Daft Property - Irish Property News

We're being seduced by property porn again – will we ever learn? LAST week the "glossy brigade" was out in force. Papers were full of bright, impossibly blue skies, over "imposing" homes many of which "boasted" this feature or that attribute. Yes, the glossy brigade, Ireland's property pornographers, who pedal lifestyle fetishes to the middle classes are back at a newspaper close to you. Amazingly, just six years after a property crash, which destroyed much of the economy, chatter about house prices appears to be back, or at least, out of social quarantine. Any day soon, expect a new TV programme on house hunting, the joys of home makeovers or the allure of trading up. Why do we allow ourselves to be taken in by this nonsense? Every spring since the crash, the estate agents and the property industry have tried to re-launch the property market with puff pieces, hard selling and gimmicks. Yet underneath the hype, the evidence from the hous...

The great property scam is back to rip us off again... They're back! The creeps, the snake-oil salesmen and spoofers who condemned a generation to negative equity are cheerleading again. The advertisers are salivating too because the "property porn" industry sees a chance to sell its fantasy again. The papers are once more displaying "dream homes" replete with doctored photographs and Mediterranean blue skies -- all at "knock down" prices. It's time to buy again, or so I'm reliably told by those who were so reliable last time that they gave us NAMA! I am not saying that property won't recover ever, of course it will; but not from here. Irish property is still extortionately expensive. It is expensive not just on a comparative basis but, more crucially, it is expensive on the basis of what is happening in the economy. Any government that is urging people to buy houses right now clearly has no intention of learning anything from the mistakes ...