The bore of '98 was either moving house or stuck in a traffic jam

Two obsessions took hold of the chattering classes in 1998 - property and traffic. The staggering rise in house prices - 17 per cent in the first quarter of the year alone according to agency statistics - broke many a chunk of ice at parties while speculation about where house-buyers were getting the money from was the stuff of a thousand coffee breaks.

With prices rising at a Weimar-like rate, property became a distinctly sexy investment. People with cash to spare could do very well by having a flutter on the housing market, and many of them did, ploughing millions into houses and apartments in Dublin, holiday homes in tax-designated seaside resorts, apartments in London and Paris, shops in English provincial towns, offices in Belfast and villas on the Algarve.

Then along came Peter Bacon to spoil the fun by proposing we cut off mortgage interest relief on rental properties. That put a halt to the investors' gallop, but not for long. By the end of the year they were back in the market, snapping up the last of the Section 23 apartments in the city centre.

Property has been a hot topic since the mid 1990s when prices began to rise, but only this year did it become a universal wonder. Everyone could tell their own property story - usually about the house down the road that made £160,000 eight months ago, was bought by a builder who spent £30,000 refurbishing it, then sold it on for £350,000.

The buyer apparently flew over from New York for the day, took a quick look through the letter-box and bought it over the phone. Or on the Net. Some estate agents claim to be doing a brisk trade on the Internet, with one Leitrim-based agent saying his website gets hundreds of hits a week from European house-hunters.

In the auction room house-hunters had to compete with a new breed of buyer - the overseas party who didn't have time for viewings and surveys, but who was determined to pay a record amount for a respectable base - usually a Victorian redbrick in either Dublin 4 or 6.

While many people could boast that their home had earned more than they did in the last five years, it was the £5.9 million sale of Sorrento House in Dalkey, a crumbling Victorian semi with a wonderful view, that really put Dublin on the map as one of the most expensive cities in the world.

"It's the young people I feel sorry for" became the cliched response to stories about multi-million houses in Killiney and semis in Rathgar fetching £400,000.

With the average price of a new threebedroom semi edging towards £120,000, and new developments selling out within hours of going on the market, young couples found it increasingly difficult to find a home. One option was to move further out of the city into the sprawling new suburb of west Dublin, towards Arklow and Gorey in the south and Drogheda and Dundalk in the north. There was talk of Kinnegad becoming a new suburb of Dublin.

WHICH brings us to the second most popular item of pub chat - the traffic. 1998 was the year when that rather sweet and innocuous phrase "traffic jam" turned into the altogether tougher, Schwarzenegger-like scourge - gridlock.

Socially, traffic became a real headache. Even the most scintillating guests turned into crashing bores. First they arrived late, then you had to hear about the 40 minutes it took them to get from Donnybrook to Leopardstown.

While estate agents continued to spin fairytales about certain suburbs being just 15 minutes from the city centre and counties like Wicklow and Meath accessible in under an hour, anyone with a car knew you could be an hour getting as far as Stillorgan. Those who could afford it sold up in the suburbs and moved as close to town as possible to avoid dying of whiteknuckle fever.

Gridlock created an unlikely new breed of star - the AA roadwatcher. Conor Faughnan is a household name thanks to his bulletins on build-ups. With traffic reports being spewed out every 15 minutes on morning radio, Faughnan became a celebrity. And Lorraine Keane rode into a plum job in TV3 thanks to her repeated warnings of tailbacks on the Rock Road.

Just as people were beginning to tire of gridlock, along came something to really worry about - the big yellow £65 clamp. There is a lot of room for outrage here. The poor eejit who was out drinking on a Friday, made a point of not driving home drunk, then staggers into town at 8.30 on Saturday morning to collect the wheels and finds them immobile. The harassed mother who comes back to her car laden with bags and babies and finds the clampers in action. No amount of pleas or threats works with these guys. They are ruthless.

Parking in general is set to become the next Big Thing. City-centre car parking spaces are now valued at around £30,000 and a leading estate agents predicts they will cost £60,000 apiece within the next two years.

At that price people ought to consider buying a space and a camper van and calling it home.