Property
I hosted a party recently. Everyone who came, and hadn’t been in my apartment before, commented on how lucky I was: ‘It’s gorgeous’, ‘when did you buy’, ‘all this is yours?’ Yes it’s all mine: a living room that can majestically contain a dining table and a sofa; a glorious balcony with space for a geranium and a smoker; a ‘galley’ kitchen (for those who like that cramped living-below-deck feeling while they cook); a six-foot across study; a bedroom that can accommodate a double bed ‘and there’s room to walk around it’ as one amazed observer noted. And all with a magnificent aspect on the bare plaster walls of the five stories of apartment opposite. It’s the kind of place an estate agent would trumpet as ‘spacious’ - which you might say was true, if they were pitching to the leprechaun community. After twenty year’s hard and precarious work I’ve a secure and homely place to call my own. Jeez - the decadence of it all is killing me…
The party was a roaring success, not least because all the terrific people who came were squashed on top of each other, and it would be impolite not to strike up conversation when your chest to tits with someone. Only one had to bail out early pleading claustrophobia, maybe everyone else was content just taking time out to hyperventilate in the bijou bathroom. But you have to question, if per capita we’re the second richest nation in the world (as yet other of those incredible surveys found recently) why does having a very modest home seem such a privilege?
One of the guests, a highly trained pastry chef, employed at one of Dublin’s premier restaurants, told me she herself had just bought a property. Near the job she loves? No, in Drogheda, because it was all she could afford. But hey, what do you expect if you’re only working twelve-hour split shifts everyday? Next you’ll be saying mere teachers and nurses should be able to afford a gaff within the Golden Pale! With rents out of control in Dublin, the purchase seemed sensible. Still, she looked a bit shell-shocked when she told me, or maybe that was just exhaustion. It was half past midnight and she’d just finished work. Bet she’s looking forward to her new commute.
The best thing about owning is not renting. I remember the last time I went on the epic hunt for a decent, affordable place to rent I was shown a disgustingly tiny, one-bed. The agent sang the praises of the laminate floor, the Habitat armchair, the aerodynamic taps. ‘What about storage?’ I asked her, because not only was there not a single built-in press, there literally wasn’t floor space for any. And I swear to God she said: ‘Don’t you have parents in Dublin who you could leave stuff with?’ This place was on the market for six hundred and fifty punts a month, nine years ago. It was newly built. And I was told if I wanted wardrobe facilities I’d need a nearby mammy and daddy: “Hi ma and pa, sorry to call so early, but I have to come over, I need to get dressed.” Perhaps this government’s chumminess with the property sector, and the consequential lack of proper building and rental regulation, is really just a cuddly scheme to prolong parent/child dependence? And the fact that property moguls themselves can afford to throw €1 000 000 parties for their daughters and give their sons €80 000 4×4s come their twenty firsts is just the icing on the booming cake the government has allowed them?
We all know the property situation here is bonkers – we’re over-burdened with debt, property values bear no relation to average incomes, and our economy is massively dependent on the construction sector. One word – bubble: RTE’s recent documentary, Future Shock: Property Crash restated all this, and the general response was ‘ah shure, it didn’t tell us anything new’ and ‘que sera, sera’. Those of us who ‘bought at the right time’ are supposed to think ‘feck it, we won’t be hit, we’re property rich’. In reality we’re all caught in the same inflation loop, unless we fancy cashing in and moving to say, Papua New Guinea.
Yeah, we all expect a slow down to come. Hopefully the cost of housing will fall, please God property won’t be such a hot topic anymore, with any luck we’ll stop obsessing that the cost of a two-bed apartment in Rathmines is equal to a five-bed in Croatia; or a vineyard in Argentina; or Malawi. We’ll laugh that a shoddily finished city centre one-bedroom apartment was ever on the market for half a million euro, we’ll marvel that the rash of hideous, cheap, cramped, design-defunct red-brick apartment blocks was ever allowed to deface Dublin, we’ll cheer as they’re condemned as tenements and pulled down, and genuine homes are built in their place.
Meanwhile the developers will bail out and retire to their Iberian golf palaces, putting balls by day, perhaps scribbling a memoir or two by night: ‘Ask not what you can do for your country, ask what Section 23 can do for you’ – there’s a title for nothing fellas.
The Right to Life of The Unborn is enshrined in our constitution – shame the same attention wasn’t paid to The Right to Quality of Life for all our rent and mortgaged stretched citizens.
