houses in 2001

Posted by Ronan on Aug 23, 2007 in Uncategorized | 0 comments

A lot of people are talking about houses, the prices of them and whether the market is going to collapse.
It’s funny, I found this.. from 2001
For those who are lazy and want a quick synopsis it reads:

..The US economic slowdown has fueled much speculation about the future of the Irish property market. Plummeting share prices, profit warnings and redundancies are already a regular occurrence across the Atlantic and fears were further compounded when the European Central Bank announced that Ireland stands to be hit hardest should the US suffer a full-blown recession…

Things haven’t changed so..

…Although investors have begun to creep back into the market, tenants continue to be hit hardest by the current property trends. A decrease in supply has seen rents rise quite substantially over the past year…

This is still true today.. prices in Dublin for accommodation are crazy!

…Although investors aren’t snapping up property in the frenetic manner of a few years ago, industry insiders reject claims that prices will actually drop…

Where have we heard that before ??

We know they actually did ..but then the prices exploded and only went up.. until now perhaps? I wonder have we reached the point again in the housing market cycle where this article was in 2001? Will we see the market slip a little bit and then go up again like a rocket? I’m not sure, but I don’t think so. The performance indicators are different this time, the Irish mentality of now is different, we are all financially better off than we were in 2001 – for heavens sake a lot of the first year students coming to college next year will have a car and pay 4 euros for the carpark .. oh-oh I may have opened a can of worms ..

Wedding

Posted by Ronan on Aug 19, 2007 in Uncategorized | 2 comments

Shelly and I attended yet another wedding (YAW). 3 weddings in 4 weeks. Weddings are great fun, but we are starting to get bored by them. Personally, if I here ‘there was a wedding in Cana of Galilee’ John 2 again I may stand up and object to the whole wedding.
It was Shelly’s cousin getting married so it was a massive turn out of O’Sullivans! There was hundreds of them! It’s pretty daunting meeting the family and all the aunts, uncles, cousins and trying to remember names, so I gave up and called everyone Ted or Mary. I need a better method – anyone got any ideas?
Here’s an obscure picture from the wedding.

We have YAW in less than 3 weeks time in Laois.. I think it’s the last for a while..

mad cow camp

Posted by Ronan on Aug 19, 2007 in Uncategorized | 2 comments

we have a couple of cows that like to cause mischief. For whatever reason, we decided to collect all the mad cows, put them together and keep them close to the house. At mad cow camp I think they devise and exchange ways to annoy us. Knocking walls is one of their favourite ways. The ones picture here are the wildest of them all. They knock walls for fun… we have to use ‘elephant’ electric fences to keep them contained!

too much time..

Posted by Ronan on Aug 14, 2007 in Uncategorized | 1 comment

catch up

Posted by Ronan on Aug 13, 2007 in Uncategorized | 2 comments

Weddings
Been to quite a few weddings this year so far and we have two more to before the season is out. the next one is this Friday in Galway… should be fun!
Soccer
I hurt my back while playing a game of soccer on thursday. The previous day I spent the day in the bog – the place people get turf from .. not the toilet! so was it soccer or the bog? I reckon bog. Soccer wouldn’t try and hurt me.. surely? With the sore back I missed the game on Friday (which we won) and I’ll miss the game next friday because of the wedding – which is a pity as we have a real chance to get off the bottom of the table and perhaps even finish mid table! The fantasy football league has started again and I had a bad start.. a bit like some teams in the Premiership.. a wise man once said ‘it’s a marathon, not a sprint’
Weekend
I spent the weekend in Dublin. I got the new cork-dublin train up and it was pretty cool. Much better than the old ones (which wouldn’t be hard!). Saturday we went to a 30th birthday party and ate in Fallon Brynes. It was good, but a little pricey.
We didn’t do much (because of said back problem) except for a couple of short walks, a bit of food shopping and some improvised cooking. The oven in the house is gas – and it appears it doesn’t work. At one stage we using a cigarette lighter to determine if any gas was coming out.. this is how accidents, burnt hair and eye-brows can occur. We ended up using the pan – which is a lot safer!

horse power

Posted by Ronan on Aug 13, 2007 in Uncategorized | 1 comment

I came back from work one evening (a wet one) and I noticed there was some new horse power in the estate. It wasn’t the kind of new horse power I was looking for..