Why do the Irish favour property investment?

Diane Mulcahy is a former Visiting Fellow at Trinity College Dublin’s Policy Institute and is the author of the book Angels and IPOs. She's written numerous articles about the need for more angel investing in Ireland and was interested to read my post on developments with Grazr -

"I'm intrigued by the idea that blogs can help create an informal, virtual network of angels and entrepreneurs."

That's a very good way of describing what's happening in this case. There's no doubt but that blogging is playing a central role in the genesis of Grazr.

It's over a year old but Diane's article on the Need for more Angel Investors, published in the Sunday Times Business section is well worth reviewing -

"Irish small businesses would substantially benefit from an increase in the supply of angel capital. Business angels are wealthy individuals, often ex-entrepreneurs, who make small equity investments (often less than €100,000) in early-stage companies.  Angel financing is the most common and critical source of early stage equity capital in both the US and Europe, but is much less prevalent in Ireland.  Instead, Irish investors strongly prefer to invest in property rather than equity.

 Last week, a report showed that Irish investors acquired €4.8 billion of property in 2004 and were the third largest cross-border property investors in the EU-15. In contrast, the 2004 Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) launched earlier this year found that the amount of angel capital and investments from friends and family in Irish small businesses was tiny - less than 1% of GDP – placing Ireland in the bottom third of GEM countries."

Richard Rodger commented on the same issue -

"The big old problem we have over here is that the returns on property
investment are much easier to realise. Why bother with angel investing
when you can flip new developments?"

Diane, any chance of publishing a blog? I'd like to subscribe to a feed to follow your writings. You really should join the converation.



Technorati Tags: angel investing, ireland, ipo, venture capital, property

Comments

[Damien Mulley]

Until she blogs how about asking her to do an interview with you?