If you are a property speculator, come to Dublin

national | housing | opinion/analysis 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