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

If we're talking optics this looks absolutely shocking!

Investors lease former social housing properties back to state

"Large institutional investors have started to lease former social housing properties, originally built by the state, back to the state for use as social housing under lengthy lease arrangements.

The Business Post has learned that second-hand homes in old council estates are now being rented to South Dublin County Council at an estimated rent of €1,500 a month, with no option for purchase at the end of the 25-year lease."

Is this being replicated throughout the country does anyone know? The fella in the link below purchased 15 houses and apartments in portlaoise last year in anticipation of direct provision centre getting closed and he was to rent them to the state to house the residents.

https://www.leinsterexpress.ie/news/news/659097/fifteen-empty-portlaoise-homes-waiting-a-year-for-direct-provision-families.html

Myhome is still showing a poor amount of properties for sale remember there is a good % of the properties actively advertised that will be sale agreed, they are very slow at updating and some sellers/EAs will leave the advert up until they are further down the process of selling the house as they may get someone cash on the hip ready to bid more and if they have that ace up their sleeve it means if the current sale breaks down they can play that card. The other point is any new build (which there has been quite a few this year - more than last year or the year before) will be adding to this number (if they have not been swooped up by the vultures) so showing less than 100 more properties than a few months ago is nothing to write home about but hopefully its pointing to where we are going.

Ah, yep, that was it - I excluded sites and now I get 12,183.

Interestingly, the total (including sites) figure is now the lowest, 15389, since start of July, and yet you say the number excluding sites is going up - which implies the number of sites is dwindling? Whether they're being bought to be built on, or just withdrawn from the market, who knows.

I am a long time lurker and I honestly have always enjoyed your posting here. Whatever your politics, please don't allow yourself to be taken in to straw man arguments like in this video.

In this case the straw man is attacking the tax system on the assumption that low income / cash poor people are lazy and feckless, and high income / cash rich people are prudent and hard working. Of course there is a lot more to it than that.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man

As to how this relates to housing, there are many many factors that effect how much income someone earns. A big one is career choice. Arguably a nurse works a lot harder, and provides more societal value than a software engineer or an estate agent, but yet earns 2-3 times less. There needs to be some way for that nurse to be able to live in the same quality of housing + area as the software engineer.

I had been taking note of the numbers for sale in total on MyHome, and then the number of houses for sale in the large area we have been searching in, and while the total numbers for sale has been rising the last few weeks, I can see that the number of houses for sale in my search area (everywhere in Dublin South of The Liffey) is still on the way down since early July - they rose a little after the lockdowns eased but it was just a blip it seems.

Could not agree with you more on this. Life is all about choice which the video highlights. Yes there are some limitations on income earning potential. Some people make life choices and expect others to fund those choices. While Ireland is held as having a progressive tax system it does not actually reflect reality.

The point that rings true for me is housing. We have people who strive to actually put a roof over their head get a mortgage, pays high income taxes, spends time on long commutes to work, pays for child minding, pays for a whole range of other costs. Up to and even as they are in their old age (fair deal scheme).

We then have those who in a lot of instances choose not to do any of the above but yet have a better quality of life than the above.

Why is it wrong for those who actually try to "stand on their own two feet" have a better standard of living than those who don't

People (especially those in the squeezed middle) are actually getting tired of being the ones who end up paying for the majority of taxes. No doubt as a result of the costs associated with the pandemic taxes will increase, be that income taxes, property taxes and a whole host of other taxes that disproportionately affect the squeezed middle (on the basis of their contribution versus the return on the provision of the service). Some of these taxes (specifically VAT) will not affect those who have chosen to rely on some form of Social welfare payments either as their only source of income or as a supplementary source of income to include the various benefits associated (eg free medical card, fuel allowances etc)

I'm not much a poster here, but I'm stepping out of the shadows for this one, as it's something that needs to be said a lot more.

I currently pay something in the region of 23k a year to the state in income-tax. On top of that, I pay VAT on purchases, tax on my car and various other taxes here and there. I fund my own pension funds through private investments that I have set up and through my employer. I have private health insurance, and I avail of no social welfare whatsoever. The rather salient question that regularly jumps into my thoughts is "what am I getting for my taxes?" I don't have a good answer for that.

At 34, I feel very much that the state is engaged in turning me and the majority of my age-group into wealth generating units to fund god only knows what ends. I neither expect nor want to be given anything in life, but I do expect to be able to enjoy the fruits of my own hard labour and, above all, be able to leave a patrimony for my nieces and nephews so that the next generation will be better off*. I did not work for years simply to take my place as a cog in a machine where those who produce are milked like cattle.

To call the current direction of the state "unsustainable" is not accurate. Indeed, the only adjective that I can apply is "vile".

My two cents...

*Note: this used to be the ambition of every generation.

CSO statistics on population growth was published today. Interestingly, given the relentless talk of supply vs demand, the last 12 months has been by a mile the lowest increase in population we've seen in recent times (34k increase vs normal 50k-60k). If we assume 34k population increase equates to roughly 15k additional housing unit requirements - the year gone is the first in a long time where additional housing supply has exceeded additional housing demand!

Of course there is a backlog of demand, but the housing supply vs housing demand situation at a total level should be in better shape than in 2019, when prices were static/falling. Just goes to show there are many other factors at work and people who just scream "supply vs demand" oversimplify the issue!

Main Results - CSO - Central Statistics Office

Just because you haven't needed a social safety net doesn't mean you never will. I've seen enough people who valued themselves by their assets crash and burn during after the bertie years to know that there's no such thing as a society of one.

"If we assume 34k population increase equates to roughly 15k additional housing unit requirements - the year gone is the first in a long time where additional housing supply has exceeded additional housing demand!"

Very wrong assumptions to begin with. If Ireland has population increase of 0, that would mean, that Ireland don't need new supplies?

Yes, that broadly matches what I'm seeing - also looking in south county Dublin, which I'm constrained to for family reasons. Since I started keeping a count in early July, the number of properties matching my criteria dropped quickly by about 25%, then stabilised. Some very tenuous signs of the number maybe starting to creep again, but nothing concrete yet.