Softening house market?

The hourly rates I quoted are for trades that are subcontracted in. These guys are all self employed. Most self employed electricians are subbing at 70/ hour for small mid sized jobs.

Builders stopped paying most of these by the hour years ago. Productivity was away too low. 12 years ago I talked to QA about it. A unionised blockies was laying about 200 blocks per day a subcontracted lad would do over double that. When I did my house direct build back in the early nineties a fifty year old blocklayer laid 400 blocks per day.

There is no sorting safe pass, no holiday entitlement or pension entitlement nor manual handling courses, the subbie sorts all them themselves. They provide there own safety gear, tools etc. The builder actually only provides the materials.

The 20/ hour is made up of two parts first is fuel. These guys mainly drive midsized or large vans. Fuel economy is usually around 25-30 mpg because there is often a trailer or material inside the van. A lad traveling 60 miles to and from a job is putting up 720/ week for a six day week. That's is 24 gallons or 108 liters. That is 200+/ week on fuel alone. Add in maintenance and van replacement 100-150/ week. Then you have the time factors, travelling that distance is taking 3 hours per day I'd not a bit with it. Different between that and local work is 20/ hour minimum.

Electricians are top of the rate pay wise. They have to have to have expensive test gear, there public liability is more( the general site liability will not cover them completely which for the wet trades and carpentry is grand). Test gear alone can be 5-6k depending on work taken on.

Plumbers are the next most expensive. The bricklayer, plasterers and Carpenters all work on output.

Even a Tiler or a painter are now around 200/day maybe even a tad above in some cases locally and they were always the most reasonable by far.

The reason most do not rent in Dublin is various. Electricians or plumbers because of security for there vans. A electrician near the city backs the van up against an L shaped wall that blocks access to both his side and rear doors. He has an alarm on the van and one of there steering wheel locks. He has a ground steel security poke in front as well.

Most of these lads are now in there forties they are gone from roughing it in rented accommodation. You have to factor in meal costs as well. Very few are interested in coming back to rented accommodation and preparing a dinner, sorting out meals for breaks the following day. At home the better half will have cooked meat, and cheese in the fridge, some will go to the deli counter for morning break and lunch. All of them want a dinner in the evening. Some of these lads could be burning 4-500 calories an hour.

The new year is less than 8 weeks away.. What's gonna happen in that time frame?

Things may slow down but there simply isn't enough tradesmen in this country, why would they just have no work overnight?

Wasn't the point of my post Bass. I wasn't even bothering to argue any of your figures. I think your figures are a bit off, but that is irrelevant to the point.

Which is that - if your argument is accurate - that person could decide to cut out all that expense and live in Dublin. Or to put that into reverse, and using your figures, a person working in construction down the country could be earning 800 Euro per week more if they rented a house in Dublin so that they didn't have all those bills you calculate.

Most of them are settled and living where they are. In Cavan, Louth, Meath, Carlow or Offaly they have a fairly decent house, the spouse could be working locally just like many others that commute in and out of Dublin.

Ya this discussion came up in another property thread 6+ months back. Its was another posters that said subcontracting trades people working in Dublin needed 1k/week to travel in and out.

If you stayed up there you would end up travelling up and down a day a week anyway. Nothing more boring than staying in a rented house, invariably you end up going for a few drinks 2-3 night a week, to watch a soccer match or to meet some other lad...or go chasing tail. Half the lads that do that end up separated.

If you are a sparky or a plumber, there is no way you will stay in rented accomdation. Some lads will stay in BnB or digs type accomdation for a day or two a week. But the reality is if you can earn X/week near home you will want X+Y to work in Dublin.

But Invariably they do not. They might get 4-6 weeks( some lads will do better) per year.youvwill seldom get 500/ day cash for a week or a few weeks work.

If you get all cash at the end of the day you need to lodge some of it.

I used to go to a doctor he used to charge me 40/visit, another lad used pay him by card and it was costing him 50/ visit. He changed to paying cash

There is signs of prices easing/droping look on myhome house prices are not going up like they were and in a lot of cases priced drops are being implemented and this is with the shot in the arm from the Central bank easing the 3.5 times you salary limit. Also most commodities have come back down Iron, steal, Lumber all back down to normal price levels. The only one staying high is concrete and even that has turned a corner. U.S just gone to 4% in interest rates we will be heading there too. WE are going to see a lot of people emigrating again over the next 24 months. Young people have no chance of being housed if they play by the rules (as in working in a job) either by renting or buying. Why would you stay here? I think we will see our housing crisis sorted by the old release valve of immigration. Already tech is showing sign of struggling big time. Big shifts coming in the likes of Intel, Microsoft, Google and Alpha in this country and with people being able to remote work they do not need to be in the country. Now add in that once the Ukraine war has ended people will go back and I never thought I would hear an Irish government telling refugees we are full but that is what is happening. So what do builders do when supply jumps off a cliff and access to credit is 3/4 times more expensive to get that extension done than this time last year. Not to mention a cost of living crisis, energy crisis, Covid still around and the war still being fought all fecking up supply lines and the man on the street looking at what he has left in his pocket, I can tell you now (As it has been this way throughout the history of recessions) big ticket items as in the new car or the extension gets taken off the list first. We will have to wait and see but I can see a huge release of pressure on housing in the next 12/24 months. It will be interesting to get a snapshot later today of Ireland unemployment rate and actual property prices for Sept and Oct of this year.

which is why there is also a comparison to the same time as the previous year. Padre its coming the signs are there as I say we wont feel it till January as Xmas is blocking a lot of peoples view at the minute.

Does anyone ever put price increases on individual houses?

On top the normal supply of private sector housing will also be coming to a standstill over the next 12 months due to the costs involved, this was flagged as soon as the ECB started talking about increasing Interest rates. So what do all of these construction workers do, they can emigrate where the same issues are apparently global or they can compete for work domestically.

I said pretty clearly that we don't know if prices are going to go up or down. I'm not saying people should / shouldn't wait or buy. What I'm disputing is when people justify their decision by saying that it doesn't matter if you pay more or less unless you're planning to sell later - it definitively does matter as the price you pay will affect your quality of life for decades.

Yes, but have the asking prices been reduced over time in those areas, for similar properties?

I'm in the process of buying a 400K+ apartment right now and I don't like what's happening. But it might be worse if I don't buy.

If prices do go down due to less affordability with higher and higher interest rates and people will be squeezed out (higher living costs and loss of employement could also hit) they will add more pressure on the rental market - especially first time buyers which I understand are a large proportion of buyers.

On the other hand more and more buyers could probably turn to the government scheme where they pay less but don't own their home entirely.

if the rental market goes up and selling prices go down it could also turn into a feast for vulture funds and anyone with large amount of cash.

Stripe letting go 14% of its worldwide workforce

Do you not think over 70% of the MNC based here will be part of the "Internet Economy" ?

I guess it is all speculation for now. They said the same thing in 2007 as well, but so have people been saying it for the last 8 years too..

Time will tell how we get along.