Boom and bust

Sir, – Your Editorial “Taxation and the property market” (June 10th) gave a very good account of the causes of the boom and bust with one glaring exception: 100 per cent mortgages.

Had people been forced to put up 20 per cent of the cost to qualify for a mortgage, housing costs wouldn’t have gone skywards, the banks wouldn’t have shovelled mortgages out the door and the ghost estates wouldn’t have been built.

We’d have been spared the moaners and whingers on “debt forgiveness” and “negative equity”. – Yours, etc,

JAMES MORAN,

Knockanure,

Bunclody,

Co Wexford.