Been making contacts with old friends over the festive period and many of the tradesmen among them do not have much work going into the new year. Brickies who were earning £1000 p/w are now being offered work at £70 a day. A few plumbers have no work at all. Reports of sites discontinuing building despite previous plans for plenty of houses.
Anyone else any info?

... an old post of mine ... but very relevant...

I know that a guy at my work, that just had plans passed for a new build house in October 2007. At the beginning of 2007 he was told, by the architect, to start looking, as it would take 6 months to get a builder.

The architect told him, when his plans were finally passed in October, that he had 3 builders that, 'could start tomorrow.'

Serpico also has a relevant post, regarding availability and cost of plasters.

A colleague who bought a site in 2006 has also had a 10% reduction in his quote to build the planned house. He's now waiting until spring/summer to see if it comes down any more.

I did a job for a brickie over XMAS; quite un-prompted he told me about the lack of work and there was 'only talk' of work for January

I've seen quite a few building developments around parts of Northern Ireland that are like ghost towns, no one on site and nothing happening.

There you go - here comes Great Crash 2 - noticed how sentiment has changed to tangible fear!

Its coming down the track fast and nothing will stop it now.

Anyone see this in E.Antrim area? Friend pointed this out to me about a development in Carrickfergus........

For this particular development, the first release of apartments were released in November 2007 with prices for 1 bedroom apartments starting at £215,000 and 2-bed apartments at £225,000. Development is at Scotch Quarter, Carrickfergus (evident by huge gap between the Coast Road hotel and some other old building) and is a joint venture for Deborah Yea and Templeton Robinson. The foundations were laid for each of the proposed 3 blocks in August 2007 but since then there has been no visible work done on-site and over the last 2months there have been no-one on site during the weekdays or weekends........anyone know any gossip on this particular site? have all the workers been taken off-site? the developers scared about the state of the housing market?anyone else have other similar stories of sites in their areas?

I have a friend who is a digger driver and he has seen a *massive* drop off in work, particularly for brickies and plumbers. The last two times I've seen him, he has had a good rant about us going into a recession and about going back to retrain in a different trade.

He has talked of people literally hanging out at the plumb centre (Castlewellan, I presume), hoping to find work there, as there is nothing else for them to do. He thinks his job is safe for the short term as he's working on a big contract, but he also thinks that he could be replaced instantly, and likely for less money. Understandably, this isn't helping his feeling of job security!

Also, he thinks the whole industry has gone daft. He was saying that brickies were buying huge detached houses and that they just *shouldn't* be able to afford them. He knows he doesn't have a skilled job and doesn't understand how this can be sustainable. He thinks everything is over priced and it's going to all collapse, big time.

He still thought houses would go up in the long term and that it wouldn't be a terrible thing to buy, but I pointed out how much I'm renting for and said I was happy to buy in a few years when they're cheaper. He agreed that would probably be the best thing to do too.

Having just seen over 10% (20k) wiped off the houses being built at the other end of my estate, I'm still glad I didn't buy recently and I don't think the prices are going to stop there... that's just the price they're advertising too and I wouldn't be surprised if there were other "incentives". Of course, the latter is pure speculation, but the price drops are as real as the day.

P.S. the builders on my estate had a VERY long Christmas... there wasn't much action until 2/3 weeks ago, really.

Yes for some people working in the construction industry work is scarce. I happen to know quite a few people employed within this particular industry - family and friends. One person told me the other day he got laid off last week along with 14 other workers from a firm in the mid ulster area who make timber frame houses. Others I have been chatting to over the last 6-8 weeks have not worked a lot since christmas and those working now are doing so for less. A lot of these guys were making extremely good money over the last few years with even the cowboys demanding high fees.
As with all walks of life the quality tradesmen are still working and getting work, a family member is a pretty good tradesman (others assessment not mine!) and has as much work as he can handle at the minute and is backed up until September/October. Some of the wiser tradesmen who saw problems in the housing market on the horizon looked alternative sources of work and are now working on commercial jobs.

BTW, I forgot to mention that he said a number of the guys out of work are getting close to losing their houses and fear they are already in negative equity.

I'm sure there will be jobs for quality and/or for people who have the right contacts, but that's no help to those who haven't worked for a while and are thinking they may lose their homes.

Still, it seems like many of these guys stretched more than they should, believing the boom times would last forever.

A new development at the rear of my house started in 2006 has now ground to a complete halt despite there being room for maybe another 20-30 rabbit hutches. There would also appear to be a high percentage of the 'occupied' dwellings already up for sale.