Queueing for a home - Mania renewed

The sight of hopeful, cheery looking young people queueing overnight to try to buy a house in a Dublin development must send shivers down the spines of tens of thousands of people who did the same some years ago but are now trapped in negative equity, probably in houses or apartments that are too small for their current needs.

Not only that, but it underlines how our house building, especially in Dublin, has failed to match demand over a period of years. Various initiatives are in place to try to resolve this shortage and it must be hoped that they bear fruit in time to slow the all-too-familiar spiral of prices soaring to unsustainable, dangerous levels.

Yesterday’s European decision to cut interest rates to a record low will do little to dampen what seems to be a renewal of the mania around property and house prices that led to our economic collapse.

It is an indictment of how we organise our affairs that the task of putting a roof over your head has become such a challenging exercise, and is one that involves so much risk.