‘Stunning façades are finished in a unique glass cladding by Lithodecor, the reflective finish breaks down visual barriers to deliver a magical interplay between landscape and architecture.’
‘It’s about dissolving the buildings into their surroundings, while walkways suspended over babbling brooks draw the senses to the sounds, sights and benefits of nature.’
‘A Kilkenny Limestone plinth elevates the apartments, improving views and promoting the permeation and reflection of light throughout the development. Full height anodised windows and bespoke glass balcony balustrades channel swathes of light indoors while allowing the great outdoors to become a meaningful extension of living space. Dunluce is an inspiring vision of cosmopolitan apartment living in a world apart.’
‘Dunluce is a utopia of vibrant foliage that dances in shadow, colour and light throughout the day and seasons.’
We’re back! The property bull**** machine is in overdrive yet again. A decade after I devoted an entire chapter of a book, ‘The Pope’s Children’, to the saccharine language of middle-class property porn, we are being bombarded again. Read this stuff above again knowing that Dunluce is a new flat complex in Dublin.
In plain English, when we break down this hyperbole we understand that the silly term “reflective finishes” actually means “see-through”. Glass tends to be transparent. “Breaking down visual barriers” means being able to look out through a window. “Dissolving buildings” is perhaps my favourite bit of this. As for the “utopia of vibrant foliage that dances in shadow, colour and light”, well, I couldn’t have described a back garden more accurately.
The point is that the marketing, the branding and the BS has begun again across the property market, and the objective is to mortgage another generation of Irish people to overly expensive housing that adds no value whatsoever to the economy. In fact, given the billions tied up in property here — billions that could be used in other productive investments — it is obvious that the Irish economy loses out hugely from expensive property.
The housing/accommodation conundrum is a real crisis, not just because of the economic, social and emotional cost of expensive housing but because as Ireland becomes, yet again, fixated with property, the world economy is moving on. The globe is not waiting for Ireland to get over its addiction.
Sometimes, the disconnect between what is happening domestically and what is going on around the world is quite shocking.
If Ireland was North Korea and we were cut off from the rest of the world, this ostrich-in-the-sand approach might be understandable. However, Ireland is the most open economy in the world. We need to be aware of the rest of the world and remain one step ahead.
Although we talk about the “Irish economy”, we are not an autonomous economy in the real sense of the word. We are part of the global supply chain and therefore events abroad have an amplified impact on our incomes. As a result, we can’t afford the luxury of prices and costs here being out of whack with the rest of the world for long.
The disparity between local costs and international norms will destroy Irish prosperity, unless we can make ourselves cheaper through tax scams.
And here is the rub.
It is quite possible that the tax-scam era is coming to an end, which implies that the unique Irish tax subsidy could be over.
This week, Theresa May said she was aiming to bring corporation tax in the UK down to 15pc. We know that Donald Trump is aiming to do the same in the US. The implication of these moves for Ireland would be that our latitude to pay ourselves over the odds and charge over the odds for accommodation is much diminished.
When we were the only jurisdiction with low corporation tax, the low tax could be used as a way of disguising a lack of competitiveness in other areas. So Irish workers could be paid more because the company would get a tax subsidy, so the wage costs could be tolerated. As the rest of the Anglo/American world brings its tax down to the same level, the cost differences between competitor countries will become more and more material.
This means that domestic costs become more crucial. As a result, when the Government gives in to public-sector unions, it may deliver some electoral advantage but it diminishes us all in the medium term. Similarly, when we see nonsense like “utopias of vibrant foliage” to describe trees, we should be very aware that this language is nothing more than code to lever people into more debt for expensive accommodation. The more indebted our people are, the more uncompetitive we will become because debt is a form of economic slavery, particularly when it is wasted on accommodation.
Therefore, the issue for Ireland is to control what we can, not what we can’t. There is little point in complaining about Brexit or Mr Trump’s new policies whether they involve trade or tax.
We can’t control other people’s decisions, but what we can control is domestic costs.
The major domestic costs are public-sector wages and local property. I have no problem in paying people their fair share but I can’t understand why public-sector unions seem to believe any extra tax revenue generated in this economy is automatically their property.
Likewise, when there are so many other housing models rather than the overhyped, overleveraged, overblown ‘ramp it up and flog it off’ model of housing, we should look for alternatives. All over Europe — a continent that rarely experiences housing booms and bust — other models such as co-operative housing work extremely well. Shouldn’t we take a leaf out of their book?
The world around us is changing. We have to change with it to keep up. Otherwise we will flounder and it won’t be just the buildings that will be “dissolving”!
Wow – that description at the beginning of the article really is something else!
Wow. That “sell” is shocking. I have heard it said that that advertising is about insulting people’s intelligence. Well property advertising really sdoes seek to promote everybody to stupid. And it achieves it by means of an intellectual dislocation – by making them feel as if they are aspiring to status. In Orwellian terms, if you take this massive loan that will make you poor, you will be able to look rich and sophisticated. Not since participation in the court of Versailles cost a fortune, has improvrishment looked so fantastic. The problem with the Versailles Court is that it dislocated… Read more »
You, I sometimes thing that the Irish establishment are more modelled on Barry Lyndon than Ross O’Carroll Kelly. With O’Kelly, it is obvious that he is an idiot. We see his complex, and no work ethic. Maybe he is analogy for a certain pillar bank. An empty vacuous financial vortex, with a rugby jersey on top, and lots of big talk. But with Lyndon, we see one scam after another. A lot of pretence. And a performance “at the heart of Europe” to play with all the other fraudsters, and get a pat on the head. An awful lot of… Read more »
Here in Norway where I live they have housing coops. The land is bought by the coop and becomes a common debt to be shared out between the new owners of the apartments or houses built on the land. Rules are enforced to block buy to let investors. They are very popular starter homes for new families. The coop also runs its own estate agent to avoid the type of bullshit listed by David. Maintainence is done collectively which reduces costs. They also pay collectively for bin collection, internett, etc at big discounts. Why can’t Irish politicians come to Norway… Read more »
David is right. Britain wants to get more investment into Britain. The US wants to bring back employment to the US. And even France, with it’s move towards Fillon, wants to get more investment back into France, to get business working. And as far as I can see they are all concerned about productive investment, in traded sectors and manufacturing. Meanwhile in Ireland we are playing monopoly board games with real money. Both Trump and May’s Chancellor of the exchequer, want investments that drive up productivity in their societies. Meanwhile, here in Ireland we have quangocrats trying to defend their… Read more »
“glass tends to be transparant” ! Brill article David, well done.
It is a great article . Why do the administration of the nation refuse to heed proper professional advise and continue to refute common sense.We have seen before the recurring economic treason promulgated by those paid exorbitant salaries so that their legacy conforms to a political fudge and not the vision of the nation . I have over many years read so much contributions to this great site and continue to watch the Dept of Finance et al ‘dance to lughnasa’ and bring to the crossroads of trade a madness that is only matched by how much more you can… Read more »
The Economist regularly publishes surveys focusing on overpriced property markets. Ireland is no exception in this regard. In fact, most Northern European countries apart from Germany are more overpriced relative to Ireland, when measured on the basis of the proportion of the average salary spent on either mortgage repayments or rents.
According to this survey, Ireland compares quite favourable to for example Belgium where I live. And in terms of house price increase in the past year, Ireland is near the bottom of the list. Of course, like everywhere there are large regional fluctuations.
http://www.imf.org/external/research/housing/
As you say David, they’re back in style. I’ve noticed over the last eight months the surge in planning applications in the Dublin 3 and 5 areas. The developers are targeting mature housing estates with a view to buying houses in batches of two or more with large gardens, completely demolishing them and constructing apartment blocks. Ironically this eight month splurge ties in nicely with a certain political party’s confidence and supply arrangement. I firmly believe the Soldiers of Destiny will be back on top of the pile within the next eighteen months and by that time the die will… Read more »
Meanwhile, this evil nutcase, Mr. John Bolton, who regularly features as “expert” on Fox News & is highly prized by AIPAC in USA & Satan-yahoo is a very close favorite to be USA Secretary of State under Trump presidency. And, he would be very close favorite to be USA Secretary of State under Hillary Clinton presidency also. . . EXCERPT ; . John Bolton Calls for US to Impose Regime Change on Iran Concedes New Govt Wouldn’t Necessarily Be a Democracy . by Jason Ditz, November 17, 2016 . Still considered among the candidates for President-elect Donald Trump’s Secretary of… Read more »
Strangely enough, I don’t ever recall any of them passing a resolution on the false propaganda that is ECB stress testing on the banks, that deliberately covers up their weaknesses.
Re-submission of opening reminder + important Links, from me to discussion of just previous article, giving tables & maps of Salaries for yee all to consider :
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Contrary to what Bertie Ahern emphatically declared ;
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“Ireland is still a 3rd world country !”
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Irish Civil SERPENTS’ opulent salaries
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Doctors’ & nurses’ salaries
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http://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/docserver/download/4211011ec032.pdf?expires=1479881839&id=id&accname=guest&checksum=045FF5F9B3AC9FDD8C4AD8F075F99AC8
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Compensation of senior management in central government
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http://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/docserver/download/4211011ec033.pdf?expires=1479881855&id=id&accname=guest&checksum=AB1FB25A05A0097514595A90F9CCE921
REPLY
Final re-submission of comments from me & links per the theme ; . Irish Civil SEPRENTS’ opulent salaries . . More useful statistics ; And, with figures superimposed onto map of individual countries of Europe. Again, I recommend that readers copy & paste into word-processing document & redact accordingly for to help inform the public of how the Civil SERPENTS are going to bleed the nation even more than they do presently with current opulent salaries for in most cases useless job performance & oft-times mendacious activity against the citizens, & with the bail-out of “their ostentatious lifestyles [ houses… Read more »
David is quite rightly casting around for a workable link that would tend to self-correct property appreciation and thus avoid another bubble. Last week he wrote “there’s an obvious solution: link pay rises to the provision of affordable housing … let one police the other”. That is exactly what we need but I cannot personally think of any practical mechanism of creating such a link and unfortunately David did not say how it might be achieved. However I do know of one tried and proven link: property taxation. The Irish Government is shying away from creating this perfect link for… Read more »
I would like to refer to a comment of Pie Squared from the previous article, for I think it is worth discussing and it chimes with what is discussed in this article and the comments below. He or she commented on David’s previous article: “You forgot the corollaries: 1) the housing crisis is really about Dublin 2) the demand for housing in Dublin is really about the failure of Ireland to devise and implement a flourishing regional strategy in Ireland (and will become about the failure of Europe to devise an intelligent strategy re immigration) 3) mostly the REITS are… Read more »
It is a small and rather humorous thing, but it bothers me so I thought I’ll share it.
Mr Farage claims he met Mr Trump recently and has thrown in this picture to prove it. This is all fine, except this does not look like Donald Trump to me.
Has Nigel gone totally bull and berserk? You judge for yourself:
http://anmblog.typepad.com/.a/6a00d8341c565553ef01bb0954a8f5970d-pi
We postulated months ago that there is no such thing as a free press anymore.
The MSM are owned by the same controllers that own the banks and manipulate the economy. They are the war hawks as it profits the bottom line of the military industrial complex also owned by the same cabal.
Any investigative journalist puts his life on the line these days as strange deaths proliferate.
100+ and counting surrounds the Clinton activities.
http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/RANCHO/POLITICS/BODIES.php#axzz4Qx4xTlLe
RT is one of the better sources for news these days.
Alternative media discussion and disclosure
https://dollarvigilante.com/blog/2016/11/24/ussa-government-protect-tax-farm-slaves-fake-news.html
The real fake news –Ron Paul
http://forbiddenknowledgetv.net/ron-paul-the-real-fake-news/
Alex Jones outlining voter fraud in the US. This is NOT fake news. Millions of dead, millions of non citizens, voted, often many times.
‘Vote early and vote often.’
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VpjNyoPWYZo
Define the “Threat” represents and more importantly to whom?
Trump should be seen as an opportunity not a threat.
Brexit is an opportunity or stick with which to change or curb the EU.
An Economist calling accurate descriptions of Architectural finishes inaccurate and total BS. This takes the cake! Where do we start taking apart the “science´´ of economics. Perhaps with a mainly unreferenced piece of raconteuring and with make-it-up-as you-go-along speculation that constitutes a normal David McWilliams book? There is not a visual bone in your body, clearly. Allied with no desire to learn a little about it. I presume, for you, every edition of “Room to Improve´´on TV is unmitigated porn designed to drag us senseless and headfirst into another debt driven-crash.Say as opposed to stories about people ( granted with… Read more »
Property and the stock market were, and are, the two primary methods that the US, Irish, and UK governments have used to create the ‘wealth effect’ since the 2008 hiccup. It’s an interesting term, ‘wealth effect’, because it is actually absolutely accurate. A couple of decades ago they gave up any idea of encouraging the creation of actual wealth, preferring to go for the easy to achieve ‘wealth effect’. The ‘wealth effect’ is created by encouraging – with tax breaks, low interest rates, and ‘reorganised’ lending rules – a massive increase in consumer and government debt. We were yelling about… Read more »
Simon Coveney is a good family man.
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Foreign secret services surely know that too.
UK is east of us.
Germany is more east.
And, Poland is officially eastern Europe.
And, Russia is as East that u can get.
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So, how about getting Russia’s perspective on those lands west of itself ?
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‘Western laws now clash with moral nature of man’ – Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill (EXCLUSIVE)
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Published on Nov 21, 2016
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In an exclusive interview with RT, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Kirill, shared his ideas on the difficult situations of Christians in the Middle East, the US presidential election, and European multiculturalism.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vpe5oOjfgXk
Ivanka Trump is married to Jared Kushner.
Jared’s father, Charles Kushner, “hired a prostitute to seduce his brother-in-law, secretly recorded the encounter and sent the tape to his sister as part of a blackmail scheme.”
Charles Kushner “served 16 months after guilty pleas to 18 counts of tax evasion, witness tampering and making illegal campaign donations.”
Grand Daddy Trump in British Columbia, Canada . Clearly, from what we know : . Grand Daddy Trump was bad. And, Daddy Trump was bad too. And, Trump is bad. BUT, HITLERY BONHAM CLINTON IS EVIL . So, the USA President Election was in in effect ; Not a choice between the lesser of 2 evils. Because, we know of only 1 evil & the other candidate we know as bad. Rather, it was a choice Evil or Bad. The true popular vote — as vindicated by the mass audiences for his speeches & the trickle for her speeches —… Read more »
Mike, those numbers quoted are way underscored.
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So, ur grievance for Irish nation is of much more value.
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I have numerous times given u leads of how Irish nation was betrayed Re ; its marine resources.
U need to up ur curiosity to serious ongoing investigation.
AND what you failed to mention is the shit they will build. Not too many good builders left in the country and many who still reside here are older, wiser, and out of practice. They still feel the sting of 2008. The desperation to try and make a wage, or get paid at all, while building will cause most if not all to “cut corners”, install the shittiest cheapest of everything, hire the bottom of the barrel decoraters to shine it up at the end, and even then it will all require another coat. Most of the work will be… Read more »
It’s very easy to understand why the Public Sector wants wage increases now! now! – they’re no idiots, they see what’s coming down the road and want to get locked in to contracts before the s— hits the fan. We must face the fact that we have very little going for us when you strip away the multinational sector. The Googles, Paypals and their likes are basically call centres located in a tax haven and when they up and leave,their legacy will be very little except for empty office buildings. Even before any new wage increases, we’re not competitive but… Read more »
It is so nice to see a polite discussion developing and the name calling disappearing. Property value is a fundamental economic factor and needs to be soberly analyzed. Maybe we can actually do that here as I sense a new restraint on the personal insult stuff. We all have our ideologies but can articulate them without being ideologues. StephenKenny wrote “The only way a consumer can borrow money is secured against property” and “You can’t really blame the politicians”. Let’s examine both of these statements in the context of the so-called “wealth effect” in which Stephen made them. As I… Read more »
“I will not allow any entity to tell me what opinions I can and cannot listen to.” My opinion on that – as everything in the mainstream media is propaganda (RT, BBC, RTE, CNN, etc), personally I would allow everyone to spread their own propaganda. I would like to draw attention to the fact that this is only relevant to the dinosaurs like us, who roam the earth despite supermarkets efforts to lower our IQs by selling food containing chemicals that do precisely this: anyone who has any contact with anyone under 24, they know that television plays absolutely no… Read more »
Forget Le Pen. Fillon will be the next French President. Le Pen will not break through anything. No a glass ceiling, or the middle space in the French electoral spectrum. The French Socialists (who are seen as a role model by many aspiring Irish statists) are taking a hammering. And Le Pen is proving tougher than anybody expected. But the emergence of Fillion is changing the dynamics. Sarkozy versus Le Pen was going to be a victory for Le Pen. Hollande versus Le Pen was going to be a victory for Le Pen. Fillion versus Le Pen is probably going… Read more »
Dangerous war-mongering b..tch picked by Trump to be Deputy National Security Advisor ;
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http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/25/us/politics/donald-trump-kt-mcfarland.html?_r=1
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http://edition.cnn.com/2016/11/25/politics/mcfarland-to-join-trump-administration-flynn-tweets/
https://www.lewrockwell.com/2016/11/egon-von-greyerz/wealth-destruction/ “”Stocks have been a massive beneficiary of the biggest monetary expansion that the world has ever experienced. If we look at the Dow since the last major economic cycle started in the early 1980s, we find the most remarkable rise. In early 1980, the Dow was at 850 and today we are 19,000. That is a rise of over 18,000 Dow points in 36 years. This means that the Dow has gone up by 9% per year on average since 1981. A 9% annual increase leads the index doubling every 8 years. What a great investment. You buy stocks… Read more »
“”A house in the early 1700s did not move much in price for 200 years until the early 1900s. But the creation of the Fed lead to credit growth and money printing of exponential proportions in most of the Western world. And this is why property prices have moved up 1,000s of percent in the last 100 years. But to believe that property now represent real value after the biggest rise in history is very dangerous. In the last few years this bubble has additionally been fuelled by virtually free money with interest rates at zero or even negative.””
https://goldswitzerland.com/wealth-destruction-of-90-is-next/
https://stopthesteal.org/election-emergency-havent-stopped-steal-yet/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=98eabjjAEz8
Edward snowden.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5rKIPtChdXg
Farage in the US re democracy. Brexit and Trump
I don’t think the title of your article matches the content lol. Just kidding, mainly because I had some doubts after reading the article.