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

are we now heading for a constitutional crisis over housing, time to remove the president for telling the truth or is it lies ?! President criticises Irish housing as 'our great failure'

"It isn't a crisis anymore - it is a disaster," President Michael D Higgins said, adding that Ireland needs to meet "the basic needs of people in a republic: Food, shelter and education."

"Housing and the basic needs of society should never have been left to the market place," the President said.

"It is the mad speculative money that is destroying our country, which we are welcoming, which we shouldn't be," he added.

https://www.rte.ie/news/2022/0614/1304804-president-housing/

What banks fix the rates at offer time? My letter of offer from AIB just landed in the post and it seems interest rates are only set at drawdown so the rates could be gone up by then.

"Central Statistics Office (CSO) filings, the average price paid by household purchasers of apartments in Dublin last year was €381,892. We know, however, that the main purchasers of the 4,000 apartments in the capital in 2021 were not households but institutional buyers. Estimates vary, but the Construction Industry Federation (CIF) says funds bought 95 per cent of the apartments built in the State in 2019.

As for the price they paid, the CSO’s house price data doesn’t specify. A recent report by property firm Hooke and MacDonald, however, lists the blocks bought by institutional investors during 2021, the prices paid, and the number of units in each block. From this it can be derived that these investors paid an average price of €448,031 for apartment units. This was 17 per cent higher than what households typically paid, mindful we’re talking about a range of different apartment types in a myriad of locations." Irish Times

so what hope do first time buyers here have, more importantly what protection is the government putting in place for young (and at this stage not so young) buyers/ tax payers/ voters .. compared to other countries there appear to be absolutely none ..

Like awec said above - once you receive your written loan offer it will have the interest rate and other details on it in relation to the repayments. This is usually issued at contract signing stage. But as awec said there's a condition within the written loan offer that they can change the rates up until drawdown. So I suppose it's not locked in until you drawdown but banks wouldn't really change a loan offer in relation to rates, 0.3% increase could mean €100 extra a month!

I find it so odd that the elected politicians don't favour the people that vote for them and instead look to their corporate and NGO lobbyists for guidance. The reaction to condemn Michael D Higgins' comments shows exactly that these FF and FG politicians do not think the housing crisis is a crisis or an emergency, which is exactly why they will continue to lose votes to other parties.

It is not hyperbolic to describe the housing crisis as socially devastating and generation defining, far more devastating for a whole generation than COVID (younger people) so should be treated as the emergency situation it is. Yet our politicians act like some tinkering is all that's needed

Then you have SF, the apparent God-awful opposition, making a very reasonable observation on the comments; "Sinn Féin TD Eoin Ó Broin said the President’s comments are “a statement of fact” and they were a “direct criticism” of the current and previous governments."

https://www.independent.ie/irish-news/politics/president-michael-d-higgins-crossed-line-in-housing-policy-attack-say-furious-ministers-41754031.html

@DataDude shared some interesting graphs recently based on asking prices, rather than prices from the PPR (the latter always being at least a few months out of date in terms of when the price was agreed) - it would be interesting to see updated versions of the asking price graphs.

Having said that, I suspect that asking prices are probably not changing so much, but what is changing is that there are fewer 'way over asking price' bidding wars on houses, and some properties now sitting there for longer not achieving their asking price.

Central Bank announced in their latest Financial Stability Review that they will be tightening Macroprudential policy, limiting how much banks can lend.

https://www.centralbank.ie/publication/financial-stability-review/financial-stability-review-2022-i

From p71:

Asking prices continue to be flat. Anecdotally, I think you’re right in that the crazy bidding wars of 2021 are largely over (hence asking prices no longer pushing higher).

The monthly slowdown in CSO was fairly remarkable in April. From a fairly solid 0.8%+ every month to suddenly flat. As always this lags reality which has definitely turned further south lately.

I’d say its now fairly certainly that house prices will be lower in a years time. Expect the monthly will turn negative next month. Question is how much and how long it lasts - anybody's guess! I say this as someone who’s just bought a house.

Just goes to show the “supply is low, demand is high - prices go up” thing is a huge simplification of the many dynamics at play!

It's a shame it's in Cavan

Germans have been urged to save energy after Russia's Gazprom announced significant cuts in natural gas supplies via a key pipeline.

Gazprom, which is state-owned, announced a 40% reduction in gas flows to Germany through the Nord Stream 1 pipeline on Tuesday.

its painful to see new first time buyers here make the same mistakes again of over paying for house prices in ireland as europe and the us slide gradually towards recession ..

I'm surprised Nord Stream 1 is still operating at all.

The FTBers in Ireland don't really have much of an alternative. The whole market environment has intentionally been rigged to cause unaffordable prices.

A lot of people have already been holding off for years. Eventually there is a point where they have to get on with their lives.

You could have said the same thing in 2007 when the subprime crisis kicked off, it didn’t take too long to reach here.