Hi all,

I have visited this site on the odd occasion over the past year or two. I am a regular poster over at housepricecrash.co.uk

Anyway, me and the missus got pissed off with the UK and I have managed to land a job in Galway. I start on the 18th of June.

We are quire nervous about moving country, but it will be an adventure You only live once.

We have been looking at buying a property around Tuam or Athenry areas as we do not want to live in the city. Our budget is around 120k Eur cash.
We don't mind commuting by car/train for 45 mins each way. I also have a motorcycle so I think that will cut down on commuting time.

Last night we reached a decision to rent for a year as we do not know the different areas and 'real' commuting times.

I have been looking online at rentals at Oranmore, there seem to be some reasonably priced rentals such as this: http://www.daft.ie/searchrental.daft?id=1198062
Is this area as nice as it looks? I read something about a small tax allowance when you are renting, is this true?

Any advice on moving from he UK to Ireland would be gratefully accepted.

Is anyone on here following this?

"The ECB has stopped monetary policy operations with some Greek banks as they haven't been successfully recapitalised, sources told Reuters. The ECB declined to comment.

It was unclear exactly how many banks were affected. One person familiar with the matter said four Greek banks' capital was so depleted they were operating with negative equity capital. According to its own rules, the ECB can't provide liquidity to banks in such a situation."

ECB pulling lines. It this what we missed or the future? Fascinating times we live in.

Sorry if this has been asked before, but has anyone a "more than likely" scenario as to what will happen with Euro mortgages held in Irish banks in the case of Ireland leaving the Euro.

Is it a case they simply get converted to a new currency over night?
Would a default on the country's debt effect mortgages in anyway?

The jury is in.

Austerity or Expansionary Austerity has been an abject failure. In Ireland, in Europe and in the US.
This sorry situation was predicatable and predicted.

Some will bury their heads in the sand and demand that we hold the course; that somehow its only a matter of time before doing more of the same will lead us back to growth.

For the rest of us, the question is what next?

We bought a 1 bed in 2007 for close to 300k and had planned on keeping it and renting it, and eventually having the income stream to live off later in life.

As with most places now, there are some apartments for sale in our development for 80k/90k. Initially I was devastated by this but then thought it might be a good opportunity to get a second place and reduce our overall risk. If we rent the apartment we have, we will have to pay 500 extra a month to cover the mortgage. But with the second apartment we would end up almost covering both mortgages overall.

Assuming both apartments are rented we would hope to have the second one repaid in 20 years and the rent could go a long way to reducing our original mortgage.

Is anyone in a similar position of thinking or should we just cut our losses and just mind what we have??

Any input is greatly appreciated.

We received a telegram from Enda's Winning Team expressing their growing disappointment with the results of our Fiscal Compact Treaty poll. So dawning the Green jersey and doing our bit for Queen and Country we ask you pinsters to have another roll of the dice.

Poll closes 18th.

I've created an anonymous survey monkey poll.

I invite all those who are thinking of buying a property in the next year or two to respond to it:

Click here to take the survey:

{Survey now closed}

Time for me to ask a question.

Currently live in WA USA.

I am thinking of buying something in North Dublin, near the dart.
killester, clontarf or somewhere along the line..

I would rent it out for a few years until I needed it or maybe never end up using it. But it could provide a good hedge vs USD etc.

My question

do rental properties actually rent for the listed monthly price?

And are rents reasonably strong?

Can you ask the renter to just get out at the end of the term without any reason?
Are there any good Irish landlord sites

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/bre ... ing38.html

Should be positive for house prices in the area; and may support the rental market.

However.

I would stress.

They have been talking about this for ten years at least.

And it looks like they have finally gotten to the stage of concluding the discussions about discussions, and moving on discussions about the actual project itself......at some point in the next twenty years future a brick will be laid......or maybe won't be.

This project is teaching me the meaning of Keynes aphorism "In the long run, we'll all be dead".

http://www.myhome.ie/residential/brochu ... 6w/1804512

Opinions on this one?