Economics / Law / Photography / Sports
Photographs I took of the RISE and Ward Union protests were published at www.stabletostable.com.
Link is here; http://stabletostable.com/en/2010/06/rise-protest-against-the-proposed-hunting-bill/
Edit: the photos from the protest before the vote was taken are here:
http://stabletostable.com/en/2010/06/dail-protest/
My proposal with Karl Deeter of Irish Mortage Brokers gets some discussion in the Examiner today
Negative equity loans could revive property
By Niamh Hennessy
Monday, June 28, 2010
NEGATIVE equity loans could kick-start the housing market at a time when 50,000 homeowners are expected to struggle to keep up mortgage payments.
Mortgage experts Karl Deeter and Iain Nash presented their research on the idea for “negative equity loans” to the Department of Finance’s expert group on mortgage arrears recently, which is made up of the main interest groups and representative bodies in finance and housing.
The loans, they said would allow people in negative equity to get out from under a large debt and service a smaller one while giving them freedom of mobility.
Mr Deeter said the fundamental idea of the loan is to let people borrow the difference (negative equity) and get out from under the loan, carrying a much smaller debt which is manageable.
“Negative equity loans (NEL) are a method that allows a person in financial difficulty to gain forbearance without giving up responsibility, as well as allowing the market to set prices accordingly between willing sellers and willing buyers,” he said.
The report’s authors estimate that the number of householders who may require external assistance in servicing their mortgage could soon be as much as 50,000. They said NELs can facilitate people who want to move, who are over-indebted and who are unable to pay.
“Currently a person in negative equity may want to sell due to labour mobility needs, or for the sake of removing the majority of their debt/risk, but they cannot do so as they are unable to clear the mortgage during the transaction,” said Mr Deeter.
The report proposes that the money for the loan would come from the Housing Finance Authority which operates a lending scheme called Home Choice Loan.
They said this scheme has not been successful to date “but they do have a lending mandate and funding lines”.According to the ESRI 196,000 homeowners are likely to be in negative equity at the end of this year, meaning they will owe more on their mortgage than their house is worth.
This story appeared in the printed version of the Irish Examiner Monday, June 28, 2010
I offer a critique of the investment methodologies used in the latest Residential Property Investment Report. A copy of this critique, along with a copy of the report is available here.
Edit: It seems this has made its way to irisheconomy.ie .
Myself and Karl Deeter, of Irish Mortgage Broker fame, have developed a model which provides a mechanism for home-owners who are in a state of negative equity to clear their debts in a manner which doesn’t encourage strategic default.
This model can be downloaded here.
A big thank you to Darragh at Boards.ie for sorting me out for VIP access to the St. Patricks day parade. I’ll be (hopefully) up close to the action by the GPO.
The recent film trip really showed me how much harder it is for you to work with finite film photography options rather then the (effectively) infinite options you have on digital. Hence, I’ve started to bid for a Canon 100 EOS SLR which is actually a lot better then my current 500d, even at 19 years old. This should force me back to the realities of ‘proper’ photography and get me thinking more and more about each shot.
In other news, inspired by a couple of really cool time lapse tilt shift videos (http://vimeo.com/9679622 – NYC, http://vimeo.com/3156959 - Sydney) I decided to mess about with the GIMP getting a PP’d Tilt Shift. Many thanks to the lovely people in the Clarion for lending me their balcony for a while. This was the first attempt – Too much clutter and the 50mm was not the correct lens for me to bring today! However, I don’t think its too bad for a first attempt; both in terms of composition and PP. As usual, all C&C is welcome!
I think it has some miniaturisation going on!
Also – I’m off to Prague next week for a few days. If anyone has any photography (or just general vacation) tips, let me know!
Big thanks to Jeremey for the lend of a film SLR and organising a trip around Dublin. The weather wasn’t really great for either getting vibrant shots or enticing people onto the streets and I doubt the rugby helped either. However, it was a very cool experience to use the film and it will be interesting to see how the shots come out. It was very strange not getting instant results from your shooting!
Plan now might be to get an EOS film camera – they seem very cheap on Ebay and start messing around with it. Will have to look into developing costs and all that first, but the educational experience of not being able to shoot 300 images in one afternoon should stand to me!
