Irish investors fed more BS about BP, this time on the down-side

You really have to pity the poor Irish investors now sitting on Budapest property. It’s bad enough that they had their expectations for making a killing on local real estate unjustifiably stoked when the market was on the up. But now it seems that they are getting equally poor information about how bad the market is while it’s on the down. Just consider the below graph from this bizarre brief in today’s Irish Times entitled “All quiet in Budapest” but which reads like it should have been entitled “Your money is all gone, Paddy, so just kill yourself”:

In the previously moribund restaurant areas of Budapest, the Irish brought many evenings of good fellowship – and generous tips – to the newly opened diners, especially on the conclusion of investment deals. Alas, all’s changed. Liszt Ferenz square, off the capital’s Utca [sic], once a vibrant area of evening entertainment, is notably quiet, with only a handful of restaurants open, where two years ago there were dozens. Much of its clientele came from Ireland, as Hungary boomed with foreign investment after years of stagnation.

While the Times is apparently Ireland’s “newspaper of record,” this and the rest of the article is not just rubbish. (I was on Liszt tér the other night, and it was hardly empty, and in any case was never even remotely dependent on Irish investors or anyone like that for its health.) It’s so rubbishy and inappropriate – note the lack of an author byline – that the paranoid part of my brain almost has me thinking it’s part of a conspiracy to make Paddy sell out for below market value. Whatever that is.