Sir, - As a married thirty-something currently priced out of Ireland's property market, I feel compelled to take issue with the views expressed by Garret FitzGerald (Opinion, June 3rd). Together with a considerable number of my peers, I am looking forward to the day when some degree of sanity returns to house prices. A potent mixture of fear and greed, spurred on by government tax incentives, have created the bizarre situation where house prices seem to be completely detached from their real value. A year ago, I read in the Sunday Times that "nothing is worth what you pay for it, but is a snip compared to what you might get for it." Regarding the Irish property market, these words ring even truer today.
The government is stoking up the market for investors and second home buyers by offering them tax incentives while treating first-time buyers with indifference. I could hold forth about the timing of our entry to the euro zone, which made a bad situation worse, but that's another day's work.
I was irritated by Garret FitzGerald urging the Government to artificially prop the housing market up should prices begin to fall, lest negative equity appear. Is the Government to permanently exclude a generation from buying their own home? Even if his comments are not taken seriously by the Government, any hint of removing the fear of negative equity will serve to spur on prices even further. Indeed, for investors, housing will become the ultimate zero-risk investment with flat-dwelling taxpayers paying to ensure that their investment doesn't go belly-up should the economy crash. - Yours, etc.,
Kevin Berwick, Clarinda Park East, Dun Laoghaire, Co Dublin.