h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

There was an interesting article in yesterday's Washington Post discussing the real estate boom in Ireland...It also said that the average per capita wealth was $192,000, far ahead of the US...perhaps I should emmigrate back, now that the potato famine seems to be over?...It sounds like Ireland is losing its unique pituresque landscape to tract housing and traffic congestion...will it all end in tears?

The boom in Cleveland, Ohio has taken on a dark tinge. Developers buy a house for $50,000 and sell it for $150,000 with the aid of corrupt appraisers and mortgage brokers...they sell to people who obviously cannot afford the payments...one waitress closed on five house purchases the same day...some houses have been reposessed five times in ten years...

For a long time, property was massively undervalued in Ireland, but that is no longer the case. 10 years of economic boom have put paid to that.

A great deal of the property boom has occurred in the Dublin area. Dublin has a third of the population, and a disproportionate amount of the wealth. Property prices are stratospheric there, and there has been a huge amount of development in the western hinterland of the city.

In the rural areas there has been a lot of demand for holiday homes, and you can find houses in the oddest locations. This is something that precedes the boom though. Irish people have always been a bit disorganised about housing - houses are scattered everywhere in the Irish countryside. There's probably a bit better planning nowadays, but the nouveau-riche demand for holiday homes has put a lot of pressure particularly in the resort towns, that frankly look something of a mess.

Where will it all end? I haven't an iota. The price rises can't continue indefinitely, and much of the more recent boom has primarily been fuelled by construction. We have had over 100,000 people arrive into the country mainly from Eastern Europe, with the majority of them getting work in the construction industry. It's not a particularly stable state of affairs. Nobody expects a crash though until 2007 because the government will be injecting a lot of cash into people's pockets in the coming year as a result of a government saving scheme that matures this year. It will however fuel more spending which may not be so wise at the present time..