A dead year with some room for irony on the commercial market

THE house market might have been on the floor in 2010 — but, if it was, the commercial end of the business was in the basement by comparison and, unlike the stamp duty break given to the residential market in Budget 2011, it still has a high tax rate on transactions.

There was hardly a deal worth a mention, in Munster at least, to stir the pulses.

The years before the Big Bust saw bank branches and investments dangled like carrots, and the main banks sold bundles of their own bank/HQ properties for hundreds of millions — guess who saw the writing on the wall? Them, clearly, in hindsight, along with a miniscule coterie of economists and a certain small west Cork farmer who’s entitled to say “I told you so...” That’s another story, though.