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

No, essentially, as businesses' ability to grant wage increases is depleting by the day with consumption declining while production costs are increasing. "Growth" in the "economic growth" sense, will be lower, inflation will cool as suddenly there will be less of an energy crisis, untangled supply chains, workers needing more hours and raw materials being easier to obtain. This is what happens in a slowdown; house prices obviously don't move as quickly as markets but the drops in markets should be a sign of that something is coming with house prices (as property investment is high risk and highly speculative, as people seem to have forgotten).

We will see a short, sharp "recession" (on paper though we all know that progressively the last few years many of us have gotten poorer due to rising cost of living (not fully captured in the CPI)) followed by a new QE pump under the guise of something like a massive infrastructure development / green transition / build back better project. It will all be well and good having a mortgage but you can't eat your house and having good savings and a stable job will be, as it always is, the determinant as to how you ride out the "recession" / slower growth period.

Likely timeline for "recession" to bite is towards the end of the year and into next year, showing up in data through this time next year, leading to the response measures (ie renewed QE and "build back better" / infrastructure plans) by early 2024. Speculation in assets, including housing, will no longer exist as it has done which will ensure that housing costs do not ultimately climb back to these current, high levels for a long period.

Getting back to more tangible topics on the housing emergency we have in Ireland - the sky is blue apparently! Home ownership rates have collapsed in younger people which will pose severe challenges into their retirement as they will be renting and need State assistance almost certainly to pay this rent.

As I have repeatedly stated, if the Irish housing market does not correct from the global economic factors, almost certainly the house prices of today will be a thing of the past as the electorate vote with their feet - quite simply really; if the majority of voters rent and feel they are paying far too much for their rent, they will vote for anything that might bring down the cost of housing. It really is that simple; while homeowners held the balance of voting power through the last twenty years which manifested in a rising housing market equating to wealth generation, the next twenty years will be a reversal of this trend as a rising housing market equates to an erosion of wealth for those that don't own their home.

Unlimited money cheat code unlocked.

The banks get free money from the ECB, then give it back to the ECB to earn interest.

Sustainable?

"Without the investor these apartments would not be built".

But also;

"Demand for housing is high so prices won't drop"

Yet somehow this high demand would not lead to any housing being built to be sold to individual buyers - doesn't add up.

Yeah I doubt anyone involved in making policy believes it will achieve much, the government are most likely just doing it so the opposition can't keep using it as a stick to beat them.

Meanwhile, the Central Bank today warns that half of our corporate tax take could be at risk, with a staggering concentration risk involving a mere 10 firms contributing half of all corporate taxes and €1 out of every €8 of taxes contributed.

We have been awash with cash and yet there have been minimal efforts to tidy up public spending the last decade and reallocate this boon towards things like housing (as in getting housing actually built rather than throwing it at existing housing) and infrastructure. The money has been, in my view, criminally wasted by FG and FF, leaving the country in dire straits should the concentration risk materialise to at least some extent. "This time it will be different" is not true as it will be Mary and John Taxpayer who will ultimately be the ones that pay when the slowdown happens and taxes need to be raised while they are told that infrastructure programmes need to be shelved. We really had a great chance the last few years to bed down the growth but alas the gift horse has been looked in the mouth; with a better functioning housing market that gave people a stake in the country enabling the new arrivals of the last few years to settle long term and we might be looking at a different economic state of affairs with less of a concentration risk to our public finances.

This concentration risk is already starting to be realised as we look at the share prices of these big MNCs (certainly in tech) correcting materially and projections for more muted growth now ingrained into their financial statements as well as commentary and some actions around job losses and hiring freezes. At least Charles and Camilla Homeowner have a house value that "recovered" after 2008, as they quite clearly took priority over the young immigrants who came here for work when things picked up.

If you were to pick a spot on the market sentiment graph we see with respect to market cycles, we have moved from euphoria in 2020-2021, to a bit of anxiety end of 2021 into 2022, to definite mutterings of denial starting to feature in commentary among market participants;

Oi remember when people really thought they gonna dictate rules to corpos an their bosses about work hours and locations...

@iColdFusion

There's plenty here who are wondering where all that money actually went. Aside from workmen installing cycle lanes and some bus drivers the public sector seemed to have treated Covid as an extended holiday.

As for SF I am tempted to post a cartoon about them I came across a while back, but I know if I do i'll probably get threadbanned..

Post and be dammed

Listen to the latest Irish times inside business podcast titled "how far will 6.7 billion budget go"

The Big boost in corporation taxes started in 2014/15 when they went from 4.5 to 6.8billion and have steadily increased to 18billion last year.

We are the 2nd largest recepient of corporate taxes in the world.

It just seems incredibly inept that a portion of that tax could not be put aside to ensure there was sufficient housing for the employees helping to generate this income for the state be it, even affordable rents that could further increase revenue generation for the state.

With regard to public services Ireland always ranked amongst the highest in funding for health services but very poor on outcomes despite having one of the youngest populations. The Troika were not here for long enough. While they were here gov were accountable, that ended when they left.

Where we are is by choice!

The economy has boomed since 2015 and even excelled during covid. In what world do you think the economy did poorly in covid? All metrics showed how well we were doing (high savings, low debt, strong GDP, lower insolvencies etc.). This idea that the economy suffered during covid is just wrong and it is worrying that people think that we have even had the economic fallout yet from the pandemic when actually the economy was in suspended animation and only ticked over due to, essentially, unsustainable borrowing. Unsustainable as there are no deep pockets of economic activity to step in and replace the ECB/government, with inflation now unfortunately forcing the government/ECB (like with the Fed) to step back with their deep pockets to effectively cause a slowdown in the economy as there is insufficient economic activity to match what they have injected into the economy the last few years. Another excuse for QE or a (probably short but sharp) "recession" is inevitable - winter is coming.

I don't really get your point, you say the economy did well during covid (some of our big tech companies did but most of it was shutdown) and then say it only did well due unsustainable borrowing by the government to keep it propped up (which IMHO was required) but your original point that I was responding to was that the government hasn't been investing corporation taxes into infrastructure even during covid, they did, into vaccination centers, HSE emergency works, massive overflow bed capacity, ventilators, buying up private bed capacity, money into all the mandatory quarantine system, etc etc.

I don't blame you for not seeing it, most people were safe in their houses following the rules but there was MASSIVE investment into the HSE since covid kicked off, people don't want to remember it but they had to build full isolation wards, Covid A&Es, duplicate maternity wards, etc to keep infected and non infected patients separate for a contagion people didn't fully understand how to stop at the time.

I changed jobs to get to 3/2 hybrid setup. Actually had a 1 day setup in a previous job but hated the job - that was pre-pandemic

Plenty of people will leave if told they have to go back 5 days, and it remains an employees market.