If you are a property speculator, come to Dublin

Thursday May 21, 2015 23:36

by pbp

Guess where a property speculator can get their best return on investment in the whole world? Dublin. It is unbelievable but true. After chaos wracked on Irish society by the Celtic Tiger property boom, the speculators are back.

A global survey by the research company, MSCI, has found that highest profits can be made in Dublin from buying and selling property.

Capitalists generally expect to get a 10 percent rate of return on their investment in industry. If they want more, they shift to riskier areas such as property speculation.

If they chose their city right, they can get a 19 percent rate of return. But last year, Dublin provided the jackpot with a 44 percent rate of return.

Guess where a property speculator can get their best return on investment in the whole world? Dublin. It is unbelievable but true. After chaos wracked on Irish society by the Celtic Tiger property boom, the speculators are back.

A global survey by the research company, MSCI, has found that highest profits can be made in Dublin from buying and selling property.

Capitalists generally expect to get a 10 percent rate of return on their investment in industry. If they want more, they shift to riskier areas such as property speculation.

If they chose their city right, they can get a 19 percent rate of return. But last year, Dublin provided the jackpot with a 44 percent rate of return.

Take for example commercial property. If you belonged to a global hedge fund and wanted to make money quickly you got your minions to scour the computer screens looking for a quick bargain. You then bought up office blocks cheaply and rented out space at an exorbitant price. You could then sit back in your plush London or New York address and live a life of sheer luxury.

Last year there was a staggering €4.5 billion worth of commercial property sold in Dublin.

The Irish government encourages this because, through NAMA, it has become the biggest property owner in the world. It wants to ‘offload’ as much of this property as it can so that it appears that a strong recovery is under way.

One way to do this is by offering tax break to the big vulture funds known as Real Estate Investment Trusts. These tend to buy up a series of office blocks or whole apartment complexes. They gain from the Irish crash and we, the people, pay for their tax breaks by putting up with poor public services.

So the next time you hear a Fine Gael or Labour Party politician tell you that there is no money in the country and they just had to cut respite care grants or slash the wages of public sector workers, tell them about the fortune being made in property speculation.

Maybe, they cut slap a 10 percent special solidarity tax on the speculators. That way we would not have to pay water charges or put up with taxes on the family home.

But that would be challenging the wealthy. And Fine Gael/ Labour could not do that

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More on the housing crisis from An Spréach

by T

Fri Jun 05, 2015 22:59

The An Spréach housing activists have a good piece on their website about the housing crisis titled: What Housing Crisis? This is a Capitalist Crisis!

The housing crisis is a really a capitalist crisis. There are enough housing units for everyone multiple times over. Joe Conlon surveys the Irish housing movement and asks whether squatting is a short-term solution.
...

The “housing crisis” we hear about so often in the media is a lie. Capitalism is the crisis; the housing problem is but one side effect of this cancerous system. The housing problem is getting worse and worse. People are forced to live in crappy cramped bed sits, cheap near-condemned B&Bs, live in uncertain rental accommodation, and some are living in a state of limbo in hostels waiting on housing lists (some aren’t even given this privilege). Even as I write this article in the 24 hour internet café on Talbot Street it is 11pm on a Thursday night the café is mainly being used by homeless people, they rent a computer for 1 euro per hour and lay across chairs and the floor trying to sleep.

No matter what time it is you’ll always find the less fortunate using the café to sleep and get out of the elements. If you walk around Dublin city no doubt you want have to walk long before you find someone sleeping in a doorway or under a bridge. These are horrible conditions in which people are forced to live. If you ever find yourself down on your luck and become homeless there is a good chance if there are no more beds left in a homeless hostel you will be give a sleeping bag for shelter....

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If you are a property speculator, come to Dublin

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