What are the supply side issues?

riclad

You can build smaller apartment blocks ,with no lifts ,just stairs ,
if the block is a 3/4 Story block .
Look at northwood, santry , i think theres just outside car parking,
no expensive underground car parks there .
As far as i can see .
And theres plenty of empty spaces .
Maybe have a rule 1 parking space for each 3 units ,in urban areas ,
where there is a bus service ,or luas .
If the government wanted they could ask councils to give free building sites ,
if a builder provides 20-25 per cent social housing .
The minimum size for apartments has been reduced .
I think the social housing percentage has been reduced too .
Councils own land all over the country ,close to roads,.water pipes .
IN area.s where there is strong demand for housing .
Maybe some companys bought sites for millions so they can only justify
building if the sale price is 200k for a 1bed unit.
They are waiting for the celtic tiger to return or at least prices to rise more .

Monife

riclad wrote: »

You can build smaller apartment blocks ,with no lifts ,just stairs ,
if the block is a 3/4 Story block .
Look at northwood, santry , i think theres just outside car parking,
no expensive underground car parks there .
As far as i can see .
And theres plenty of empty spaces .
Maybe have a rule 1 parking space for each 3 units ,in urban areas ,
where there is a bus service ,or luas .
If the government wanted they could ask councils to give free building sites ,
if a builder provides 20-25 per cent social housing .
The minimum size for apartments has been reduced .
I think the social housing percentage has been reduced too .
Councils own land all over the country ,close to roads,.water pipes .
IN area.s where there is strong demand for housing .
Maybe some companys bought sites for millions so they can only justify
building if the sale price is 200k for a 1bed unit.
They are waiting for the celtic tiger to return or at least prices to rise more .

There is underground parking in Northwood, in Lymewood Mews anyway which are the apartments beside the Spar roundabout and beside Ben Dunne's gym.

Muahahaha

Ronan Lyons makes some good points but I still cant get my head around that €280k headline figure. If we say 80sqm for a 2 bed apartment and then allow a further 20sqm per unit for corridor spaces that would mean a 2 bed apartment needs the same footprint of a typical 100sqm semi-D. But with apartments the land use is a lot more intensive than a house as a developer can build them four stories high.

I do take his points about lifts, call out charges to inspect a broken lift are often over €300 and then even more to repair the thing. As for basement car parks- surely developers built these simply because the price of land was so high that they needed to use the available space as intensively as possible? I do take the point that digging out a large underground car park is an expensive undertaking, perhaps councils might in future allow ground floor car parks while still permitting four floors of accommodation.

One thing I wonder about this supply side issue is the fact that we have all these developers who were part of the crash who are now (thanks to NAMA) supposed to be getting back to the business of supplying homes. But they are clearly not. I think some of our problems might lie in the fact that some developers paid huge money for land prices back in the 2000-2006 period and now that they're back in the game they won't build simply because their projections are based on bubble prices. I think this problem may go back to the very structures of NAMA where they decided to work with developers who had effectively gone bankrupt rather than cleaning the slate and allowing new entrants into the market. If new developers entered the market and picked up land for a song in 2010-2012 I think we would be seeing more supply on stream now. But instead what we have is the old guard developer who paid mammoth prices for land is now back in the game but won't start building till we getting nearer to bubble prices.

Sleepy

I'm not an engineer, but would assume that in order for a wall to take the load of 3/4 stories of concrete above it, it needs to be built to a higher standard (thicker, stronger) than a wall only expected to take the weight of a first floor and timber roof?

The electrics and plumbing work needed is all going to be far more extensive than that of a 3 bed semi too.

The design and planning phase is surely more complicated for apartment builds too, particularly if the area has no history of medium-high density housing?

Not trying to defend the figures, just get a better handle on them!

L1011

Planning considerations add considerable costs; although I'm not suggesting we throw them away.

For example, here in Maynooth it seems you won't get planning for further units in parts of the town until the ringroad is built - meaning that land is temporarily useless and potentially an interest burden on developers as well as a future vacant site tax burden when that comes in. However, the ringroad is expected to be built (not just levy part-funded) by developers in a specific part of the town which adds a considerable per-unit cost to those units. Planning applications for that land that don't include "their" segments of the ring road won't be approved.

Additionally most of the available land floods in wet weather so the council rightly requires flood alleviation works - retention tanks, drainage, pumping stations - which again add a considerable per-unit cost.

These are on top of the levies that would normally be charged.

dubrov

I still think apartments would still be a lot cheaper to build per unit.
Sure you might have a huge plumbing network to install but it would be still cheaper than installing the same network in semi-detached houses.

Planning and design would also be cheaper due to economy of scale.

The reason why builders are willing to pay for the ring road is that it would increase the cost of the land by at least that amount. Otherwise why bother.

Macha

I wonder how it compares to building costs in other Western European countries.

Victor

riclad wrote: »

You can build smaller apartment blocks ,with no lifts ,just stairs if the block is a 3/4 Story block .

With conventional apartments, it needs lift is it has 4 storeys or more (measured to the lowest floor of the apartment) than 6 apartments. So, at a time 3-storey blocks with a total of 6 apartments were popular with builders. https://www.google.ie/maps/@53.3333844,-6.2751303,3a,75y,309.79h,99.3t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1sxyGR4Bn6Ur9o9IS8rApmHg!2e0!6s%2F%2Fgeo3.ggpht.com%2Fcbk%3Fpanoid%3DxyGR4Bn6Ur9o9IS8rApmHg%26output%3Dthumbnail%26cb_client%3Dmaps_sv.tactile.gps%26thumb%3D2%26w%3D203%26h%3D100%26yaw%3D176.21712%26pitch%3D0!7i13312!8i6656

Then there was a shift to own-door duplexes. https://www.google.ie/maps/@53.3920438,-6.3745446,3a,75y,306.16h,89.46t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sEaZLtelbFAbme6IqN3IW9g!2e0!7i13312!8i6656

dubrov wrote: »

What I don't understand is how can a self-build of a detached house more than twice the size cost less than a 2 bed apartment built as part of a large block of apartments?

Many of the estimates put out there by self-builders are half-truths and/or delusional. They're not including land purchase or site development costs, design fees, the thousands of hours they put in themselves, decoration and many other elements. Build quality is likely to be less than what one would even get with speculative builders.

That said, the noises coming from the other side are self-serving.

Note that builders do need large margins as they develop properties over a period of years. It's not like a shop that takes cash for your bread today and pays their supplier next month.