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

You raise valid points and to be fair, I would feel the (well intentioned such as yourself) private landlord is treated very shabbily by the Govt in contrast to the institutional landlords.

My comment is more broadly speaking at all property owners, hence why I said 'property owners' rather than 'house owners'.

The parasites are the government! They facilitate this dont they? Did I vote in a company with profit maximization as their goal to represent me? No... I voted for politicians, that are meant to look put for broader society... the invest funds being identified as the bogey man here, is comedy! There is one culprit, appalling, reckless and lazy beyond belief " shure til be grand" governance...

To be honest I think immigration into the country to fill jobs will be higher than the Ukrainian refugees as a lot of companies are struggling to fill vacancies and won’t be able to keep the show on the road otherwise. The churn in employment as employers try to poach is also leading to pay rises which will lead to higher property prices…To put it simply the economy is to hot in certain sectors.

Affordability is a problem everywhere but one thing that is unique to Dublin is the opaque way property sales are done. At least when I found a place in London it was a next-day yes/no with the advertised price and not weeks of farting around.

This is where people don't realise (certainly from a private landlords perspective). The State is not paying €15k for rent. They are only paying €7.5k (€15k less tax @ 50%).

So if you look at this from an economic perspective for a moment. The State has "housed people", the State then dictates the conditions of rental making them legal. The State does not have risk of non payment of rent, the State does not have any maintenance issues etc.

On top of this the State does not need to employ staff to maintain council owned houses, the State can then sit back and blame the "evil landlord" (remember the local plumber, taxi driver, PAYE worker) which I suspect the majority of people have a private landlord either in their family or within their social circle.

The State (the Govt) is responsible for this but so are some sectors of society. We have people who are "entitled" to this that and the other. I regularly view Facebook and groups of those looking for council housing. The number of people in their mid to late 20's who highlight being on the Housing list for 10 - 12 yrs and are near the top of the list is shocking.

I am all for helping people to get on but we have this idea that "I am entitled". With rights/entitlements comes responsibilities, yes if you have tried to actually buy a property and you reach your mid 30's and you have been unable then yes the State should assist at that point. But not when you reach 18 and start getting housing support.

I remember reading multiple posts on Boards over the years saying people wanted the rental market to become professional and that the small landlords should be out of the market because they were amateur. Well guess what, you got your wish and look at how thats working out.

Our housing situation is intertwined with our welfare system and we need to review our welfare system if we are ever going to improve our housing situation. While this will not fix the situation on its own, it certainly will go some way to improving it.

Mods again I think the above needs to be factored into the thread regarding the housing situation because of the affect it plays on the wider housing market.

I would agree with most of your post especially the last sentence.

However most sw spend is now used to prop up/inflate house prices and especially rents. These policies enrich the most wealthy and to add insult to injury, these entities pay no tax even though the assets they hold would not be viable without infrastructure provided and serviced by the tax payer

I have not heard one left leaning party calling for this

Beware of the wolf in sheeps clothing

The posters picking on the age profile of a small section of the people in attendance at a public meeting is terribly simplistic, reactionary and nasty. If these same posters feel so strongly about the need for development like this to proceed why not attend themselves to speak up and advocate for such development? It would be a positive change from endlessly quoting tired "old biddy" tropes.

I would agree with that. They should plan properly and designate areas to build high rise together.

From the 2019 budget approx a quarter of the HAP budget went to "corporate landlords" so not an insignificant number. I expect a corporate landlord could encompass REIT,ICAVs,self directed pension wrappers etc. Yes the REIT shareholders will pay tax on dividends but the top 10 shareholders in Ires own 62% and are all tax exempt vehicles.

Also, if people have a property or two to top up their pension income on top of a the state pension then the tax take would be in the 20%s until their income was above 36k or so.

I'd welcome a study as to what level of income tax the state generates from rent and what HAP really costs but if I was to make a high level approximation I'd apply a low 30s% haircut to the HAP spend which will still accumulate to a nice ticking bomb in Leinster House to go with the pension time bomb for some other schmuck to sort out in 20 years time.

Add into that the "enhanced leasing scheme" where the state is responsible for repairs and the lessor gets rental increases based on consumer CPI then there is some serious investment uplift being pocketed by effectively tying a (admittedly dumb and potentially lazy) AA- borrower into a ridiculously bad deal. Dermot Desmond summed it up nicely pre pandemic with "having a laugh".

The link provides some details on the make up of the private rental market and hap where 85% of the tenancies were with private landlords. So as private landlords we are paying 50% on our rental income (assuming those who are above €36k income from all income sources).

About a qtr of the spend in 2019 went to corporate landlords. I would then draw two conclusions from the above figs (1) is that if 15% of the market is being accounted for by 25% of the expenses then these properties are at the high end of the price. (2) is that the above goes back to my point that half the rent paid to private landlords is going back to the State.

This brings me back again to my point of our welfare system distorting the market. I am not familiar with the Enhanced leasing scheme and have to assume this falls outside of the RPZ legislation. Can you provide a link to this?

I would also welcome an honest debate into the housing market and maybe the general public would actually get a true picture of who exactly is benefiting and who is suffering on all sides in the housing market.

The healthcare assistant is not the problem

The problem is a 2 bed apartment is valued more than them

Average rate of pay is 11.99 per hour and they pay more tax than the apartment

The wage is not the problem here, it's the rent.

She is an essential staff member unless you want to argue that we can do without nurses in nursing homes?

So, either we need to pay her more, which has a cost, or rent needs to come down, which is the obvious solution.

Say she didn't have HAP, her yearly rent would be 23,400.

Say she earns 38,000 a year, she will come out with approx 33,648 net

That would mean she has 10,248 for everything else, like food, heating, clothes and so on for herself and her daughter.

Again, what do you propose she should do in this situation and from a macro side, what solution would be have to fix it?

Ireland of 2022... warm over a pittance and we are taxing you at outrageous levels, fifty percent, oh and you will have to find two grand a month for a decent one bedroom apartment in Dublin after tax... dublin, the city that doesn't even have a transport system worthy of the name. I'd love to know, where the hell our outrageous tax take over the pittance of an income, has been spent the last few decades. We need a new political party here, the current lot are institutionalized smarmy, weasels...

The worst of the interest rates in the 80s still doens't bring the cost up to what people have to do now. And the interest on deposits made getting the deposit a lot easier, as well as it being much smaller in proportion to salary.

The issue we have is the cost of living in general. I have proposed on a number of occasions a number of solutions to deal with our housing and wider issues.

Firstly extend the rent a room scheme to those renting whole properties. So instead of paying €2k a month and the landlord only receives €1k and the State receives the other €1k agree with the landlord to only charge €12k a year and he gets to keep the whole €12k if he charges anything more than €12k he pays tax on all of it. This then allows the tenant save the other €12k towards a deposit for their own property. Result is it removes people for needing long term social housing support and encourages developers to build knowing there is a market, and reduces the risks to banks for lending.

Secondly radically reform the welfare housing supports system. If you don't work and have no intention of ever working you are housed where there is a vacant property. If you are an essential worker you are prioritised for social housing support.

Thirdly, we need to radically reform our welfare system overall. No welfare system should provide a better standard of living than work does. We need the majority of people to be net contributors to our tax system not net benefactors. Despite what the parties on the "left" of politics think we don't have a magic money tree. if this means reducing our welfare system to force those to work who can and choose to play the system then so be it.

To bring the above into context on your post. if we changed the criteria for people on the housing list we would reduce the demand on the housing sector both private and public. There is a cohort of people who when they turn 18 they automatically go on the housing list. These people have decided they wont even try to house themselves. I personally don't have a problem with people who actually try and fail but I do have an issue with those who choose not to even bother trying.

What you fail to realise is that the quality of housing in the 70's/80's is nowhere near what it is now. I grow up in a house built in the 70's, we had single glazed wooden windows were you woke up with frost on the inside of the window, no central heating, no flooring other than chipboard sheets. The houses kept you dry nothing else.

We had a different culture back in the 70's and 80's. We had to work for everything, we got no social welfare unless you worked. We have become to generous with our welfare.

The cost of housing nowadays is a combination of all of the inputs inclusive of land. Land is finite and it has always been a case that children had to move out further from where they grew up, people had no choice. People want the three bed semi with the garden within Dublin but we don't have the space.