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

That is 350/ sqft or 4k/sqM. That is crazy. In Rural area three years ago build costs were 80/sqft.

There is one good thing the thing to cure high prices is high prices. I am getting vibes that there will be huge roll back on some of these projects not just in Ireland but accross the world

BAM recently stalled a big project in cork city centre due to costs.

Would tend to agree, I think the West is starting to rot, everything revolving around debt generation in order to sustain the growth required in order to keep civilisation going.

I think this Ukraine war and fertiliser crisis will create a serious food shortage problem, couple that with global warming and reduced crops yeilds we could see a drastically changed society in 20 -30 years time. Personally I would love to see a change away from corporate greed.

Famous saying is "society is 9 meals away from anarchy", do often put my tin foil hat on and wonder why has got Bill Gates so involved with buying farmland in America. Globalisation seems to have shown us in the wake of Russia and the Pandemic how much we relie on cheap goods and raw materials from the East in order to fulfil our throw away excess high growth lifestyle.

The younger generation are not interested in BER F/G type homes.... Every post on here talks about the cost to upgrade the house to a higher BER rating after buying it.... despite the fact that a very large % of the population is living in such homes and are not in a financial position to upgrade to a high BER rating..... Maybe a generalisation but that is how the posts come across to me.

Projects are definitely being put on hold and of the projects that are going ahead the developers/builders are trying to buy supplies up front which in turn creates more demand and pushes the prices up.

Incredible. Have you purchased or just establishing costs in advance of bidding?

If there is even a vague sense of rational economics in the housing market, the value of land should be taking an absolute pummelling with build costs like that.

its simply just not sustainable any more - anecdotally also hearing building projects being cancelled due to spiralling costs - hard to restart work then and job losses looming - incredible really just when we need building to ramp up ... the overall cost and in particular the price rises are simply far too high and more importantly unaffordable and unpredictable..

What project was that?

Renovation costs are 1.5 times new build costs? That’s madness. We’re looking at a renovation and extension and it hadn’t occurred to me the renovation part would cost MORE than the extension.

That is because renovation now is nearly a complete rebuild. People are tearing out floors, walls ceilings etc. Then you have the risk of coming accross unforseen issues. Steel and lintels being put in to have panoramic views. Velux windows and roof lights. New windows and doors, complete rewireing, plumbing and heating system over hauls. As I said Dermot Bannon has a lot to answer for.

Guest room must have ensuite as well. I have seen plans for a house lately. Young couple, both in there mid 20's. Four bed house, living area 15X5 meters( I still have to convert to put the reality in it 50'X16'), second sitting room. Office, four bed rooms, two on suite, master bed room has massive walk in wardrobe, bathroom, shower in toilet in living area, utility and pantry. House is over 300/ sq meters. If it gets build they will be paying for it until they are 70. They end up scarficing a lot of there life for a house,( children, holidays etc) and will not be able to afford to retire until on there 70's.

Saw plans for another house on a sloped site. Bedrooms on lower level. Living area is above bedrooms. No issues with that, but it's footprint is nearly double the size of the bedroom footprint. You are into structural steel and mass concrete. To top it all off they have a 15X2 meter balcony off the upstairs living area. With its glass tailings it has probably added 50k to price of house.

Some of the sh!t going on is hilarious if it was not so stupid.

The industry itself have admitted that housing could be delivered far cheaper using a different approach

"The fact is policy-influenced and soft costs account for 50pc-52pc of the cost of any home, " said the report. "A homebuilder building for the State can do so for 50pc cheaper because these additional soft costs are not in play."

I have no doubt there is an element of what bass is saying going on, but I'd imagine it's confined to a small proportion of people.

Can you give a brief description of the renovation proposed, just to see if the cost differential can be in anyway justified

Hard to disagree, but we really need to ask how we have had a starting point of knocking down oversupply to chronic undersuppy in the space of a decade.

I think its a situation that could have been managed better

The cheapest part of any houses is the four walls. When you get into renovations the only saving I see is the fact the house was there so no planning required.

There is a large percentage of people that want the '' new house or new house look''. What people need to start realising is forget about Ber ratings. Look at running costs. There is no one forcing you to have a A rated house unless its a compete new build.

When you go looking for planning ya they want iy. A lot of C and D rated houses have nearly as low running costs as an A rated house.

We have a holiday home and the one next door was bought lately. New owner is talking about changing the windows and door, doing insulation, revamping it completely and bringing the house up to an A or B rating. It will cost 150-k IMO. This is a holiday home.

We have put in a pellet stove in the living area. We hardly burn 150 euro worth of pellets in the year. Our electricity bill is less than 600/year for th house. The windows and door were put in about 2003/4. Are they not as well sealed as nowadays, ya but spending 20-30 k replacing them ??. It just dose not make sense. Ya I probably do the insulation wrap some time on it. But surely there is some way to redo window seals. The crazy part is the new windows will have exactly the same issue in 20-30 years time

It's the same with doing floors. Is it justified to take out floors and put in new insulation and underfloor heating. Even in a small house its adding 10+k to the job at least. This might seem all beer. But managing minor costs is as import as managing the larger ones.

In a lot of older houses a pellet stove based heating system should probably be considered. On some houses drylining using insulated board should be looked at. These also make rewiring much easier.

But you will not have the ''A rated house or the new house look''.

I hear you but the building regs require this type of upgrading. It’s not really a choice if you’re doing anything but a small extension.

Fair point, but you also have margin, sub contracting margin, cost of Finance, connection to services.

If housing was substantially cheaper, would the state be subsidising to the same degree, ftb grant, HAP savings,

People closer to employment centres Greater efficiencies.

If we approached housing with a focus on what's best for the economy, the country and people, we would have a very different system to what we have now and surely that is the responsibility of government.