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

There is no affordable alternative to buying

Buying is only affordable to the top 20/30% of households, despite multiple incentives for buyers and developers. These buyers are competing with investment funds who pay no tax and have access to 0% capital. This requires the tapping of Bank of mom and pop for many

Those that are renting are economically neutralised

Average age of ftb in mid 30's and increasing.

Billions of taxpayers money spent subsidising rents and fighting homelessness. People called in on Saturday may be paying less tax had we a fit for purpose housing system. This from a position of surplus housing supply less than 10 years ago.

Price trends imply people are moving further and further away from work to secure housing. This suggests the cities prices are out of reach and price trends in rural towns will now be out of kilter with the local economy pushing workers there further away. All this leads to development away from where its needed and building a new crop of ghost estates at the highest possible price for the next bust.

All very predictable, all symptoms of or re-engineered mechanisms of the last bubble.

Oh, beans on toast in the 80's was a treat for many

And the rest of society is still paying the price for people who couldn't pay and wouldn't leave, higher mortgage rates and post 2008 fear of banks to lend meant people couldn't get mortgages leading to prolonged renting and leaving cheap houses to be hoovered up by cash rich landlords.

Handing the keys back is the only right thing to do if you cant pay and wont be able to pay for the foreseeable future.

In a very similar situation to you. Sale agreed a couple of months now but things are dragging due to some issues on the seller's side. We're willing to wait. The place needs work but we're happy to DIY as much as possible and take our time. We think the current high price of materials has definitely put people off the likes of a fixer-upper like ours.

What we've seen is an even worse slowdown in supply for the areas we're looking for. March-July very intense and quick bidding like you said. A few heartbreaks during that time. August-October a lot quieter - less homes on the market, less bidders around. It's not even that these homes are being listed at asking 100k-200k more than what they would have been a few years back, they're just not going on sale - there is no supply. We have seen a few properties hanging around a while, like yourself. We decided to go for a fixer-upper during that time and we're happy with the decision so far. The contracts are taking a really long time to issue but we're still thinking positively.

I was wondering if it's the case that the desperate bidders have now come and gone, have spent their extra savings?

For us, we can see this weird cool-off/extra scarcity happening BUT it isn't phasing us from our decision - at the end of the day, this home is right in the middle of an area we'd be happy to spend the rest of our lives in. It has room for expansion should we need it. And we need to get on with starting a family. Currently lucky enough to be staying with parents while we try to save enough to keep up with the increased costs of property & materials. So for us, we're willing to push for this one, and eat the baked beans for a year or two when we're in. Fingers crossed we can get a close date soon. 🤞

Yep, I see the exact same. There has never been fewer houses in our area, yet most of the bidding pressure has come off. Seems odd.

I also think you're right on the fixer uppers, and even had a few EAs say as much and that people are now beginning to really factor increased costs when bidding on properties needing work.

I could definitely live with a 10-15% reduction over the next year or two, in fact, I'd welcome it. We'll likely never leave this house. Would feel fairly sick if things dropped 30% by Christmas though! I think we have probably paid c.10-15% more than we would have paid in 2019, but also 5% less than we bid on the same property 6 months ago, so kind of feels like a win. I can imagine a scenario where supply picks up in Spring and the 15-25% inflation over the last 12 months coming off quite quickly (as you say maybe that was down to stuff like excess saving). But it's hard to envisage prices going back down to 2017 and prior nominal prices anytime soon with the job market this strong.

Best of luck with the purchase, hope it goes well from here.

The average house price is still attainable for the average couple working for 50k under the current financial paradigm that people use to buy a property in this day and age. Beans on toast may be a treat but not when its your one and only meal of the day for a year I think you will find that treat has outstayed its welcome. Not mention the damage being done to your sphincter muscles :)... We really need to stop confusing our supply issue with affordability.

Also 10 years ago we had 1/2 million less people living here. Your right about people moving out of the cities and this is what is known as urban sprawl a phenomena that has been going for decades all over the globe - why do you think Ireland should be immune to this given our new population size and our decision to stop building for people on welfare. I mean if you want to live somewhere desirable you have to pay the price as other people also want to live there this is economics 101.

As for the average age for people buying a property this also has a lot to do with people wanting to live more as apposed to being saddled with a mortgage, same goes with the average age of having kids and getting married they have all increased. It has very little to do with affordability with the exception of maybe earning more in your 30s as apposed to your 20s. but the younger generation have other things on their mind when it comes to spending your money goes on things like the latest phone, car or a 3rd or 4th holiday this year. (Now the covid years have been an exception for holidays.)

You keep saying we are in a bubble I don't see it not yet anyways. I do see prices going up higher due to a supply issue that is not a bubble. Your drawing conclusions with comparisons to 08 well think of this comparison if the availability was the same as that of say 07 when we had a huge over supply and in 07 prices were still increasing if we had that oversupply differential now prices would not be going up - well thats my opinion. Hopefully they can build enough houses to prove my theory.

Speaking of greystones am I missing something or is this not relatively reasonable value ?

https://www.myhome.ie/residential/brochure/burlington-lodge-victoria-road-greystones-co-wicklow-a63av82/4530648

I was googling this property and found an interesting article on it from 2006. Built in 2002 and was on the market asking for €1.65m when the article was published.

https://www.businesspost.ie/legacy/wicklow-home-in-walk-in-condition-69b16acc

This was a great article over the weekend, among others. I was almost surprised to see it in the IT given how strong it was against the lobbyists (e.g. Pat Farrell and his IIP lobby group - who is undoubtedly well connected with FF and FG; and clearly does a good job for those interests he represents). Eoin Burke Kennedy likely got an email or two from aggrieved vested interests after that article as possibly the IT editor did as well but it is a vital article in a market which has been tilted to big corporate interests for a number of years now.

906 available, 9 days later, showing for me in "Dublin (county)" on Daft.ie. As a renter, I am grateful to be in a decent place right now as the options for moving to a decent place that is somewhat affordable are greatly curtailed from this time last year. Not an enviable position to be looking for a decent rental at the moment - I actually have a friend who moved back home when the lease was up on the house they were renting and the landlord was moving back in, as they could find nothing habitable with two bedrooms despite their budget being up to €2300 pm and being in their 30s - a horrible and humiliating thing to have to move home to the parents in your 30s and not good for our society.

Farcical and incompetence at the level of Dave Dinnigan (the same Dave Dinnigan who claimed that they were being too hard on themselves when it came to criticising DCC's delivery of social housing, even when confronted with figures of Dublin City Council directly building 90 social homes in 2019 and 124 in 2020), Owen Keegan etc. in Dublin City Council that they would push back against the government's plan to phase out councils entering into these bad value leases. However, what this push back shows is that there is more fighting against the Housing For All strategy and the government giving in to the arguments against aspects of it mean it is going to fail. SF must be laughing at the total inability of the government to treat the crisis with the same urgency as covid as is needed - they are soaring in popularity and this will continue. Our last 20 years will go down the drain when SF get in, not because of SF, but because we made no effort to build a sustainable society and economy that worked for the people, which is what lead to SF getting in. It feels like a slow motion car crash.

A tin of beans, buttered toast/baked potato and some sausages is a nutritionally sound, delicious and budget friendly dinner that costs around €2 per dinner to put together once you have the bread, butter, spuds bought in bulk. I will not have you tarnish it by referencing it to the Baby Boomer war era of the 1980s.

interview with the LDA chief exec., John Coleman

There remit appears to be almost entirely affordable cost based housing.

He breaks household income into deciles. The top third its envisaged can afford there housing need. The bottom third are covered by council and subsidies.

John claim the middle third is not served by the market and not supported by any subsidies.

The income range of the middle third household is between 45 and 80k. This is someway of the so called average couple on average wages and I would hope that they have done more research into this than anyone else

The remit of the LDA appears to be to provide housing solutions at affordable rates for this section

The system up to now was to source housing at the price paid by the upper third decile. This increases the price in this market and consequently reduces the number of households that can afford there housing need. This eventually leads to collapse of the housing market and that will pull the economy down with it.

It will be interesting to see how it plays out and if its enough

I still use the search facility to find out information about houses, roads, areas...although it is becoming increasingly out of date.

On the plus side, if you believe George Soros (wink wink nudge nudge) is conspiring with Wuhan scientists to reshape the plant then it's an amazing source of information.

So you think allowing someone stay in an asset where the loan is not being paid to the bank for 10 years+ is protecting the bank , really can you explain this. ?? I dont see any upside for the bank. This is to protect the FAMILY HOME and its as left leaning as it can get. Protect the banks will you come off it. Your trying to spin that this has gone so far left its actually gone around the globe and is now a policy from the right side of the political sphere. You have to look at who benefits , who pays. The bank are left with a loan that is not being serviced and an asset they cannot access. The family dont pay anything and get to live in the house. I dont see how this is right leaning in any way shape or form.

We had a very long thread about how the inevitable repossessions would crash the market further around the time prices hit the floor. The reason repossessions never happened on any scale is bcos of the damage it would do to banks, NAMA, government.

I suspect it would have significant cost on the state had they to assume the cost of housing repossessed families.

Agree its not ideal and a big part of dysfunction in the market, but I dont think it was driven by leftist ideology rather a cloak to disguise real intentions