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

How it it backwards, please explain is it backwards to tell people sorry but if you cant afford to live where you want there are other housing areas available for you? How is that backward. If you make a decision to buy or not to buy then that is on you. There is a serious lack of accountability for some people when it comes to them paying for themselves in this country. You call me selfish because you cant afford a house beside mumsy ?? really will you get a grip your sense of entitlement betrays you. I did the math - the math shows its affordable for a couple on the median wage with the FTB and current house prices and the current low interest rates. If the houses are not there then you should vote for Sinn Fein in the next election as apparently we will see Hairy lou and Piercey baby with the hard hats on building housing for all. You seem to want to blame people who have a house yet Its not the fault that houses were not built over the last decade or so. Also just on tax I think there needs to be a serious look at where our taxes go as we are borrowing billions a year and the return for the tax payer is crap. Crap services, crap infrastructure. With regards to paying more tax for housing and peoples commute time.. well welcome to the real world I don't live where I want I would hazard a guess the majority of home owners dont live where there would like and I have a 2.5 hour round trip to work that is just things are in this country setup. You seem to have a lot of anger at people who had no part to play in your current plight. You have the following options open to you and you should stop looking at others and thinking the grass is greener.

Buy in a less attractive location

Buy a house that needs work at a lower price point and do it up over time

Stay renting in the hope prices drop - there is a cyclical nature to property

Upskill / reeducate get a job that pays more so you can afford more

Leave and go to a country you can buy a house in.

Back when I still lived in Dublin 1 and commuted out to Parkwest (finally left last August) all the road changes I saw were making the traffic almost as bad as pre-pandemic with only a fraction of the vehicles. Anything like pre-pandemic commuting levels will stuff up the place so badly that the whole model of living out in the sticks but regularly going into central Dublin is as dead as the dodo, at least in tech. I pity the company that has the misfortune to be the first to demand everyone back in the office 9-5/5.

"Leave and go to a country you can buy a house in" is usually closely linked with "how are Sinn Fein on 30+ per cent in the polls".

Generally, people get a little more conservative as they get older and buy into the system. Owning a house and paying a mortgage is a big factor in that buy in. We've now got 35-40 year olds who essentially can't afford to buy into the status quo and the establishment attitude towards them (as they perceive it) is, "Actually, Ireland's great and if you don't think so, then leave and go to a country where you can afford to buy a house or shut up moaning."

And then they wonder why SF are surging ....

Genuine question - if your parents were in their 20s now and "worked there(sic) asses off", would they be able to afford anywhere close to what they have now?

No. No they would not. No amount of "honest hard work" will get you anywhere close to what it got in the past. And you can spare us all the guff about outside toilets etc - complaining that houses nowadays have inside toilets and central heating as some kind of luxury is like saying a homeless man on the streets of dublin today is better off than the king of england 400 years ago, because the king of england never had a smartphone.

Times change, and what is a normal house now will seem luxurious 30 years ago - but you have to look at these things relative to the time they came from (i.e. look at irish houses for sale now, relative to modern prices and the cost of building them)

Yes they would. I think house prices are quite reasonable and in many cases they are cheaper than the cost of replacement. It's just that alot of people are not willing to make compromises anymore it seems. Plenty people buying houses every day in this country. Our prices have not risen to the same extent as the rest of the world due to our stricter lending policy. It has never been easy to buy property.

lol. Okay - so what exactly is it your parents do that would make them fare better than most of the under 30s in this country today?

Or is this just this notion you have that all 30 somethings nowadays spend all their money on avocado toast?

I remember a few years ago there were two old semi cottages for sale near us.

One had been done up. Nice but not actually that modern at all, but walk in condition and the garden was lovely. The other had single glazed windows and an old range and all the door frames etc were falling apart. Garden was a bit of a jungle Basically the place had never had any love.

There were no bids on the neglected house. The other house sold for €310k. Myself and my brothers bid €120k for the neglected one. After another 2 months it was accepted.

When we got possession of the house we spent €45k bringing it back to life. And then sold it for €345k.

People were only interested in the walk in.

I never mentioned anything about avocado toast. All my cousin's, neighbours friends are buying houses. Not easy for them but it never was.

Cool story bro. Totally irrelevant since you haven’t mentioned the year, financial conditions etc.

It was significantly easier in the past - but you seem to think instead that people in the past were more frugal and all the unaffordability problems nowadays are caused by picky people with champagne goals but cider budgets or something along those lines. It's total nonsense of course.

The only time it was significantly easier was in the Celtic tiger era when banks would lend 100% to basically anyone.

Back in the 70’s you could buy with one income but that was because women had to give up work when married.

in the 80’s you were lucky to have a job and had high interest rates. The value of the property was not the issue it was the ability to repay. The only exact opposite of what is happening today thanks to low interest rates.

U are of course entirely entitled to your own opinion.

You do understand the cost of replacement being so high is because houses are so much more expensive to build now hence making them much less affordable to the average person yeah? Building regs, professional fees, land prices, planning requirements, utility charges, energy efficiency requirements, wage inflation, etc had driven up costs a lot the last few years before all the covid supply chain issues added another 10-15% on top of that.

Unless your parents were both engineers, accountants, nurses or similar professional jobs able to earn at least €50k a year each they wouldn't have had a chance, no amount of saving is going to get you ahead of 10% house price inflation.

This has always been a option used throughout history you only have to look at the huge Irish diaspora.

Buying a property has almost always been the most expensive thing you buy and the most amount of money you will ever borrow. This has been the case for decades.