Dublin - Significant reduction in rents coming?

Ozark707

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117704341#Comment_117704341

You probably just need one night a week so it might be best to look at B&B's.

Amadan Dubh

Yeah, I mean honestly you wouldn't need a big budget like 70 quid for a night would be doable midweek in a hotel. Possibly even less for a shared place on Airbnb or in a guesthouse. You could always email a reaonsbly priced guesthouse or hotel and try to lock in a night a week for 3 months at a time.

mairtmairt

Ya that’s what I’m def going to do for example commute up the Wednesday morn straight work stay night the home after work Thursday!! Should get a hotel Travel lodge etc midweek should be no dearer then 70/80

Dav010

https://m.independent.ie/business/commercial-property/rental-income-increases-at-irelands-largest-private-landlord-40724474.html

Can’t get much more professional than that, great news for those who wanted small/amateur landlords out of the market.

On a more serious not, astonishingly high occupancy and collection percentages.

Ozark707

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117713726#Comment_117713726

"Ires also entered into a 25-year social housing lease for 128 units at Hampton Wood that is expected to close this month"

(can't seem to be able to selectively quote from article since the upgrade???)

....I can imagine that deal will be followed up by a few others like it given how lucrative they are.

Amadan Dubh

i-Res REIT, like the other REITs, need occupancy as they have shareholders requiring dividends. It is not in their interest to leave properties vacant like with the U.S. vultures such as Greystar, Kennedy Wilson, Round Hill Capital etc. i-RES REIT actually target the more reasonable rent range consequently (relatively speaking of course) which is why they have 98% occupancy.

https://www.irishtimes.com/business/commercial-property/mixed-fortunes-for-landlord-giants-1.4641024

Capital Dock only 56% occupied 3 years after completion is a disgrace and highlights what little value Kennedy Wilson bring to the Irish property market, they are nothing but vultures.

DubCount

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117718673#Comment_117718673

Its a free country. We dont get to pick and choose who owns property. If Kennedy Wilson want to invest in Irish residential property, then they should be free to do so. We can add in all kinds of incentives or punishments for vacant property, but unintended consequences. Make building and renting property easier and less expensive, and we wont be worrying about every vacant apartment.

Flinty997

I think this is from 2019... Might be later. I may also have read this wrong. Hard to post here and read that on the mobile. So I'm open to correction.

"...Less than 0.3% of HAP landlords had more than 10 properties..."

https://publicpolicy.ie/papers/trends-in-social-housing-supports-housing-assistance-payment-hap/

So keep that in mind when looking at these kinda reports of profitability.

Jmc25

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117718673#Comment_117718673

The Capital Dock figures are an absolute indictment of the current situation and frankly shouldn't be allowed happen. There would be broad, almost unanimous, public support for Government measures to prevent this type of absolute nonsense.

Ozark707

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117719795#Comment_117719795

Some updates re Capital Dock

"Kennedy Wilson was first out on Wednesday night. The US investment group had 2,067 units generating revenue here at the end of June. The results show that its occupancy rate declined by 4.6 percentage points to 92.2 per cent for the first six months of the year, while its revenue in the period fell by 4 per cent to $13.7 million (€11.5 million using its own exchange rate). The average rent was just over $1,100.

Kennedy Wilson’s results also state that Capital Dock, the tallest residential block in Dublin with 190 high-end apartments, was just 56 per cent let, three years after construction was completed on the 4.8 acre site. The pandemic and the mass migration of office workers from the city centre won’t have helped."

https://www.irishtimes.com/business/commercial-property/mixed-fortunes-for-landlord-giants-1.4641024

mrslancaster

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117722630#Comment_117722630

Maybe its only 56% occupancy because a 1bed apartment is 3k pm & a 2bed is 4k. Very high rents that a lot of people simply couldn't afford.

https://www.daft.ie/property-for-rent/grand-canal-dock-dublin/apartments

Ozark707

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117725040#Comment_117725040

I have seen someone trying to let a room there on a FB group I am a member of....not much luck so far....of course in the ad there is only mention of the views etc and not the price :)

Amadan Dubh

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117699971#Comment_117699971

Update on Daft a few weeks later; 1,251 listings on Daft for Dublin to rent and 1,116 shared listings. There'll be no properties to rent in Dublin in 2 months if something drastic does not happen. Big companies will need to hit pause on asking workers to return to Dublin to attend the office and new hires will be frozen unless we see the catastrophic trend in the rental market dramatically reversed.

I read today that tik tok wants to hire 5,000 people in Dublin and that the Facebook campus for sale will enable Facebook to hire even more people in Dublin - these companies obviously haven't gotten the memo that this won't be possible as the workers won't have anywhere to live! The whole situation feels so unsustainable and volatile, I don't know what is going to happen.

Dav010

There are currently 2 million people living in GDA. Bound to be a few people among them who will take jobs in the companies you mention, or will they only be hiring people from outside Dublin?

Amadan Dubh

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117861664#Comment_117861664

These are new jobs and the Big Tech companies predominantly hire from abroad. These employees will have to be shipped in to fill the roles. That is how it has been for Google, Facebook etc the last 10 years.

As I said, 500 less rentals in the last month and people haven't even returned to the office yet. We have barely over 1000 rentals now available in Dublin. Something is going to have to give; likely we will see excellent wage growth for the next few months at least but that probably isn't sustainable as the post-reopening boom will die down while wages won't fall as quickly.

The IDA has already warned of the risk posed by the ability of the economy to handle further expansion and I think this risk factor is certainly more prominent at the moment.

If I was in government I would be pumping money into remote working hubs, supports for businesses and hard coded laws for employees to continue to WFH as it would be a quick and easy way to get some of the froth out of the rental market. Of course, the lobbyists might not be happy with a government aggressively pursuing a WFH policy.

Dav010

With all due respect, I would be confident tech companies are aware of the challenges in the rental market, and have allowed for them. It is hardly a secret after all.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117861778#Comment_117861778

Agreed. I can verify that housing costs for employees is very high in managements considerations on whether to come to and expand in Dublin. I have been party to those conversations in a large data / market intelligence firm with a Dublin office. However, the response has been (to date) to pay staff a Dublin uplift over the international pay scale, to specifically cover accommodations costs. That obviously exacerbates the problem for everyone else

Ray Palmer

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117861722#Comment_117861722

Do you have the breakdown of how many people these tech companies brought to the country directly. I know Irish people working in the companies you mentioned. The vast majority of IT staff are Irish but I reckon it is 20% foreign nationals with about 5% outside the EU. It is just the observations I made working as a contractor in multiple companies but if you have something more solid that would be interesting

Amadan Dubh

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117862066#Comment_117862066

Nothing more solid, just anecdotal from people in PayPal, Google, Indeed, Airbnb, Smartbox and Facebook.

Amadan Dubh

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117861778#Comment_117861778

Yes, fair enough. I see them building in the increased housing costs for employees by way of allocating bigger salaries and embracing WFH for the staff. But the rental squeeze we are seeing right now is unprecedented in recent times from my following of Daft rentals for the last few years. 1,700 to 1,200 in 4 weeks; it is genuinely looking like there will be next to nothing to rent before Christmas. Can salaries just keep increasing 10% per year to match with the soaring cost if living in Ireland?

Dav010

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117862326#Comment_117862326

If a significant proportion of employees are already GDA residents, perhaps the situation is not quite as dire as you are making it out to be.

Amadan Dubh

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117862493#Comment_117862493

That's the assumption, for sure, in order to claim the situation is not at breaking point.

jimmycrackcorm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117719795#Comment_117719795

That's easier said than done. Coming up with such measures is going to be very difficult to copper-fasten so that they can't be escaped via loopholes and don't have negative effects on constitutional property rights. I see plenty of commentary on social media about this yet not a single actual workable suggestion about how it can be achieved realistically.

Ray Palmer

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117862301#Comment_117862301

so it isn't even your own experience but others telling you. They do need native speakers for lots of operations but they don't bring them over they were here already.

Dav010

Didn’t Leo say as much a couple of months ago? Legislating in a meaningful way to tax unoccupied properties would be nigh on impossible due to the number of exemptions that would have to be included.

Blut2

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117862066#Comment_117862066

You're off by quite a bit there - "Google has said in the past that 70% of [their] jobs in Dublin are held by foreign nationals " --

http://www.finfacts.ie/Irish_finance_news/articleDetail.php?Does-Google-Ireland-have-6-000-employees-in-Ireland-649

Its a similar percentage in most of the very big tech MNCs. I've worked in a couple of them where I'd say it was at absolute most 20% Irish. They all import absolutely huge numbers of EU workers in their 20s who speak multiple languages in particular.

JimmyVik

My company has rented a whole lot of apartments in the city center. Capital dock included, from property companies and indeed their own staff.

Those apartments will then be sublet to employees coming back to Dublin or new employees coming from abroad.

They are up to about 20 im told and still thats not enough. They are looking for more.

Regular emails going out to staff asking if they have an apartment or house they want to rent to them.

This whole situation is just crazy.

They have even emailed us to say that all staff are expected back in the office in Dublin in November (thats the newest date theyve settled on) and its up to them to arrange their accommodation before then, but anyone desperatly stuck can have a room in one of the apartments /houses, until they find a place of their own.

Blut2

Even smaller firms are having to do that now. My partner works for a smaller/mid-size tech company that only has 200 odd staff. They purchased a 5bedroom house near the office that they offer a room in for 6 months to new junior hires if they need to move to Dublin when starting work in the company.

Its just to shield the new hires from the horrors of the Dublin rental market for the first while at least. I presume after 6 months they think the new hires will have a social network so will find it easier to find a place to rent (and will have more commitment to being in Dublin by that stage...).

It is bananas though that companies are having to do this sort of thing.

awec

In fairness businesses providing accommodation for relocations is nothing new and has always happened, though not usually for as long as 6 months.

JimmyVik

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117863872#Comment_117863872

Its new for my company for sure.

And they are going in in a big way too.

They are nearly as bad as the REITS :)