherry FitzGerald business breakfast.)

"For years, we have been encouraged to ‘‘invest’’ our money in now-decimated pension funds as tax-allowable deductions. Similarly, we have been encouraged, by a coterie of mortgage brokers, bankers and financial gurus, to buy our own homes. Instead of continuing to contribute to these ‘‘black hole funds’’, maybe we should be allowed to switch this pre-tax income to paying off mortgage debt on our principle private residences. The net cost to the revenue would be nominal, as it is swapping one form of tax-allowable deduction for another. Messrs Cowen and Lenihan should give us something to smile about, and let us tackle negative equity with our incomes." (Cahir O’Higgins, solicitor, Dublin 7 in the Sunday Business Post)

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