Get real (estate) while the going is good

FRIENDS have news. They have just purchased a house in Dublin for half the advertised price of 18 months ago.

It's 15 minutes' walk from the post office in O'Connell Street. I can picture the suburb now and I haven't even logged on to dublin-realestate. com to see what else is for sale.

Dublin is a great city where everyone looks like the people who knelt beside you at mass as a kid.

It's so familiar to Australians, I know I could live there. Well, sort of. In the summer. With a poet.

Collapsing property prices should elicit sympathy. They are a devastating sign of Ireland's relapse after a brief spot of economic sunshine. The Irish Independent wrote last weekend that Cork County Council has put 52 houses on the market at rock-bottom prices starting at E150,000 ($210,000) but that the three-bedroom, two-bathrooom properties can't attract a buyer. There are anecdotes about newly built apartment blocks, empty save for a handful of tenants who live in fear because of their isolation. I feel a pang for those caught in the slump but in a flash I'm doing the math on how many James Joyce-style terraces I could buy if I sold up here.

There was a brief moment last year when we stopped talking about our houses as profit centres and started worrying about our super. After decades of the Saturday morning scan of the real estate ads - even if not strictly in the market for a new house - property lost its pull. For just a minute there we walked past the "home open" signs, eschewed The Weekend Australian Magazine's Homehunt section and got on with being a grown-up person who counted her blessings rather than the money that would be left over after decamping to Meekatharra or the next street. But here we are, back on the game, ready to sell the front step at the mere hint of a three-bedroom for E300,000.

This behaviour might be more acceptable if it were about living the dream, escaping to the Provence-style experience of wine, cheese and personal growth. But it's not. Nor are we talking Clive James or Germaine Greer: we're good with living in Australia for the foreseeable. No, this is about the deal. Two for the price of one! Buy a house in Galway and get one free! Cash in even if it means leaving behind friends, family and real football. That's bricks and mortar for you. Addictive. Time, as those Irish nuns used to say, to take the pledge.