Softening house market?

That "green initiative" was announced two years ago.

It's happening everywhere. Even Boris has done it in the UK.

Indo is a rag. It regurgitates old stories in silly season.

Higher interest rates always slow down prices. If the ecb goes to 3% rates will be over 5%. That will make people think.

House construction costs have gone up, but they pulled back recently too - especially wood and insulation. The main builders have huge room to assume increased costs - cairn homes made an average NET profit of 19% last year.

Market needs to fall back or we need a large wage increase. Current prices are unsustainable. (I bought 1st house 36 years ago - 3 bed semi in ballinteer for £39,950)

Crazy!

i was talking to someone who does the house maintenance work for insurance company.

said they go to Cork builders provider weekly. Price just keep going up without limitation.

and they can’t line up plumber at all.

suggested if can hold on, better not think about any house renovation at the moment

Well the other side of the coin is wages are not rising quickly enough so something will have to give how long will builders be able to without building before they have no money? I wonder if the areas of renovation will see prices come down as people building houses from start to finish may need to find work else where

Is there any updates on new builds for the first half of 2022?

I don’t know how people building one off houses are able to cope with the price of materials. I have seen a house for sale last year in Cork. It needed a lot of TLC. It sold just over 350k when houses sold for 450k-500k in that street but were in a better condition. They have now demolished it and are building a brand new house. The increase between the architect quote and now must be a lot higher.

The narrative around the ECB rate rises may spook a lot of people and give them pause into paying huge money for houses, especially houses that need a lot of work.

It's all anecdotal but some houses near me are still on the market months after being up for sale. Numbers at viewings appear to be less, although it was summertime.

Internationally there is a lot of negative stories about crashing house prices, again may make people think again about paying over the odds.

What we saw in Canada, NZ, Australia and parts of the US, was that once interest rates began to go up, market sentiment shifted in a major way, and now all those markets are seeing declining house prices with interest rates still on the rise.

Will Ireland follow suit? Possibly not, but hard to see prices continue to rise when there is so much headwind in the next 6,12,18 months.

Full rewire, rip out the heating and do it properly, insulation from the outside, new windows new kitchen new internal and external door.

On the topic of refurbs - I'm on the cusp of bidding on a property which has no offers yet because of the low BER rating and the scale of work needed. My thinking is that yes, I'll have a lot of time and hassle to fix it up, and the cost of renovation work is sky high right now which is putting people off; but I'm a fairly low maintenance kind of guy who doesn't need to be living in showroom conditions. I'll be OK with a property where I do a first round of urgent jobs straight away (rewiring, some improvements for energy efficiency), and then just chips away at the rest over several years. If the decor's a mess for a few years, hell if I'm living upstairs for the first winter because it costs too much to heat the whole house, I can cope with that, if it just means I finally get somewhere bought. Am sick of the search by now! And A/B-rated properties nearby are still going well over asking.

I may look back on this post a year from now and cry into my (very cold) beer...

We're not exceptional.

Canada, New Zealand and Australia are exceptional in that there was no real property crash post-2008. Whereas we're only hitting 2007 levels now, those three are miles ahead of 2007.

So you could argue they have a lot more scope to fall than we do.

i do agree with you but we shouldn’t forget the crazy lending and borrowing that occurred in Ireland that brought the country to over inflated levels pre 2008. The same situation wasn’t replicated everywhere but now many countries are likely to be experiencing what we experienced then. They will fall harder and faster, we have the lending limits constraining normal buyers, but I think a lot of money has flowed into the irish property market from these countries mentioned as we are cheap in comparison and after covid people have come home to a highly constrained market rapidly increasing prices. Will house price increases here reverse now as the global housing market comes down and buyers purchasing property resumes on a fairer level? With everything happening I’d be very surprised if we didn’t see a correction here. It remains to be seen though.

Not true. Canada is having the housing issue we had in 2007 which was speculation not lack of supply.

We aren't exceptional we just aren't the same mostly because we had a previous crash these countries didn't. The fact we used to have the highest home ownership in the world and long term renting was extremely rare here are also large factors not relevant in other countries. WE have huge differences to the countries you mentioned such as not having control over our local interest rates. For all the similarities there are enough differences to know our market is different to theirs which isn't an exception.

It's worth noting that the market collapses when many people cannot afford housing. If you are waiting on the collapse, the question is will you be one of the many people if it does come?

It is pure exceptionalism to think that the market could collapse and these individuals not be impacted by the cause of the collapse - thinking that they could then pick up a bargain.

Oh I remember these people before 2007. When the crash happened they were all laughing about how they knew it would happen and they would pick up a bargain. They had invested in the stock market instead of property with the belief the property would crash but their stock would maintain value and grow. That came out as a big shock when stocks tanked, they lost their jobs and the banks weren't lending.

They had a reprieve as rents dropped for a bit so they laughed at people in negative equity paying more for a mortgage than rent. People even gave their properties back to the council that they bought with government plan to help them buy as the saw they could rent for less than mortgages.

Buying a property is a marathon not a sprint and people would do well to truely consider their personal circumstances rather than speculation on what the market will do. In the boom days many people bought cars, appliances etc.. on their mortgages. They heard it was cheaper than getting loans but never understood that was on the grounds you paid it back as quickly as a regular loan not just left on your mortgage. That is how we get the partially informed making huge decision without understanding what they are doing. The speculation here is dangerous as it is not fully formed information with people only partially understanding what they are reading on top.

No point in gloating about what is a gamble that you may win at when you never knew it was a gamble

I've seen people on r/Ireland for example absolutely itching for a property crash as they say they cannot afford to buy now. However these same people believe that they will be immune from the headwinds that cause property to crash. There is a complete lack of understanding that in order for prices to fall, property has to be completely unaffordable for those actually buying at the current price or there is some other reason thousands of buyers leave the market.

Those itching for a crash will likely still be priced out due to the unavailability of credit when it comes. I would've loved to have picked up a period redbrick in Rathgar in 2014, going for 450k, but it was a cash only market at the time.

So unless these people are sitting on mountains of inflation eroded cash, they won't be buying in the crash either.

I'm lucky we caught the bottom of the market the last crash. The thing is two factors need to be kept in mind, if you delay buying they will be paying back smaller sum over a short time so the cost of servicing the debt could well be the same. Also if you are buying in a falling market forget about a 10% deposit you'll need at least 20%