Irish Property Market chat II - *read mod note post #1 before posting*

SummerK

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119454734#Comment_119454734

Completely agree but I think they (including councils) can do more considering there is massive demand. It appears to be all about profit as has always been.

CorkRed93

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119455654#Comment_119455654

what will local authorities do? most of them arent capable of collecting derelict site levies not mind build a shot a houses at "affordable" prices given current squeeze on labor and material price increases.

bobbysands81

Double post, sorry, can’t see how to delete.

bobbysands81

Double post, sorry, can’t see how to delete

bobbysands81

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119455085#Comment_119455085

No it doesn’t, but it helps to keep these homes available for people to rent rather than being sold off and thus decreasing the amount of units for rent this pushing rental prices up.

bobbysands81

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119454082#Comment_119454082

Investors are all over the market, it’s the exit of small landlords and accidental landlords that is also helping to kill the rental market. 

This is too little too late though, the landlords deserting the market are the ones who never wanted to be landlords in the first place with absolutely punitive taxes on rental income (that wasn’t even covering their mortgage). These landlords won’t be back.

Bass Reeves

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119455283#Comment_119455283

Incorrect. There was an old farmhouse on the farm I did it up between 2014-2017. I have it rented. It would not be available or fit for occupation except for me. Many LL buy old houses and get them bought back to a habitable standard. Many old bedsits have been refurbished by LL. They provide a service.

My son is working in Dublin. He has no intention or interest in buying a house in the short term. The first house he was in the owner gave them notice to vacate in May as he was selling it. They have since found another house to rent but this is happening wholesale accross the country

bobbysands81

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119456446#Comment_119456446

The Repair and Lease Scheme does exactly this.

https://www.citizensinformation.ie/en/housing/housing_grants_and_schemes/repair_and_leasing_scheme.html

Bass Reeves

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119455452#Comment_119455452

It nothing about artificially pushing up prices. There is a substantial amount of housing vacant for one reason or another. Some LL have left there properties empty in RPZ because the rent is way below market rents and it makes sense to take a two year hit so you can reset the clock.

People who might have considered short term letting are scared sh!tless because of all the new legislation. There are houses where people may have moved in with children, people with relative's in nursing homes and property going through or gone through probate.

If you are going abroad for a while it probably gone to the stage where it's too risky to consider renting. There is a thread on this forum where people cannot get back possession of there house after giving notice in April. They will have to restart the process with the RTB and will be lucky if they get possession in 12+ months

Rental has turned into a sh!tshow for the person who wants to only rent short-term 1-2 years

Bass Reeves

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119456461#Comment_119456461

My house is in a farm yard. I cannot and will not cede control of it for H&S reasons. The R&L scheme would not have been appropriate as the Council costing would have been crazy expensive. Very few take this up unless the house is in fairly good condition. We did some of the work on the refurbishmend ourselves.

aligator_am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119455226#Comment_119455226

IMO, the insane policies in place that make it incredibly difficult to turf out problem tenants/people that won't pay is the main reason why non-Irish banks have left the market here. I think it's some doff of the cap to the Land League from back in the day or some similar bolloxollogy. Either way, it's a massive problem.

Honestly, I don't blame you for not renting out your place again, considering the potential wrangling you'd have to face if you encounter a problem tenant.

I think if the laws were changed to allow eviction for non payment of rent after a grace period of maybe a month or two then it would encourage more home owners to rent property. If they knew they had copperfastened rules in place, that would actually be enforced, then I think more potential landlords would be willing to roll the dice on it.

drogon.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119456489#Comment_119456489

I mean, come on. There are 35K houses empty at the moment with the pretence they will be on the rental market soon. Surely by limiting the supply of these houses not being in the market, it is going to artificially push up prices. It is called scarcity principal.

If you are a REIT, your aim is to make as much money as possible. Rather than providing homes for people. I am sure they will not want you thinking that of them, but at the end of the day they are investors with shareholders etc, and all they want to see is price of their property going up, and rental incoming rising.

Bass Reeves

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119456636#Comment_119456636

The REITs hardly own 35k housing units between them. The top ten owned 17k at the start of the year.

https://m.independent.ie/irish-news/revealed-ten-biggest-landlords-now-own-17000-homes-41339550.html

You are getting carried away with conspiracy theories. I was talking to an enumerator who worked in the last census. He had a mixture of rural and Urban which was part of a small town. Of 400 odd houses/ apartments he haf to enumerate, about 70 were vacant. I am trying to remember the figures he gave but 4-6 were abandoned farmhouses one if which was habitable. 6-8 were apartments/ flats of which owners were doing up half of them. 20 ish were rental houses of these 4 were LA between let's, 2-3 were boarded up by LA, 4-6 were for sale by LL, two houses awaiting refurbishmend LL other sux were between let's. 15 ish were where owners were deceased from 6 months to some as long as five years they were in caring conditions of repair. 6 ish were where people were in nursing homes. 2-4 were gone to live with relative's. There was 5-6 houses for sale. There was two where inheritors had decided to use them as holiday homes. There was 3-4 where owners were abroad a lot.

There is no conspiracy just people unwilling to rent properties because of the loss of the control of the property

Get Real

Just ten years ago Deutsche Bank did a study which claimed we wouldn't be able to fill our housing stock for 43 years.

https://m.independent.ie/business/irish/itll-take-us-43-years-to-fill-all-empty-houses-26863864.html

"The report says that if current population trends are sustained, housing oversupply will take 43 years to clear (this excludes holiday homes from unoccupied houses in the calculations)

I know the report is questionable in terms of what for them defined a vacant house as opposed to our own CSO definition. They've some areas of Dublin with a 20-25% vacancy rate.

Nonetheless, such a report from an investment bank would have delayed some from getting building kickstarted again I'm sure.

From a 43 year housing glut to a housing shortage, in 10 years.

a ridiculous tax rate and an inability to evict bad tenants. It’s no wonder that so many of us would rather have our places sitting empty for periods, even pay a vacant property tax, rather than rent them. It’s a farcical situation.

Bass Reeves

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119456768#Comment_119456768

Any vacancy tax will be ineffective just like the vacant site tax. There will be many loopholes. At the end of the day if you can give a PPS number for a house it will probably mean it's occupied

drogon.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119456736#Comment_119456736

Lol there is no conspiracy theory.

Also I am not saying all 35K are owned by REIT, but by limiting supply of rental properties by leaving them empty it certainly will push up rent prices, be it private LL or retail investors.

There is also a separate section in the CSO figures for abandoned farm house, renovation, and deceased owner. So these are separate from the 35K empty houses that are to be rented out.

Bass Reeves

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119456823#Comment_119456823

All I gave you was an a fairly rough analysis of what houses he said were vacant and why. The figures are startling. There is no RPZ in around the area he was involved in. If we can encourage people to rent houses we can stabilize the rent increases, may e even reduce them back down.

One other thing he remarked was the amount of commercial buildings that are vacant overhead, a lot of these are no longer listed as accommodation in the census. There was an amount of vacant pubs and shop fronts as well.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119454301#Comment_119454301

Ireland is richer than it ever was in the past. Why can we not replicate the home ownership rates of even just 20 years ago? This should be easier than it ever was in the past by changing policies back towards home ownership.

Are we richer or are we poorer in real terms ?

Which is it

Villa05

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119456768#Comment_119456768

Agree on rental tax and eviction, but why keep a house you don't use. Are homes the new deposit account?

Is there nobody you can offer the house too who could pay a token rent in cash and maintain the property for you

Its twilight zone stuff

drogon.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119456838#Comment_119456838

All your giving is an analysis based on a conversation you had with an enumerator. Rather than looking at the facts of the CSO figures, which clearly has empty farm house, property being renovated, people deceased all in separate category. Then claiming I believe in conspiracy theory.

The simple fact is, if you are a LL or REIT you want to maximise profit and would rather let a property be empty than let it out for lower money. It is a human nature. But this will only work when the economy is doing well. If and when we eventually have a recession, do you think people will be able to afford €2k + rent ? Either way interesting times ahead.

Bass Reeves

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119457178#Comment_119457178

There is another thread on this forum where a house owner going abroad let the house to a friend. They notified the friend that they were returning in April. The friend stopped paying rent. They have as well now that the family is home refused to move out. Legally the house owner now will have to start the RTB process. This will take 6-12 months maybe longer. WTF would you risk your house for a nominal fee.

Bass Reeves

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119457203#Comment_119457203

The REITs have 17k houses while they may be withholding property from the top end of the market from the rest of the market they serve they will have everything on the rental market as much as possible

The rental market is exceptionally strong. Any LL would be crazy to leave property empty. However as I showed above a certain amount do. The real issue is there are other houses empty as well. We need to get these I to the market. The answer by most is to use a stick approach. That takes time. Rome burnt while Nero played the fiddle.

The demand for rental is insatiable at present. 750 on daft nationwide. All's are not withholding property and not re.nting it because if price. Most rental property is being rented by word of mouth at present. In the last six months I have had three enquires about my farmhouse even though it rented already.

There is not property being withheld because people are not getting what they are asking for it.

Dav010

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119457178#Comment_119457178

Considering the interest on deposits offered by banks, a vacant asset which has been appreciating in value for the last 10 years is undoubtedly a better prospect than a deposit account.

Dav010

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119456928#Comment_119456928

Have you considered that the fact that we have so many high earners, our population has increased, and there aren’t enough properties to buy might make it a little more difficult to replicate ownership statistics from 2002?

Dav010

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119457203#Comment_119457203

Irish REIT published results today, 99.3% of their properties are occupied, so I’m not sure why you think they are holding them back.

https://www.irishtimes.com/business/2022/08/11/revenue-at-ires-reit-rises-as-2022-gets-off-to-strong-start/

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119457254#Comment_119457254

are you saying we have too many high earners to ever replicate the home ownership rates of the past?

Dav010

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119457327#Comment_119457327

Eh, it’s more likely we haven’t enough houses, but go with whichever one you want.

timmyntc

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119456928#Comment_119456928

Because most of our builders got shafted in the crash and have not been active since - thats why.

Posters earlier in thread were claiming that if landlords all sold up people could just buy and the rental crisis would be fixed - but that is not the case. There is a higher occupancy rate per unit in rented dwellings compared to owned homes, so if everyone were to buy old rental stock it means there would be an even worse rental crisis.

The only solution is more supply of homes (rental and for sale) but unless we have a big push for people to pick up building trades (unlikely as work is slowing down now due to material cost inflation), we will never build enough homes to fix these crises.

combat14

TikTok opts out of planned Dublin docklands office deal

https://www.irishtimes.com/business/2022/08/11/tiktok-opts-out-of-planned-dublin-docklands-office-deal/

Interesting read on companies like tik tok, facebook, twitter are all starting to rethink their commercial property requirements here for various reasons .. all is not rosie in the tech sector with companies now seriously starting to watch their costs