Inside Dublin’s Housing Crisis

Flinty997

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121109066#Comment_121109066

Selling off of local authority housing started in the 70s. Outsourcing everything become popular in the 80s as cost cutting.

We've had successive govt including the current one not really interested in tackling it.

HerrKuehn

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121108935#Comment_121108935

Luckily they only have a year left, the situation is easy enough to solve apparently. You just have to look at other European countries, pick the best one and do what they do. Eoin found the Austrian model best, so we can look forward to that. We just need other visionaries to realise the Dutch health care system is the best and the Finnish education system is best.

spaceHopper

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121109216#Comment_121109216

Work with a guy from Holland and apparently the current government told the public they need to plan for the retirement they want to have. His parents are elderly and get next to no support from the health service there. It's all care in the community but you are easily forgotten. His 80+ year old father is carer this mother and they will not step in until he can't cope anymore.

RichardAnd

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121109711#Comment_121109711

I'm sure the Dutch government themselves will be retiring to pensions after selling out Holland to investment funds...

That said, this is correct. The pension issue is going to be a major problem in the decades to come. I have a LOT of family in the civil service, and quite a few of them have retired in the last few years. All of them are around 60, so are they to draw a pension for the next 30+ years?

HerrKuehn

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121112071#Comment_121112071

Young people need to realise, when you graduate or finish school, you are in a race to accumulate assets before retirement. You need to hit 30 with something to show for it (significant enough investments etc), especially if you live at home for a bit in your 20's. Of course people will complain and say you shouldn't have to, but that is just the reality and obviously it makes no difference to me whether someone does it or not.

Murph85

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121108023#Comment_121108023

Correct. It sure as he'll wasn't spent on infrastructure

Murph85

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121108935#Comment_121108935

I agree. The other options are appalling too though. There is zero leadership or vision here. That's the problem.. voting for one gobshite or the other gobshite, won't change that. Its depressing..

RichardAnd

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121112248#Comment_121112248

Agreed. I personally didn't use my 20s as well as I could have, and whilst I'm not in a terrible position, I missed many great opportunities that could have done wonders for me. I recently had a chat with my 24 year old cousin who has just graduated from a philosophy degree. I urged him to look for a real job, but his reply was "I don't want to get caught up in a career in my 20s". This attitude, if one adopts it, will see them living with their parents in their 40s.

It is an unfortunate reality that we are forced to do this, and having the population engaged in a rush to accumulate resources probably is ruinous to social cohesion (if that even exists anymore), but it's the reality of where we are. Older generations have landed us with a disaster, and now we need to what we can to prosper.

realitykeeper

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121108175#Comment_121108175

Property owners benefited because property was inflated by the borrowing. Taxing property substially more is the answer but new builds and first time buyers would need to be exempt for it to work properly.

realitykeeper

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121108207#Comment_121108207

Public or private, it`s purpose was to inflate property prices. I heard Enda Kenny was paid millions by RTE for his documentary about cycling around Ireland. Does anyone know if this is true?

spaceHopper

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121112403#Comment_121112403

Do they don't, they only benefit if they sell, it's not a property investment it's a home. You are spending to much time on left wing social media.

HerrKuehn

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121112378#Comment_121112378

It was always this way, it is just that adolescence has been extended with each generation. I know guys from my generation (early 40's) who still live with their parents and never moved out. I traveled a fair bit in my 20's, but managed to accumulate a decent enough amount by 30. I appreciate that there is a lot more to spend money on now (phones are much better and more expensive for example). There is a fair bit of "financial fatalism" nowadays, where people think they will never be able to afford to buy a property so why even bother. I don't know if it is something particular about the younger generation mindset or whatever.

Flinty997

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121112449#Comment_121112449

Lots of distractions these days. They should teach financial well being in schools.

RichardAnd

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121112449#Comment_121112449

The extension of adolescence is indeed real. Look to youtube and find men in their 30s screaming about video games. That said, this is certainly a modern phenomenon. If we went back to the earlier part of the last century, adolescence barely existed at all. One left school, got a job and that was that; welcome to the adult world. My own grandmother (paternal) was working at 14 and got married at 19. People grew up quickly because the realities of life were not kept at bay by abundant resources.

I think that as the "good times" diminish, this luxury of putting of becoming an adult will start to disappear for more and more people. Of course, my 24 year old grandfather (who owned a chipper) was able to buy a house in Dublin 3 and pay off the loan in two years in the 1950s...

Flinty997

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121112419#Comment_121112419

You think the country got a loan to pay Enda for a cycling documentary :)

Flinty997

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121112526#Comment_121112526

Used to be no childhood either. No weekends. No education.

Very hard to sell a frugal lifestyle if there's increasingly nothing at the end of it. Can't afford a pension or a home etc.

Certainly scope of an economic plan to sustain your own population.

Claw Hammer

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121109163#Comment_121109163

Selling off local authority house was a sensible thing to do in the circumstances which pertained at that time. The problem is that the stock of housing was not replenished.

The councils began outsourcing housing to private landlords through rent allowance and HAP.

Private sector developers cannot deliver a sufficient supply of housing at affordable prices.

Flinty997

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121112915#Comment_121112915

IMO selling off the houses (Home ownership) brought stability to those areas.

As you say the failure was to stop building new stock to replenish it. Then compounded by everything else since.

Private market will never deliver social provision/service thats effectively loss making.

NIMAN

Is it time to ban AirBnB in Ireland, at least for a couple of years?

Flinty997

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121113030#Comment_121113030

Thats a less than a band aid.

You have to fix the issues that are pushing people to AirBnBs.

JCN12

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121112248#Comment_121112248

I very much agree.

Part of the problem is Irish parents generally having a laid back attitude toward their children's future (and their own) - prudence, careers, discipline, grades, the people they befriend, how they carry themselves, grammar etc.

With the country being more global now than even pre Covid, a significant majority of Irish are going to be left scratching their heads as to why they have been left behind by highly competitive expats in the medium/ long term, who realise the world does not owe you anything and want to seize opportunities.

No doubt the government will get the blame in the end, and the hate will be directed toward the expats who had more discipline and avoided the entitled behaviours rife here in the first instance. It's always someone else's fault.

DownByTheGarden

Nowadays people seem to need to go to college for at least a masters and probably soon a phd if they want to get a well paid decent job.

People used to be out into the workforce before before the end of the teens. Then it became normal to be in college til you are in your 20s. Now its post grads.

I notice the people I know who are in their 30s buying houses now are mostly in the trades or civil/public service. Most of my friends children who have gone to post grad and phd level now are still faffing about well into their 30s.

There are exceptions to all of those observations but they mostly hold true.

PeadarCo

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121113030#Comment_121113030

The problem is the AirBnB is just rebranded self catering holiday accommodation. It's been around for decades and has been actively promoted by Bord Failte for just as long. Airbnb has just made it more profitable. So ban Airbnb the property owners just move to another site/agency. Unless you talking about banning an entire sector of holiday accommodation. Which would be a disaster for the tourism market.

Then aside from that a lot of Airbnb accommodation is set up for tourism and owners will not move into the long term letting market. So you will have damaged the Irish Tourism industry for a marginal gain in the housing market.

For anyone talking about banning self catering accommodation(Airbnb is just a brand) how many houses will be release into the long term residential market? and will this increase be worth it given the damage a ban would do to Irish Tourism.

Claw Hammer

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121113488#Comment_121113488

Air BnB is not a rebrand of a previous type of accommodation. Airbnb couldn't work with cheap flights and the internet. Neither of those things were around until relatively recent times. Cheap air fares facilitate travel. Travellers need accommodation. The internet facilitates the search for accommo90dation . Nowadays nobody drives around looking for a hotel or B7B and knocks on doors until they get something in budget or up to standard. The result of Air BnB and increased travel is that standard housing is squeezed. -The ludicrous situation has now arisen where the homeless are put n hotels, which has made hotles too expensive for tourists and tourists are being accommodated in self catering buildings built as permanent homes.

Secxond home ownership and AirBnB have proliferated in the last 25 years. A shortage of housing has now emerged. No coincidence.

Roberto_gas

So much dry powder in the market..ppl bidding over 50-60k listed price on ok houses regularly !

arctictree

Its pretty simple why there is very little supply:

• Over regulation
• Over taxation
• Under enforcement (evictions etc)

Any fixes outside the above are just band aids

PeadarCo

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121114114#Comment_121114114

Saying Airbnb isn't a rebrand of self catering accommodation just shows a lack of knowledge of the history of self-catering in Ireland. The idea that self catering didn't exist before Airbnb is news to anyone who worked in the industry in the decades before Airbnb.

Airbnb is just the name of a company that advertises for self catering businesses. Bord Failte did the same via the discover Ireland for a long time before Airbnb/Booking.com/other agencies. There were other agencies that also advertised self catering on line or in the holiday equivalent of the yellow pages.

What Airbnb has done is 2 things.

One changed the profitability of the sector. I know of one agency that was operating in the mid to late 00's that took in the region of 2/3rds the money paid by the actual customer. Airbnb and other agencies now take less than 15%. As you'd imagine that has radically changed the profitability of the industry for the actual accommodation providers. Most businesses operating in the self catering industry were/still are small operations with limited ability to spend on IT infrastructure and advertising.

Which brings us to the second way Airbnb has changed the self catering which is branding. People are aware of the self catering accommodation in a way they were never before. What Airbnb/Booking.com etc have done is enabled self catering businesses to outsource advertising and IT and focus on their core business. Again most self catering businesses are small and don't have the resources to invest in the advertising Airbnb provides.

I'd argue one of the reasons Airbnb grew so quickly was because there was an existing industry there which was ripe for disruption. To be fair to Bord Failte they did attempt to set up the equivalent of Airbnb/Booking.com for self catering providers around 2010/11 but for various reasons it didn't succeed. So Airbnb where not the first to try and do what they have done, they have just been the most successful.

Banning Airbnb is a waste of time as accommodation providers will switch to Booking.com or other agency. What you would be far better doing is making sure planning permission is adhered to, properties are registered with Bord Failte etc.

Which brings us back to the question if you place a ban on self catering accommodation how many extra housing spaces do you expect to become available and is it worth damaging the tourist industry as a result?

Just because someone is prepared to provide short term accommodation to tourists does not mean they will provide long term tenancies. They are completely different industries.

DirectorKrennic

It's very hard to get a house if you're single. I started saving very seriously 3 years ago, got to 5k, got 10k, got to 15k. Around the 18k mark I thought I had 'half a deposit' and the banks wouldn't laugh at me. Got to 32k, was very proud of myself. Went to meet PTSB - they laughed in my face. They told me I could buy a shed with my salary. I kept saving and at the end of 2022 I had some hope with the mortgage rules going to 4x and the Shared Equity Scheme. I didn't realise legal feels were like 4-6k and that if you buy a new build you get no floors, but if you try buy a 2nd hand house/apartment the bidding wars start and you're priced out before even placing a bid. I've now saved E48k and I know I'm probably still f****ck*d as a single person. There were 2 beds going in my area for 250k and I was so close to getting one - they suddendly jumped to 275 as soon as I was close. Now somehow there're going for 285. I still think a lot of people in their 20's have no idea what's coming for them. Like if someone handed me another 20k it still wouldn't be enough. I was thinking of moving abroad but then I heard housing is an issue in the entire Western world now. Very sad. I'm not sure if I should just move to Spain or something.

realitykeeper

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121112446#Comment_121112446

But others need to buy. The reason the government pumped up prices is coz folks default if in negative equity and coz of the feel good factor. If they want to feel good, let them pay for it.

realitykeeper

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121112533#Comment_121112533

I think it was 2 million for 8 episodes. Or was it 8 million for 2 episodes. Insane however ya cut it.

Murph85

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121114666#Comment_121114666

Get Yourself on the social housing list , free housing when you get it. No management fees etc...

Flinty997

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121114933#Comment_121114933

There is an irony in vilifying home owners while championing buying a home.

Flinty997

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121114944#Comment_121114944

I think you need to let Enda go.

spaceHopper

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121114933#Comment_121114933

No they didn't the default rate was very low and some of those defaults or distressed sales were forced by the banks. The while pumping up of prices was to protect the banks balance sheets. How on earth do you think it benefits people who bought between 2008 and 2015 to have prices inflated. They had to borrow more and pay back more!

Padre_Pio

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121114994#Comment_121114994

Sure, only need to wait another 10 years. Sure the government are just GIVING them away..

realitykeeper

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121115172#Comment_121115172

Not really. The irony is the stupid who over-borrowed in the naughies got bailed out by people who were school children at the time. Let them pay their own debts, including the 200 billion Enda borrowed to bail them out.

realitykeeper

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121115184#Comment_121115184

Slimy as he be, a fish called Enda oughtn't ever be released.

realitykeeper

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121117679#Comment_121117679

300,000 were in arrears in 2009. That is off the charts. More serious defaulters were more than 3 times higher than you would expect in a normal crisis. People who pay higher prices are paying the inflation caused by the borrowed 200 billion and they are funnelling more of that 200 billion into house prices. So they are both causing and benefitting from house inflation. All the more reason to tax the hell out of them.

tabby aspreme

A lot of Airbnb properties are just 1 or 2 room's, converted garage's etc, banning Airbnb will solve nothing.

If inward migration to Ireland continues at its current level we will have a housing crisis for a long time to come, there is no chance of 50-60000 house completions per year being a reality

Flinty997

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121120351#Comment_121120351

Which children where giving out 200 billion loans. That's a new one.

If they are that good they shouldn't need any help getting housing in 2023.

Yellow_Fern

I have been an Airbnb host for about six months. I just put up a spare room in a city. All of my guests are workers or exchange students. Airbnb is very important for people who are not tourists. So seeing it as a tourist vs locals is quite inaccurate.

spaceHopper

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121120391#Comment_121120391

300K that's just pure bull **** Q3 2009 18K, Q2 2011 40K

https://www.oireachtas.ie/en/debates/debate/dail/2009-11-03/24/

https://www.theguardian.com/business/ireland-business-blog-with-lisa-ocarroll/2011/aug/29/ireland-mortgage-arrears-rise-sharply

JCN12

Wrong thread. 🙂

Cal4567

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121109163#Comment_121109163

No. It actually really developed just post 2nd world war. The last thing government wanted local authorities to do was to keep hold of liabilities such as properties. Get them sold off to the tenants and divest themselves of any further responsibility for them, promoting home ownership as the goal, the norm. Housing academics such as Michelle Norris and Lorcan Sirr have written considerably on this.

Cal4567

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121114666#Comment_121114666

Have you considered northern Ireland or Scotland. Jobs are there, plus affordable property prices compared to the Greater Dublin area. Culturally, so similar to here that you wouldn't notice.

Flinty997

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121124510#Comment_121124510

1973 came up when I looked it up. I took that to mean that's when national purchase schemes were created Vs local arrangements with individual councils.

"...Tenants of council houses have been able to buy their homes from individual local authorities since the 1930s, and a scheme for the sale of council houses was introduced in 1973...."

https://www.irishtimes.com/news/social-affairs/a-century-of-housing-how-the-state-built-ireland-s-homes-1.3785939

."...Between 1990 and 2016, some 43 per cent of the 82,869 council houses built during that period were sold to tenants, often with a discount of up to 60 per cent on the market value, writes the report.

Two-thirds of all council housing is now privately owned after being bought through the tenant-purchase scheme, which has been in place since the 1930s..."

https://www.irishtimes.com/news/social-affairs/tenant-purchase-scheme-must-end-to-meet-social-housing-demands-1.3553443

In itself nothing wrong with it. Just when they stopped building replacement stock it becomes an issue.

Cal4567

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121124594#Comment_121124594

It's something government is going to have to make a decision on. Like the state pension, the sell of local authority stock is not sustainable in the long term. Very little to no media commentary on it, something that used to be called 'a political hot potato'.

RichardAnd

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121114666#Comment_121114666

I bought a house a single man (36). I originally got mortgage approval back in 2017 for about 150k when I had about 70k in savings. I could (and SHOULD) have bought an apartment there an then, but bad advice from my family and my own inhibitions about taking on debt stayed my hand. Five years of rampant money printing, lockdowns, dancing nurses and general societal insanity later, I finally bought a 300k house that I don’t really like. The worst thing about it all was that I had no one to help me, and I’m not talking about finance. Simply having a partner to bounce ideas off would, I assume, have been an enormous help. 

I know exactly how you feel regarding getting outbid constantly.  I looked for a place through the lockdowns, and I saw many properties shoot way, way over the asking. The process is, put simply, maddening. It saddens me to say it, but I have a considerably lower opinion of humanity now than I had at the beginning of the process. If I ever sell a house, I have promised myself that I will not engage in the disgusting behaviour that I saw. I don’t like to say it, and it is a terrible generalisation, but I feel a genuine sense of resentment towards older generations at times as it would seem that they utterly failed to watch the shop for their children and grand-children. 

I agree that younger people coming up are looking at a bleak situation.  The West in general is in terminal decline. From mass immigration, lunatic politicians to insane ideology, we have it all in spades. I really don’t know what will happen, but I don’t see things improving without a major black swan event. 

I hope things work out for you.  

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121124594#Comment_121124594

If they're being sold off at discounts of up to 60% it's hardly surprising they don't get replaced. :-)

Unfortunately I think we are at a transition phase. We have made property a very valuable commodity for investment funds, building to sell only provides a once off payment for these investments funds while building units to rent ensures that they have a steady income over 70 years or more while retaining ownership of a very valuable asset. Home ownership gives people security when they hit retirement, but due to the expense of purchasing a property people need to shift their goal from home ownership and need to get more comfortable with lifelong renting. Better controls are needed to ensure that renting is affordable. Look at any other service they have all gone essentially to a rent style service e.g. PCP car for cars, gamepass, streaming services etc

Social housing in its current form needs to be reformed we can't keep putting the high burden of providing social housing on those who now cant afford to purchase homes for themselves. The state should only provide high density low cost accommodation to those who cant currently provide for themselves.