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

I’m sure most people would love a nice plot of land to live on. But sadly we’re in a situation where that’s not possible so we need to best use the limited supply we have. Empty nesters not having space they're accustomed to is an inconvenience. Young couples not being able to have space leads to actual systemic societal issues like rapidly falling birth rates & rapid increases in age of parenthood. These are significantly more important issues than ‘I like my garden’.

Saying old people need their nice gardens in the current climate of a housing crisis is like saying some people needs steak dinner during a famine.

I’m late 20s. Parents mid 60s. They live in a multi million euro mansion on a couple of acres. I call them out for it the whole time. Seems they are finally beginning to see the merit in moving to a small bungalow/apartment closer to their local town and retiring. Expect they will in the next short while.

Raising a family in an apartment is entirely possible. Tenement flats housed large families. You cant solve one problem by creating another just because it suits your narrative.

Your parents are multimillionaires and you're living in a 5 bed. Maybe you're genuine..

Historically Irish families were large and homes were very small by today’s standards. If you were born in 1980 (guessing from your username) then I know several people in and around your age who grew up in families with 6-12 kids in 3 bed terraced or semi-d houses. Most of those houses are not much bigger than 70sqm. I know of a family with 5 kids living in a house about that size right now.

Disgust is a very strong word to use for an entire nationality. I think you need to go for a walk.

But do you need a five bed house. Have you a partner and 6-7 children. I think you may have been one who said that an ensuite was necessary with every room when I question the design and costs involved in 4+ bed houses a week more back.

The demand nowadays for virtually a double bed room for every child and an ensuite gobbles resources. I was bought up in a three bed farm house. As the family got bigger one bed room was split in two to make two small rooms. A double bed was squashed against a wall for my two sisters. A set of bunk beds were put in the other room.

The housing issues is a complex issue. It's a mixture of a demand and resources issues. Resources are finite. There is a case to try to encourage older people to downsize. However there is so many issues it's very complex. However those building larger houses or doing extensions also draw on resources.

Too many think that there is some magic bullet. Take your idea. Who will it effect most. What criteria do you set. If an older couple live in a three bed do they have to move. If it a four bed I imagine you definately will require them to move.

However what if I have a two bed house with two sitting rooms, a large family room and a home office. What if I take down the wall in the box bedroom or turn it into a walk in wardrobe. It's very easy to reconfigure houses.

Any solution like that is usually tried to be solved by property tax. However there is resistance to property and water taxes by those that may benefit the most. Take the TV licence the younger generation are totally against it. It now seems an optional tax.

Back pre 1990 building labour was poorly paid compared to the present day. At present do we redirect a large amount of this labour towards building smaller family units and force older couples into them. I have no problems with a bedroom tax. I will just reconfigure my house.

Any property tax will effect those on marginal incomes( on old age pension's with no other income but savings). Those with better pension or that still work will put up with a 1-200 per bedroom surcharge. That is even if it's enforceable. Are you allowed a bedroom for an older child that come home at weekends.

Vacant houses are now too expensive to renovate. This has a double whammy. If your proposal came into being those older people with poorer quality 3-4 bed houses would be caught in a Hobson's choice. They could not afford to stay or to move. So any such tax would have to be rolled over to when the house was sold. This would nullify the effect of such a tax.

What about LA houses and HAP funded houses. Should any of these that are in need over sized houses be moved. But where do we move them to.

The housing situation is a mess. But it's much more complex that a one or two fix solution. Look at the recent attempt at taxing vacancy tax on houses and sites. The LA has no record of the housing stock and need to get this in place before any such tax is implemented.

How do we redirect a limited labour pool to building the maximum amount of houses. Do we stop all extensions. Do we outlaw more that a bathroom, onsuite( or second bathroom) and a downstairs toilet in 3+ bed houses two story houses.

Everything effects everything else. Anyone that think there is a quick solution to this is deluded. It's mostly a Dublin, Galway and Cork city issue.

You could cut the tension in here with the walking stick of a widow living in an 8 bedroom house in Dundrum, who is about to have her garden overlooked by 1000 social housing tenants.

It is not the fault of young people that housing is so expensive. My first years pay in the 90s (£32k) would've bought a 2 bed flat in the dumpier outer boroughs of London. In the noughties I had a guy say I had been mortgage approved (£500k+) that didn't know my family name (I swear to God). I had a pulse and worked in the City, no money down mortgages were being handed out like sweeties. It must be so frustrating for the people around 30 who have gone into professions that benefit everyone, like teaching/nurses, and yet realistically their salary is never getting them a home.

It is not the fault of of old people that they don't want to downsize into apartments. Who realistically is going to move house for altruistic reasons? Stairs might become a problem, the house may be too big to take care of or loneliness may make you move into a home but no one is moving solely to let some strangers have a crack at it. Even taxing people out their homes ("encouraging") doesn't sit well with me.

The other day when people were talking about the Dundrum situation I looked at Google maps and counted 10 golf courses within 15 minutes drive of the place that are all bigger the whole of Dundrum shopping center. I'm not having a go at golfers, I am sure you need all those course but I am saying that Ireland is very green. There's acres of land in Meath, Kildare & Wicklow. Pick a spot, connect it by state of the art rail to Dublin and Galway and build a new city (my magic bullet for you Bass Reeves).

Where there's a will, there just ain't a will. There's a lot of can kicking.

Disruption via displacement.

That is the cause of the housing crisis, in a nutshell. Globalisation, in a nutshell.

The system has broken down, there could never have been any other outcome, short term gain against long term loss. You can't slowly build yourself out of lightning quick demand. Impossible.

And now, lo and behold, the solution is going to be disruption via displacement too, except it's the disruption of a broken system instead.

Some options are;

Elderly people need to be displaced (to where?)

MNC's with imported workforces need to be displaced.

Underperforming Irish people need to be displaced.

Vulture funds need to be displaced.

Underperforming immigrants need to be displaced.

Refugees (in the case of sheer ukrainian numbers) need to be displaced.

Expropriation (as the residents of Berlin non-bindingly voted for overwhelmingly recently), forced emigration, you name it, It's coming down the road. Drastic, distasteful, unfortunate, it doesn't matter because this is what we're left with.

Supply-side is never going to happen, ever. Demand-side is what's left to manipulate. Displacement to disrupt the rotting system.

The unlimited growth fever-dreams of a few, despite every instance of screaming reality, have brought us to this point. Now it's a case of pick your poison and there are many flavours. People have to leave, in one form or another.

No I'm arguing against your communist level rhetoric. The solution is not swapping older people out of their homes home for younger people. The statement itself is so utterly ridiculous I really shouldn't even bother replying to it.

I'm in favour of building retirement villages. You know, well thought out, well planned, fit for purpose accommodation for a specific demographic. My parents would be happy to "downsize" into something like that.

Anything else is rediculous. You can't punish one demographic because you deem another demographic more deserving.

There's a word for that.

As I said above, you can't build your way out of this.

Build a new city? People must be living on the moon if that seems anywhere near reality. Might as well put forward raising Atlantis out of the ocean, build a few bridges.

Build retirement homes? And how long would that take to reach significant numbers? Another 10 or 20 years? Completely unreasonable.

The reason many older folks are holding onto their homes is precisely because of the housing crisis. They have children that are, in many cases, doomed, so the idea they'll give up their last-ditch saving grace is never going to happen.

This is all about demand, and you can reshuffle elderly people into MNC buildings, MNC staff into log cabins, dogs into fishbowls, whatever you want. Youre still left with too many people and too few accommodations. It's a fools errand.

A tap on the tank will tell everyone theres barely any mileage left in this fiasco. Solutions are needed now, with tangible effect felt immediately. Not 15 years from now.

Too many people. Too little to go around. People have to leave, be they Irish, elderly, immigrants, companies, vulture funds or what have you. That's the answer, no matter how much you sweat over reshuffling and bungling around, people have to leave.

No, that's not going to happen.

And therein lies the upcoming conflict in having to make these choices. Everyone is going to say "you first".

It's going to get interesting. An interesting year all ready ahead.

You are flip-flopping. First it was a bed room tax now it's a property valuation and area tax. This was like the site tax and the vacancy tax.

For any tax to be effective it has to force change. For it to force change it has to be punitive. Look at the opposition with regard to the rise in fuel and heating prices as well as the turf ban.

No government can or will try such an idea. Why so, because the opposition will make hay of it. Again as I posted it will only really effect the pair of pensioners with no other income income. What will the charge amount. Will it double present property tax. Even at 1-1.5k extra per year, it's probably a no brainer to pay it and not move. In the short term it would have a severe knock on larger houses and force up the price of 1 and two bed houses As some scramble to move.

Dermot Bannon was on the Claire Byrne radio show I think last week. Even Inc grants it will cost 40k to being a modest house from Ber ratings D/E up to a an A or B rating.

To save what. 1-2k per year in heating costs. That is not viable even though the bould Dermot saw no issue with it. It was.interesting that a SF TD quoted in the Dail that we had 2.8k death because if fuel poverty. That is actually the excess death of winterVsummer for the whole of Ireland North and South. That is how any opposition tries to stoke up panic and anger against the government if the day.

Your idea is deeply flawed and unworkable

Will there be lizard people? Or freemasons?

I look forward to the reckoning...

A new city is not the answer. The cost of the high speed rail link would be 8-10 billion alone to interconnect it and Dublin effectively.

One of the main issues is the reluctance of 2nd and third generation Dublin people to consider moving anywhere else. Talking to my son over the weekend. He is renting in Dublin at present. Nearly 1k/ month. He just out of college on a modest salary. It's not just housing it's the general cost of living up there. 15 euro for a takeaway, admittedly with free delivery. 7euro a pint. 3+ euro for a take away coffee. He deliberately chose to live near work and the city. If his friends get a taxi it's 20+ euro between 2-3 of them. He is starting to look at WFH and commuting and staying overnight. once a week.

I have argued that the Cork-Limerick motorway needs to be fast tracked so as to provide a counter balance to the Dublin metropolitan area. Three cities with a population of 5-600k could provide an outlet to help rebalance population growth away from Dublin. They all have small commuter towns with in 30 minutes of them. But even that is a 5-6 year fix with political will.

It's a matter of redefining rresources.Maybe a granny flat initiative to kill two birds with the one stone. This especially might work on some larger houses or sites. However expect green and LA opposition. LA to bring any vacant houses back into occupancy. Also a serious look at anti social behaviour in LA or HAP housing.

The carrot of rent a room should be advertised continually. You can earn 14k by renting rooms in your house tax free. However a workable structure needs to be put in place. If you want to solve under occupancy you have to be imaginative if you want it to work in the short term.

Owen Keegan probably looking out for his former employers at Davy who know that increased supply means lower rents and therefore lower valuations on their property portfolios.

Interesting that ads for rentals on Daft for Dublin city are up 25% in the last two weeks. From around 360 two weeks ago to 450 now. Obviously at such low numbers the percentage increase makes it seem more significant than it is but hopefully something that will continue.

Well the point is that people had bigger families in those same sized houses, but for some reason we can't have families in apartments.