Monday, May 25, 2009

Quotes of the Week

"The bottom line is that the Irish property market is heavily entrenched in a deflation spiral and, given the myriad of factors that have led to its creation, it is unlikely to recover any time soon." (Alan McQuaid, Bloxham Stockbrokers, in The Irish Times)

"One has to be critical of interference with the property market generally in normal circumstances, but these are not normal circumstances. There are 60,000 houses around the country with for-sale signs outside them." (George Lee in relation to his suggestion that stamp duty be reduced to 2%, in The Irish Times)

"From now on, there will have to be consistency between a local authority’s development plan and the National Spatial Strategy, regional planning guidelines and ministerial directives, such as those I have issued to a number of councils." (Minister John Gormley, in The Irish Times)

"We have a price in mind which is considerably less than the asking price, but we’re not going to let someone make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear at our expense. We’ll play it cool and see who really wants our money, it’s not a lot, but it’s a sum we can stand over. And we have trends on our side." (House hunter, Don Morgan, The Irish Times)

"This is the fastest rate of decline in national prices that we have seen to date since the index started in 1996. The particularly dramatic reduction in prices for First Time Buyers reflects their reluctance to buy in a market that is still declining and where unsold properties are being reduced further." (Niall O’Grady, General Manager Business Strategy, permanent tsb)

"All borrowers will be required to meet their full legal obligations. There will be a hardening of the approach to these borrowers – taxpayers’ money is at stake and the agency [NAMA] will be expected to protect it in a commercial way and with an independent remit.” (Minister Brian Lenihan)

The Government has stated that Nama will have a clear and strong mandate to ensure that Irish taxpayers do not ultimately end up paying for the over-exuberant lending practices of the past decade. Failure to face up, recognise and deal with the problems in our banking system is simply too costly to contemplate for this and future generations of Irish people.” (Brendan McDonagh, interim head of NAMA)

"The last thing AIB or Bank of Ireland want to see is the entire portfolio of some bankrupt property developer dumped on the market by a liquidator. Not only would the banks have to write off their losses on that particular developer, they would have to write down all the other loans extended to all the other developers to reflect the value of the prices being achieved by the liquidator... If it takes the precipitous collapse of Paddy Kelly to force everybody to jump into the unknown and get on with cleaning up the mess, then it is to be welcomed." (John McManus, The Irish Times)

"AT long last the Auctioneers Bill hit the Senate on Thursday. The cowboys are being reined in. The same cowboys are believed to have beaten a path of protest to the Minister for Finance's door demanding some of the Nama valuation action. Apparently they are fuming that The Irish Times published a report suggesting that our oh-so-honest (but much-maligned) estate agents will not be allowed to give valuations for Nama.Why should they?

These are the guys who deceived the nation with phoney guide prices, who seduced young buyers into auction rooms by quoting artificially low figures in the newspapers. Their record on valuations is abysmal. How could the Government put any trust in their wild guesses at the value of a toxic asset? They were always way off the mark with the non-toxic type. These are the clowns whom an RTE Prime Time programme revealed were indulging in malpractices , including fake bids at auctions and quietly supplying vendors with knowledge of buyers' financial strength. They obtained the information through their own mortgage brokers." (Senator Shane Ross, Sunday Independent.)

"There are about half a dozen developers in the country, mainly in the Dublin region but not restricted to the Dublin region, who really lost the run of themselves. They got us into all kinds of problems over the last five years or so. Looking at projects properly -- realising we are a little country of four million people and we are not the greatest nation in Europe the way some of the developers had convinced themselves we were.'' (Owen O'Callaghan)

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