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Fri 08 Aug 2007Attitude to empty properties will shape marketEconomics:As the outbreak of war approached in 1939, and Stalin remained inscrutable, Winston Churchill described Soviet strategy thus: "It is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma." Much the same can be said of the performance of the Irish housing market over the past 10 years.The Irish housing boom of the past decade defies a credible economic explanation. In broad terms, the number of new houses added to the national dwelling stock between 1996 and 2006 was almost twice the number of new households formed over the same period.