Irish Property Market 2020 Part 2

Pelezico

awec wrote: »

How can a study where the council went to vacant properties with the explicit goal of checking if they were really vacant be less reliable than using unreturned census forms?

They went to a few properties and extrapolated the numbers. Fact

PropQueries

awec wrote: »

How can a study where the council went to vacant properties with the explicit goal of checking if they were really vacant be less reliable than using unreturned census forms?

They went there about a year later. Entirely possible they were occupied at that stage.

awec

Pelezico wrote: »

They went to a few properties and extrapolated the numbers. Fact

Yes.. and this is still more reliable than using unreturned census forms.

awec

PropQueries wrote: »

They went there about a year later. Entirely possible they were occupied at that stage.

Or they could have been occupied all along. Alas, here-in lies the problem, the data is poor.

All the census forms prove, is that without any shadow of a doubt there was no census data returned for that property. That is it.

Finglas CoCo followed up on it, and found that the data was incredibly unreliable within their council area. Maybe other councils would have fared better. However, all we know for certain:

1. They used unreturned census data to try and determine vacancy
2. The one council that actually followed up on this found the data to be rubbish.

hometruths

awec wrote: »

Yes.. and this is still more reliable than using unreturned census forms.

Are you saying think the vacancies on the census simply represent the number of unreturned forms?

Marius34

PropQueries wrote: »

They went there about a year later. Entirely possible they were occupied at that stage.

Right, we have a real problem here? Census find hundreds of thousands of vacant homes, and they keep getting occupied.
How to solve vacancy problem?

hometruths

awec wrote: »

How can a study where the council went to vacant properties with the explicit goal of checking if they were really vacant be less reliable than using unreturned census forms?

I mean if I want to check if my neighbour is at home, I can either:

1. Use the fact that their car isn't there to declare that they are not home
2. Go and actually ring the doorbell and see if they answer

I think everyone would agree that #2 is more reliable.

I wouldn't be too sure Fingal Co Co actually ring the doorbell. According to them:

It should be noted that unoccupied and boarded dwellings are not necessarily an indication of vacant possession.

awec

schmittel wrote: »

Are you saying think the vacancies on the census simply represent the number of unreturned forms?

Of course it's not that simple. I am sure if they saw you through the window watching the telly ignoring the doorbell they won't mark it as vacant. However it was still a fairly rudimentary process.

The facts are, that the only known organisation that actually followed up on the data presented found the data to be rubbish.

The number of organisations that followed up and found merit in the numbers was zero.

Why some people have such a hard time accepting this is quite frankly bizarre. We are supposed to accept that this census data was accurate when the only test of the data found it to be crap.

hometruths

awec wrote: »

Or they could have been occupied all along. Alas, here-in lies the problem, the data is poor.

All the census forms prove, is that without any shadow of a doubt there was no census data returned for that property. That is it.

Finglas CoCo followed up on it, and found that the data was incredibly unreliable within their council area. Maybe other councils would have fared better. However, all we know for certain:

1. They used unreturned census data to try and determine vacancy
2. The one council that actually followed up on this found the data to be rubbish.

Do you have a source for either point 1 or 2, or is this just hearsay?

PropQueries

Marius34 wrote: »

Right, we have a real problem here? Census find hundreds of thousands of vacant homes, and they keep getting occupied.
How to solve vacancy problem?

Easy to solve the vacancy problem. Just slap a 50% of market rent tax on the vacant properties that the funds own. The international funds purchased c. €200 billion worth of property and business loans between 2012 and 2016.

If it only applied to investors who owned more than e.g. five vacant properties, that would solve the problem within a couple of months without impacting on the mom and pop type of investor. It would probably work assuming they also removed all and any potential loopholes to such a scheme.

hometruths

awec wrote: »

Of course it's not that simple. I am sure if they saw you through the window watching the telly ignoring the doorbell they won't mark it as vacant. However it was still a fairly rudimentary process.

The facts are, that the only known organisation that actually followed up on the data presented found the data to be rubbish.

The number of organisations that followed up and found merit in the numbers was zero.

Why some people have such a hard time accepting this is quite frankly bizarre. We are supposed to accept that this census data was accurate when the only test of the data found it to be crap.

Interesting you used the telly example. Did you read the rest of it?

CSO reported 183,312 vacant houses and apartments in Census 2016. How did CSO get this figure?

Some 4,700 census enumerators visited over 2 million homes across Ireland in the weeks around Census Night, April 24th 2016. These visits involved making contact with members of the public to deliver and collect census forms. In some cases, despite repeated visits by the enumerator, the door remained unanswered. In these situations, the enumerator made an assessment based on CSO vacancy rules and training. This resulted in some of the homes being marked as vacant.

What were the rules that made enumerators determine that the homes were vacant?

Census enumerators adhered to detailed procedures that have been developed by CSO in consultation with key experts across several censuses. As part of these procedures, enumerators varied the times of the day and days of the week they called to homes in order to make contact with householders. For example, when an enumerator called to a home during the day and failed to make contact, they dropped off their contact telephone number on a calling card. The subsequent visits were at different times such as evenings and weekends.

Enumerators also looked for signs of vacancy such as post and junk mail building up, no lights on at night time, no cars in driveways, overgrown gardens and no windows open. If they observed any signs of occupancy, they could not record the home as vacant. They also checked with neighbours to enquire about the homes where they could not make contact. If neighbours told them that there were people living in these homes, the enumerator could not record them as vacant.

Would it not be easier for an enumerator to record a home as vacant rather than calling back to try to make contact?

All of the work undertaken as part of the census by enumerators is closely scrutinised by their field managers and is subject to detailed quality assurance procedures. This is designed to ensure that enumerators record the correct details about every home in their area, including whether they are vacant or occupied.

The enumerators are paid based on how successful they were in collecting completed census forms from members of the public. In 2016, they were paid €3.70 for every completed census form they collected. They were only paid €1.10 for each vacant home in their area. They had on average 430 homes in their areas so enumerators were strongly incentivised to persist in attempting to make contact with householders.

Marius34

PropQueries wrote: »

Easy to solve the vacancy problem. Just slap a 50% of market rent tax on the vacant properties that the funds own. The international funds purchased c. €200 billion worth of property and business loans between 2012 and 2016.

If it only applied to investors who owned more than e.g. five vacant properties, that would solve the problem within a couple of months without impacting on the mom and pop type of investor. It would probably work assuming they also removed all and any potential loopholes to such a scheme.

Ok, let say we do it. What difference that would make to the Census vacancy? We still will run around, what todo with houndreds of thousands of "vacant" properties, that's getting occupied.

hometruths

awec wrote: »

Why some people have such a hard time accepting this is quite frankly bizarre. We are supposed to accept that this census data was accurate when the only test of the data found it to be crap.

Strangely I feel the same in reverse. I find frankly bizarre that people have a hard time accepting that the CSO's data is more reliable than Fingal Co Co.

Particularly when if you actual take a close look at what Fingal Co Co did, it was amateur night compared to the CSO.

And what I find even more bizarre is a lot of the same posters who are convinced the CSO deal in crap data, are not shy about quoting their data to justify the fact we need to build 30k homes a year for a decade.

Frankly bizarre indeed.

PropQueries

Marius34 wrote: »

Ok, let say we do it. What difference that would make to the Census vacancy? We still will run around, what todo with houndreds of thousands of "vacant" properties, that's getting occupied.

It would work because the international investment funds probably own a significant percentage of the vacant properties in Ireland. They purchased €200 billion of property and business loans between 2012 and 2016.

€200 billion might not be considered much in the USA or UK, but in a small country like Ireland, it's a significant amount of property they probably own and much of it may be vacant. We would only find out how much if such a tax (without loopholes) was introduced as international funds still like to stay on the right side of the law.

Yes, I used 'maybe' as those purchases made between 2012 and 2016 are still shrouded in secrecy.

Just to add: On top of that they also purchased €90 billion in distressed mortgages, so that €200 billion in property and business loans is most likely comprised primarily of investment properties, land banks and similar.

Pelezico

schmittel wrote: »

Strangely I feel the same in reverse. I find frankly bizarre that people have a hard time accepting that the CSO's data is more reliable than Fingal Co Co.

Particularly when if you actual take a close look at what Fingal Co Co did, it was amateur night compared to the CSO.

And what I find even more bizarre is a lot of the same posters who are convinced the CSO deal in crap data, are not shy about quoting their data to justify the fact we need to build 30k homes a year for a decade.

Frankly bizarre indeed.

The consequence of the great financial crisis is monetary easing and cheap money.

It is or has been relatively cheap to leave property vacant.

We now have airbnb collapse and lower migration. We are still building property say 18000 units this year.

Where is the crisis?

Marius34

PropQueries wrote: »

It would work because the international investment funds probably own a significant percentage of the vacant properties in Ireland. They purchased €200 billion of property and business loans between 2012 and 2016.

€200 billion might not be considered much in the USA or UK, but in a small country like Ireland, it's a significant amount of property they probably own and much of it may be vacant. We would only find out how much if such a tax (without loopholes) was introduced as international funds still like to stay on the right side of the law.

Yes, I used 'maybe' as those purchases made between 2012 and 2016 are still shrouded in secrecy.

1) If that would be a case, it made a great job, as it appears vacancy has reduced between 2011 and 2016
2) This has nothing todo with reality, made up story, as you would not find out that there are tens of thousands of vacant properties owned by funds. If that would be a case Sinn Fein, would work really really hard to prove it.

thefridge2006

This so called jump in asking price is simple to explain....

1) there was obviously pent up demand that grew while everyone was in lockdown.
2) the EA's started seeing the pent up demand ringing up and enquiring about properties ie, higher demand than usual when it was realistically (6 months demand pushed into 1 month)
3) EA's job is to sell house at the best price that they can get, they very cleverly used this big demand to hype to push up asking prices...(and the media jumped on board as it also benefited them also)
4)some people read the articles and probably bought as fast as they could as they sh1t themselves.

this hype is all very temporary. When the dust settles, there will be huge falls

hometruths

PropQueries wrote: »

They went there about a year later. Entirely possible they were occupied at that stage.

They didn’t go to the same properties, contrary to what some on here would have you believe.

PropQueries

Pelezico wrote: »

The consequence of the great financial crisis is monetary easing and cheap money.

It is or has been relatively cheap to leave property vacant.

We now have airbnb collapse and lower migration. We are still building property say 18000 units this year.

Where is the crisis?

You're 100% right. Until there's an opportunity cost to holding those vacant properties (i.e. a vacant property tax), the incentive isn't there. But I believe they would still like to exit sooner rather than later. It will be their decision on when to exit that will decide the future direction of the Irish property market.

But they're there and I would be very reluctant to invest in a sector of the economy with such a Gorilla that can move the market on a whim.

PropQueries

thefridge2006 wrote: »

This so called jump in asking price is simple to explain....

1) there was obviously pent up demand that grew while everyone was in lockdown.
2) the EA's started seeing the pent up demand ringing up and enquiring about properties ie, higher demand than usual when it was realistically (6 months demand pushed into 1 month)
3) EA's job is to sell house at the best price that they can get, they very cleverly used this big demand to hype to push up asking prices...(and the media jumped on board as it also benefited them also)
4)some people read the articles and probably bought as fast as they could as they sh1t themselves.

this hype is all very temporary. When the dust settles, there will be huge falls

And still transactions were probably down c. 40% in Q3 2020 compared to Q3 2019.

Ortiz

PropQueries wrote: »

And still transactions were probably down c. 40% in Q3 2020 compared to Q3 2019.

Basically as you've both said, high demand + low supply = prices rising

tobsey

PropQueries wrote: »

And still transactions were probably down c. 40% in Q3 2020 compared to Q3 2019.

Are prices down though? If demand goes down, there's every chance supply will go down because sellers won't see value. It's not like last time when we were building 70k units a year and had massive over supply.

hometruths

Pelezico wrote: »

The consequence of the great financial crisis is monetary easing and cheap money.

It is or has been relatively cheap to leave property vacant.

We now have airbnb collapse and lower migration. We are still building property say 18000 units this year.

Where is the crisis?

I agree cheap money (combined with various govt policies) means it is more attractive for some property owners to leave houses vacant.

What grinds my gears is we cannot get around to discussing how we might be able to reduce the number of vacancies because so many people say, “that’s nonsense, there are no vacancies, the CSO doesn’t know its arse from its elbow, Fingal Co Co told me so”

Meanwhile these are often the same people most likely to wail about a shortage!

PropQueries

Marius34 wrote: »

1) If that would be a case, it made a great job, as it appears vacancy has reduced between 2011 and 2016
2) This has nothing todo with reality, made up story, as you would not find out that there are tens of thousands of vacant properties owned by funds. If that would be a case Sinn Fein, would work really really hard to prove it.

They purchased €200 billion of property and business loans between 2012 and 2016. To put that figure into perspective, Ireland's GNP was €260 billion in 2019.

They're a massive influence on the property market in Ireland and I'm amazed that outside of one documentary on RTE in 2017, the Irish media haven't appeared to look into this at all.

Pelezico

schmittel wrote: »

I agree cheap money (combined with various govt policies) means it is more attractive for some property owners to leave houses vacant.

What grinds my gears is we cannot get around to discussing how we might be able to reduce the number of vacancies because so many people say, “that’s nonsense, there are no vacancies, the CSO doesn’t know its arse from its elbow, Fingal Co Co told me so”

Meanwhile these are often the same people most likely to wail about a shortage!

Even Uncle Leo dismissed the CSO figures. The clerical officer who did a desktop exercise was correct.

Fingal did not like the numbers and created what in essence is fake news.

Then we get posters here advising you to inform.yourself by reading the fake news....because that is what it is ..fake.

Marius34

PropQueries wrote: »

They purchased €200 billion of property and business loans between 2012 and 2016. To put that figure into perspective, Ireland's GNP was €260 billion in 2019.

They're a massive influence on the property market in Ireland and I'm amazed that outside of one documentary on RTE in 2017, the Irish media haven't appeared to look into this at all.

That could be right, if there is that kind of information. I'm not arguing, about who purchase what.
But massive vacancy of those properties are clearly made up story by you, that you won't find that kind of information.

hometruths

Pelezico wrote: »

Even Uncle Leo dismissed the CSO figures. The clerical officer who did a desktop exercise was correct.

Fingal did not like the numbers and created what in essence is fake news.

Then we get posters here advising you to inform.yourself by reading the fake news....because that is what it is ..fake.

Leo didn’t like the figures either; with homeless people living in hotels and rents close to bursting, from his point of view it was not ideal for the CSO to be saying there are 180,000 vacant properties in the country.

PropQueries

Marius34 wrote: »

That could be right, if there is that kind of information. I'm not arguing, about who purchase what.
But massive vacancy of those properties are clearly made up story by you, that you won't find that kind of information.

As I already said:

"We would only find out how much if such a tax (without loopholes) was introduced as international funds still like to stay on the right side of the law.

Yes, I used 'maybe' as those purchases made between 2012 and 2016 are still shrouded in secrecy."

fliball123

tobsey wrote: »

Are prices down though? If demand goes down, there's every chance supply will go down because sellers won't see value. It's not like last time when we were building 70k units a year and had massive over supply.

I have been saying this to the lads on here since the beginning of the lockdown and kept getting laughed at every time I suggested that if the supply side keeps dwindling and it has, it now has over 3k less properties on it now then it did in January or to put it in simple terms about 15% less stock available for sale than at the start of the year (going on whats up on myhome) Yet they still dont understand supply vs demand = price I have accepted that demand may come down but it will have to keep pace with the supply side to see any drops in price. 9/10 months on and still no price drop. Yet schmittle will come on and with no proof say prices are dropping even do both CSO and PPR confirms he is full of hot air.

Hubertj

schmittel wrote: »

Leo didn’t like the figures either; with homeless people living in hotels and rents close to bursting, from his point of view it was not ideal for the CSO to be saying there are 180,000 vacant properties in the country.

I'm very surprised that someone with too much time on their hands hasn't investigated this. We all know of vacant units in the ovepriced developments in Grand Canal and Ballsbridge. So even if CSO is way off for various reasons, lets say 100k "Vacant units". It must be pretty difficult to hide that many. Why hasn't some PBP clown done a Sherlock on it?