Is it dangerous to move to Ireland during a recession ?

Question

Just wondering if anyone can help me to decide (seriously) whether moving back home to Ireland is dangerous in the present economic climate ? Will the housing market recover ?, and are jobs very hard to find ? Even though this isn't essential (job issue ), are people with liquid assets going to be alright ?

Thanks

Answer 1

4 questions in one ....

Dangerous to move back to Ireland - depends on what you want to do here - construction industry is down significantly and taking many of us down with it. BUT - I believe it's a correction. 79,000 houses built in 2007, and a projection to build less than 50,000 this year. The picture is not this bad as there are houses built and empty that are causing some of the problems this year.

The rest of the economy is pretty flat - and that's what happens after circa 15 years of boom time - this is the end of the beginning rather than the beginning of the end as some of the more pessimistic observers would have us believe.

News reports gloomily state that the non-construction economy is flat on last year - but that's not very bad when you look at the very high growth recently - we're taking a breather!!

Essentially you need to check the market for your specific skill-set.

Will the housing market recover - I believe it will over the next 2 - 3 years, with construction coming back to a level where it meets demand. House prices are falling right now and I believe this will continue as there are significant over-valued prices across the country at the moment, especially in the larger cities.

Jobs Hard to find? - see earlier note. It depends on the sector within which you work. Construction right now is bad - and that knocks on to associated industries. Civil Service is also taking cuts - but I'd reckon that cuts in that sector are different to others!!!!

Liquid assets? - not too sure what you mean here. Liquid assets essentially means cash - and I'd rather have the cash than property right now. When house prices bottom out, I'd want to be in a position to increase my property ownership - so yes, I believe liquidity is a healthy place to be.

On that matter, banks are not lending very easily - a friend was recently told to sell his own house first before the bank would consider a mortgage to move ........ and he's not short of $$$$.

Read last week that some banks are valuing houses at 15% below the estate agents' valuations for the purposes of mortgages - that means that they believe that house prices are going to be at least 15% lower than they are now.

Inflation is circa 5% - work being done across the EU to keep it under control.

Unemployment rising very rapidly with 7% projected within 12 months. This may be helped by some of the quite mobile immigrant population deciding to move on - a Polish careers fair was held recently to attract Polish and Irish construction workers back to Poland to help with high levels of construction activity over there.

Hope this helps - and welcome back if you decide to move ......... by the way, the weather is c**p!!!!

Answer 2

Yes i would say its risky anyway.Im not a pessimist but 600 people are losing jobs everyday and the dole queues are lengthening quicker since the states history.Ehh what else...interest rates have gone up and house prices have significantly dropped its very bad for mortgage holders.The housing market wont recover soon sure even our finance minister announced about 2 or 3 weeks ago that "we will never see such a boom in property again...those days are over.The dail are beginning a 9 hour meeting today to debate the economy.They have taken a week off their holidays to debate.It was announced yesterday that they are trying to save 500million euro this year and so they have called an emergency meeting today to think of cutbacks...there will be cutbacks in all Departments.They are going to cut spending next year b 1 billion euro and that money has to be made by raising taxes and even further reducing spending in already suffering departments.It just dosent look good its as simple as that