European residential property

Gurgle

Half of boardsies seem to be convinced that the Irish property market is going to go pop in the next 15 minutes, and that thousands of people will immedietly sell their property at a massive loss. :rolleyes:

So I'm asking anyone living on the continent:

How much does an average 3-bed semi cost where you live?
How much does the same house rent for?

Ballpark figures anyway.

FillSpectre

That is a false comparison from the start.

House prices are linked to employment, cultural factors, history and population fluctuation. You might as well judge the thing based on the price of a pint of Guinness.:p

How can you relate a former Soviet state that provided free housing and subsidise heating with a country that just came out of a personal recession that last 40 odd years after a civil war?

The EU may be about becoming equal but it doesn't make it happen instantly. The first Autobann was built in 1932 should we compare our roads with the Germans? RTE with BBC?

Seriously if you want some prospective look in a history book.

THe Irish property market is going boom you mean people think it will go pop or bang

Gurgle

^^ I made the mistake of taking Fillspectre off my ignore list to see what he had to say on the subject.
Answer: Nothing.
Back you go.

Anyone got any numbers?

antoinolachtnai

If you search around you will find average prices for different marketplaces. You really need to compare these prices to interest rates and average incomes to gauge 'affordability'.

Gurgle

OK, Google it is then:

Nice 530 000€
Just off the Promenade, lovely 4 bed town house with garden and guest studio
Pretty garden and terrace (200m2) Large private guest studio
Fully renovated Central but quiet

This charming and typically Nicois villa/ town house (detached) is situated on a very quiet street to the West of Nice Centre and is just moments from the beach and 5 minutes’ drive from Nice International Airport.

4-bed detached house, €530k
Sounds like the same ballpark as here tbh.

Are they going to have a bursting bubble too?

FillSpectre

Well maybe others will understand what I have said even if Gurgle want to stick his fingers in his ears so he can shout about the inequality of house prices accross Europe.

The average 3 bed semi doeasn't exist accross Europe and just proves ignorance.

Gurgle

antoinolachtnai wrote:

If you search around you will find average prices for different marketplaces. You really need to compare these prices to interest rates and average incomes to gauge 'affordability'.

I'm not trying to gauge affordability.

I just want to know if a similar house in the middle of France costs about the same as in the middle of Germany, Austria, Belgium, Wales and Ireland.

Besides, interest rates across the EU are consistant, and average incomes are slowly coming into line too.

Ponster

Middle of France :

3 bedrooms
810 sq. feet
About 1 hour 30 minute drive to Paris

€112 800 in a town of about 10,000 people


I bought a 360 sq. feet, 1-bedroom flat on ground floor with private courtyard in Paris (nice part of town - 30 minute walk from Notre Dame and the river) for €75,000 3 years ago and is now worth about €130,000.

andy1249

In comparison to ponsters , 3 bed for 130K , try Carlow , Middle of Ireland . The laurels estate , 3 bed house for 130K , approx 1 hour from Dublin , Maybe 1.5 hours depending on Traffic ,
In short , if you want to live in a remote area you'll get decent prices but there is a long commute for work.
This is consistent across most EU states

Ponster

Of course no one in their right mind would actually drive to work from so far away :-)

Out of my team of 6, 2 lads live out of Paris, the rest in the suburbs. Both guys that live out of the Paris region are from Amiens, about 135Kms away but both take the train that goes every 30 minutes at rush hour and costs €80 a month, 50% of which is paid by their company. At that speed you could leave Carlow at 7:30am and be in the office before 9am and probably sell the second family car.


To be honest Ireland is a lot more expensive than Ireland IMHO when it comes to house prices. France has the space and a housing market that is growing strong but doesn't have the same demand that exists in Ireland. In the little village where I'm from outside of Clonmel a batch of new semi-s are being sold of at €430,050 where as for the same € over here, in the same location, I'd be looking at a country house of sorts.


Here are a few nice ones I found on the same site. All in the same area, 1.5 hours north of Paris and 30 minutes from the D-D beaches.


http://c.visuels.immostreet.com/2d/c/5/7/c57e7e63-5a22.jpg

€450,000

19th century 'Normandy' house. 4 bedrooms. Outdoor garage. 1000 sq. feet Comes with 1.5 acres of land.






http://a.visuels.immostreet.com/2d/a/5/9/a59e7c17-5fee.jpg

€445 000

'Normandy' house. 4 bedrooms. 500 sq. feet Comes with 2 acres of land.






http://5.visuels.immostreet.com/2d/5/8/e/58e0657f-7577.jpg

€424,000


'Normandy' house. 6 bedrooms. 4 bathrooms. 2000 sq. foot Parking. Tennis. Comes with 1 acre of land.

Calina

Gurgle wrote:

OK, Google it is then:

Nice 530 000€
Just off the Promenade, lovely 4 bed town house with garden and guest studio
Pretty garden and terrace (200m2) Large private guest studio
Fully renovated Central but quiet

This charming and typically Nicois villa/ town house (detached) is situated on a very quiet street to the West of Nice Centre and is just moments from the beach and 5 minutes’ drive from Nice International Airport.

4-bed detached house, €530k
Sounds like the same ballpark as here tbh.

Are they going to have a bursting bubble too?

A cursory look at myhome.ie is turning up four bedroomed detached houses in Dublin at three quarters of a million euro. Clondalkin is 510K, sure, but it's not five minutes from Dublin Airport, and I'd bet it's not moments from the beach either. Plus the weather is far worse in Clondalkin. The best I@m doing in Swords is 570K not far from Applewood. Central it is not.

In terms of what you're getting for your half million in Nice versus what you're getting in Swords, I'd venture to say the location in Nice is a hell of a lot better than the location in Swords, not even allowing for the hilarious asking price not equalling real price in Dublin situation.

Imposter

I think FillSpectre made some good points Gurgle and you are just ignoring them.

Austria:
- There's really no such thing as a 3-bed semi. In villages and on the edge of towns and cities there would be once off houses or groups of houses (almost always standalone).
- There also exists apartmants including family friendly apartments. They can be anything from 2 stories to 12+ stories.
- People earn less and need a 20-30% deposit to buy a place at 'normal' interest rates. You may get a loan to buy with less of a deposit than this but you'll have a higher interest rate for at least the first few years.
- Houses are expensive. Probably a little cheaper than in Ireland but incomes are less. 2 family houses are quite common. Apartments (and houses too) differ in price depending on age a lot more than they do in Ireland. A new apartment where I live in and about the CC would be about 200k for 60/70m². A 30/40 year old apartment of a similar size might be 120k.
- There are rates to be paid. For a house it could be just water and bins but for an apartment there's management fees too. This is based on ground size divided by number of residences (more or less), so for a house that's expensive. For a 2 story building with an apartment on each floor it's ridiculously expensive (depending on the managment arrangements)
- Management of buildings is generally done by a committee of residents and it works are these people live in the apartments too.
- Rents are a lot cheaper than a mortgage. As an example: I pay just over 300pm for my own apartment(48m²). I'm a bit outside the centre so such an apartment would cost about 70k-80k to buy. Rates would be about 100pm. That's over 500pm when you consider a mortgage and paying the rates.
- People won't spend all day travelling to work. Average journey is porbably 15mins with very very few spending longer than 45mins getting to work.
- Decent roads and public transport options exist
- Parks and the like are everywhere, generally unvandalised and well kept.
- It's a safe country.

Calina

Imposter wrote:

I think FillSpectre made some good points Gurgle and you are just ignoring them.

Austria:
- There's really no such thing as a 3-bed semi. In villages and on the edge of towns and cities there would be once off houses or groups of houses (almost always standalone).
- There also exists apartmants including family friendly apartments. They can be anything from 2 stories to 12+ stories.
- People earn less and need a 20-30% deposit to buy a place at 'normal' interest rates. You may get a loan to buy with less of a deposit than this but you'll have a higher interest rate for at least the first few years.
- Houses are expensive. Probably a little cheaper than in Ireland but incomes are less. 2 family houses are quite common. Apartments (and houses too) differ in price depending on age a lot more than they do in Ireland. A new apartment where I live in and about the CC would be about 200k for 60/70m². A 30/40 year old apartment of a similar size might be 120k.
- There are rates to be paid. For a house it could be just water and bins but for an apartment there's management fees too. This is based on ground size divided by number of residences (more or less), so for a house that's expensive. For a 2 story building with an apartment on each floor it's ridiculously expensive (depending on the managment arrangements)
- Management of buildings is generally done by a committee of residents and it works are these people live in the apartments too.
- Rents are a lot cheaper than a mortgage. As an example: I pay just over 300pm for my own apartment(48m²). I'm a bit outside the centre so such an apartment would cost about 70k-80k to buy. Rates would be about 100pm. That's over 500pm when you consider a mortgage and paying the rates.
- People won't spend all day travelling to work. Average journey is porbably 15mins with very very few spending longer than 45mins getting to work.
- Decent roads and public transport options exist
- Parks and the like are everywhere, generally unvandalised and well kept.
- It's a safe country.

Currently, in Dublin, rents are significantly cheaper than mortgages, particularly when you bear in mind that in Ireland, you do not have to stump up so much of the purchase price yourself.

Also, worth noting is that two family houses are not necessarily the case everywhere. I have known them in the rural part of Germany I lived in, but they didn't really exist in the rural part of France I lived in. You could suggest that semiD-s are two family houses too - in Germany two-family houses are often split horizontally, in Ireland, they're split vertically.

The big, big issue in Dublin, in Ireland as a whole, is that city centre family accommodation units are not being built. There are three bedroomed apartments all over the shop in Paris and Munich and Brussels. Most of what is built in Ireland, however, is temporary accommodation, of the "I'll live here for two years, then I'll move out".

Ancillary costs to living in Ireland do include refuse collection charges, and for an increasing number of property owners, management fees also. As in, there's no real difference between Ireland and other countries in this respect going forward.

Incomes are not necessarily less. The problem is I have what I consider to be a fairly decent salary and yet it will buy me far more in every other city in Europe than what it will buy me in Dublin. That's because it will buy me nothing in Dublin.

The point is people have to live somewhere. We could try and identify what the main differences between how people fund it are. The issue in Dublin is that the rental set up is still - despite recent changes - tilted in the landlord's favour, so that no one really wants to rely on renting for their lives, whereas in most of the rest of Europe, it's pretty normal. My recent experience has told me there are a lot of landlords out there who many not be in it for the long haul, so sure, most people don't want to rely on it as an option. Not only that, there's whole snobby anti-rental sentiment which is shockingly common in this country as well.

Me, I spend a lot of time looking at property prices in France, in a vague "wouldn't it be nice" type of feeling. Mostly, what I see is that although prices are largely similar between Ireland and France, Brittany in particular, you get far, far more for the money you pay in France versus what you get in Ireland. As in, the difference is not so much in the price, but in the product. Obviously I can't speak for Austria, but there you have it.

PeteF

Property in France seems to be really reasonably priced comapred to the Irish market. Are they in the middle of nowhere or is there a catch like not having water rights (A problem in America)?

Calina

PeteF wrote:

Property in France seems to be really reasonably priced comapred to the Irish market. Are they in the middle of nowhere or is there a catch like not having water rights (A problem in America)?

I think the profile of their investment buyers is different to what it is here.

One of the interesting things which I turned up in an article on property in Brittany (don't still have the link) is that there's a wealth tax on property over a certain value in France, I think, and that many people have seen an increase in their tax bills as a result of rising prices in France, driven in part, it's thought, by foreign buyers.

Here, we have a lot of people who appear to be stockpiling entry level property on the grounds that "you can't lose with property", "It can only go up". Also, I'd venture to say that because they have so many renters in France, people who are happy to continue renting because they have an option to stay in a property longer than 4 years, the demand profile is different. In any case, it varies from one region to the next.

Imposter

Calina wrote:

Brittany in particular, you get far, far more for the money you pay in France versus what you get in Ireland. As in, the difference is not so much in the price, but in the product.

The rest of your post dealt with money, money money, but this is the thing I was trying to get across at the end of my post. In Ireland you generally have to make big sacrifices when buying a property (be that size, location, commuting distance etc) whereas imo most european cities are designed around living rather than just having a roof over your head. In that sense what people are paying for a property in Ireland (not just moneywise) is way, way too much.

Calina

The point is the OP asked how property prices compared between Ireland and Europe, and got a smart response saying, grosso modo, that any such comparisons were falacious and a waste of time because things were too different. I suspect what Gurgle wanted to know was how Ireland compared to other countries in terms of finding somewhere to live.

From what I can see, you and I agree that it compares very, very badly. I have no doubt I'll be contradicted, but Fillspectre's post suggested that Ireland was different, we shouldn't bother doing the comparison. However, in the main, the main thing is people everywhere need somewhere to live. Everyone needs a roof over their heads, and it has to be paid for somehow.

From a pure price point of view, it's fair to say that many parts of Europe, even urbanised capital cities, compare extremely well to the situation in Ireland, and that's before you factor in vastly superior local services versus what you get here.

In other words, I suspect if he hadn't directly asked about a semi-D, he might have gotten more of a sympathetic response.

I'd also add that the rest of my post, as you say, was not money money money, but was purely to point out that things you cited as being different in Austria are no longer that different. Management fees and refuse collection charges are an example of that.

In any case, I would suggest that based on employment, historical prices and infrastructure, the money being paid for property in Ireland is not founded on realistic understanding of the risks. Fillspectre, I'm pretty sure from previous threads on the subject, may not agree. But that's the way the cookie crumbles.

iguana

Gurgle wrote:

Besides, interest rates across the EU are consistant, and average incomes are slowly coming into line too.

Interest rates across the EU are not consistent. Interest rates in the EuroZone are the same, there are plenty of countries in the EU which have decided to keep their own currency and as such maintain their own interest rates. For example the Bank of England, whose interest rates started rising well in advance of the Euro.

A huge factor in European house prices, in France in particular, is English investors. In many parts of France locals have been priced out by English(other British and Irish also) investors, this is also damaging local economies as these houses would have been permanent homes for French locals, but are holiday homes for the investors. This means that they are rarely occupied and not using local shops and services in the same way permenant residents would.

France also have very high unemployment and outside of Paris rates of pay are very low. A French friend of mine was working in PR for a pretty famous cathederal choral group and was responsible, amoung other things, for concerts for over 100,000 people. She was being paid €9,000 a year for that, and since she left that job she has been out of work for years as she can no longer afford to take the jobs she is offered. This is why house prices in certain regions were traditionally very low.

Ponster

iguana wrote:

France also have very low unemployment and outside of Paris rates of pay are very low.

You mean high unemployment surely? (about 10%)

I get paid less in Paris then I could in Dublin but then again it's cheaper to live in Paris then Dublin so it all works out in the end.

iguana

Ponster wrote:

You mean high unemployment surely? (about 10%)

I get paid less in Paris then I could in Dublin but then again it's cheaper to live in Paris then Dublin so it all works out in the end.

Yes, I meant high, I've fixed it now.

Yeah but it doesn't work out so well if you earn €10,000pa and a hundred Londoners, earning 5-10 times your salary, decided your town is the next big investment hotspot.

Ponster

Indeed. To the point that the French, being the French, are thinking of bringing in a new law which protects the market against forigen buyers who are buying 'holiday homes'. I have no idea how it could possible work but they're thinking about it.

And don't forget me. I'd love to move back to Ireland but I could never afford it. I left in '97 to get a job and now that I have one I'm stuck with it

Gurgle

Ponster wrote:

Indeed. To the point that the French, being the French, are thinking of bringing in a new law which protects the market against forigen buyers who are buying 'holiday homes'. I have no idea how it could possible work but they're thinking about it.

Same was suggest for meath a couple of months ago.
There was a big thread on here with people trying to justify it :rolleyes:

And the answer to the original questions are:
Irelands socioeconomic situation is different to everyone else's.
Ireland consists of Dublin and 'The middle of nowhere'.