Author: Karl Whelan

No Really, We Did Have A Huge House Price Boom

There are lots of aspects of the performance of the Irish economy that people disagree about. However, I had been under the impression until this week that everyone agreed that Ireland experienced an exceptional increase in real housing prices in the during the period before the recession.

It turns out, however, that I was wrong. Not everyone agrees with this. Earlier this week, there was a discussion on this website of a paper by Carmen and Vince Reinhart, which reported some figures for real house price appreciation between 1997 and 2007.

Among the figures reported by the Reinharts on Table 4 of their paper were the following:

U. Kingdom +150.1pc
Spain +118.5pc
Sweden +114.9pc
Ireland +114.8pc
France +111.6

These figures have been debated elsewhere on this site but not in a way that would clarify the key fact. That Ireland really did have a larger increase in real house prices than these other countries is not that hard to check.

Here are the facts. The Department of the Environment reports that the average second hand house in the Republic of Ireland cost €102,711 in 1997 and cost €377,850 in 2007, an increase of 268%. The average value of the CPI increased by 42.4 percent between 1997 and 2007. So, from the DoE figures, we can calculate the real house price increase from 368 / 1.424 = 258. In other words, real Irish house prices rose by 158% from 1997 to 2007.  And, for what it’s worth, the real increase from 1995 to 2007 was 246%.

So, yes we really did have a huge house price boom. Certainly a boom that was bigger than occurred in Spain, Sweden or France. Morgan Kelly didn’t just make it up.

Cue comments from house price boom deniers, flat earthers and folks who believe Elvis is alive and living with Michael Jackson …

Mortgage Arrears: June 2010

The apparently newly branded Central Bank of Ireland has released the latest summary data on mortgage arrears here.  

A total of 36,438 mortgage accounts were in arrears over 90 days in June 2010, up from 32,321 in March. This meant that 4.6 percent of mortgages were in arrears, up from 4.1 percent in March and 3.3 percent in September 2009.  However, mortgages in arrears have a higher average balance (€190,000 compared to an average of €149,000 for the full sample) so the 4.6 percent of mortgages in arrears accounted for 5.9 percent of the total outstanding mortgage balance.

The arrears on the overdue loans totalled €559 million in June. Those in arrears over 180 days are, on average, behind on 10 percent of their total balance.

Negative Net Lending to Firms and Households

Last month, Philip noted the new Central Bank release on Money and Banking. Philip pointed out the new presentation of the data in a more useful format, with figures presented for what is essentially an IFSC and non-IFSC breakdown.  I had meant at the time to chip in to note some other useful improvements but didn’t get around to it.

So, with this month’s release now available (with figures through July), let me first point out that the Bank are now making historical time series available (not sure a direct link works, so click on Statistics on the — newly rebranded! — webpage and then on Data under Credit, Money and Banking Statistics along the left hand side.)

The Bank are also now releasing figures that make the underlying credit situation easier to understand. Detailed figures on lending to households and non-financial corporations, including a breakdown by duration, are now available. The charts on year-over-year lending to firms and households in the press release are based on levels series that are cleaned for factors such as NAMA or exchange rate adjustments that affect the figures for total loans on the reported aggregate bank balance sheets.

Most useful of all, to my mind, is that the Bank now publishes figures for net amounts of new lending (i.e. new lending minus loans paid off) for both firms and households. For example, go to spreadsheet A.5 and click on the tab labelled Transactions and you’ll see these figures broken down by sector and maturity.

These figures are quite volatile from month to month. However, I ran up a chart (see below) of the three month moving average of net new lending to firms and households and it makes it pretty clear that there was a step down in credit availability in late 2008 and that net new lending has been negative for most of the past two years.

This time last year we were inundated with government politicians telling us that NAMA was going to get credit flowing. Well, there’s very little evidence of this occurring yet.

Business and Finance Piece on Banking Policy

With almost two years having passed since the Irish banks reached crisis point, it’s worth reflecting on how effective the government’s policies have been.  Here‘s a piece I wrote for this month’s Business and Finance on this subject. I gave the government A for effort and D- for execution. Written prior to yesterday’s Anglo figure, the D- might have been generous.

Anglo Interim Report for 2010:H1

The report is here. The press statement is here. The loss for the first half of the year is reported at €8.2 billion. And “The Minister for Finance has recapitalised the Bank with a further €8.58bn effective 30 June 2010, bringing total capital support to €22.88bn.”

As the Apres Match version of the Minister might say, that’s a lot of noughts.