Softening house market?

Current experience is it's a mixed bag out there. In the areas I'm looking in on the Northside if Dublin, I've seen a number of houses that have been sitting there for two or more months with no offers, despite price reductions. Generally these are in not great to poor condition or were listed too high in the first place.

On the other hand, have seen houses in ok to good condition, priced low/accurately go sale agreed at very high prices within a couple of weeks.

For the ones that aren't moving, I've heard a few agents say the vendor is "waiting for January" in the hope that the mortgage rules will kickstart things again. Interestingly though, BOI are already offering approval in principal at the higher LTI ratio so you would think we'd already be seeing some of this trickle into the market if it there was going to be a big bang in January.

Most interesting, and heartening from a buyer's perspective, some of the houses sitting for months with no offers were previously sale agreed at 20/30 over the asking they can't currently achieve.

And most disheartening from a buyer's perspective, some houses continue to go sale agreed at what are likely all-time record high prices.

It's most certainly not a tangent. It is in response to your obsession about en-suites. You appear to think that if, instead of having 50 student apartments, we just built 10 semi-Ds and squashed 5 students into each, that it would solve the problem. I am trying (unsuccessfully it seems) to explain to you that it would actually be more efficient and profitable for everyone involved to build the 50 apartments.

As per development knowledge, it appears you only have the small-time amateur developer mentality. Developers building large blocks of accommodation aren't going into the bank, cap in hand, after each stage of the building process trying to get a few quid to do the next stage. The piecemeal amateur hour approach is one we need to get away from as it is a large part responsible for why the market here is so dysfunctional.

You appear to acknowledge that your grandparents had a great standard of living for their time (but by todays standards they probably most certainly would not). You have made some progress but I fear you may not have the capacity to extend that to understand the point I was making. Which is that you cannot compare a standard from 40 years ago absolutely with a standard today. In the same way that students are not necessarily pampered and lazy today because they won't accept the same standards that you imagine you persevered through 40 years ago, it is equally not legitimate to compare your standard of living today with your grandparents of 40 years ago.

In other posts you imply that your better standard of living today compared to your 20's is because "it was paid for" with your hard work. If you want to compare absolute levels and use your logic then your grandparents could have had central heating and a couple of TVs and a couple of foreign holidays a year. Well if only they weren't lazy and spending it all on avocados. You did it with your hard work. They didn't. Must have been just lazy like today's students.

Plenty of houses for sale at the moment. And refugees won't be buying them.

I agree mental money. Where is all this cash coming from for housing refugees, sure our tax. Yet not used for where it is needed.

One thousand apartments would not solve the supply issues. It's estimated, I believe, that 50k units per year for the next ten years will be needed to meet demand, and I think that that figure was posited some time ago, so it may well be out of date. Assuming that it isn’t, that’s 500k units. Where will these units be built, and how will they be paid for? Is the manpower to build them available? Are the materials available?  I’m not trying to belittle you, but the often cited solution of building more houses is a very easy thing to say.

This problem needs to be resolved, and we no longer have the luxury of avoiding sensitive issues. As I see it, we are simply beyond the point of crisis and heading towards an outright disaster.  

Please explain how you think this is going to effect us ? Bet you cant.

I think everyone thinks that its free and easy to build houses in both cost and time. They seem to think "oh, we need 100,000 houses, just build them next year. All done". You need to get the money to build them. And you need time to build them. They dont appear magically once you decide you want to build them.

We are so far behind now and have put so much bureaucracy into housing, we will never ever catch up. So not only have they destroyed housing, as you rightly say the contagion is spreading now. The tourist sector is almost gone now. We will feel that in the summer. Next comes increased taxes to pay for all the damage they have done.

This is nonsense. Politicians have a vested interest in being reelected and we live in a true democracy where the "elites" you describe aren't guaranteed anything. The vast majority of civil servants are on pay scales not particularly out of line with the private sector and have families and need homes just like everyone else.

The reason it's the same in pretty much every developed country on earth regardless of government type is that it's an incredibly difficult problem to solve, not some massive conspiracy by people pulling the strings, no matter how much populist opposition parties like to pretend otherwise. The only reliable way to reduce house prices is to crash the economy and that helps nobody. In the meantime you're dependent on increasing supply but there is only so much labour available, materials are hugely expensive, land in desirable areas is finite, and while everyone says we need more houses, the reality is that nimbyism is rife and most object to them actually being built in their area.

The only way out of this now is to build 10s of thousands of low quality housing in the middle of the country somewhere. Doing it the way they are now is increasing the costs and slowing the process. Build a Tallaght style development out on a greenfield site in the middle of nowhere with the promnise that the other facilities will come after people are housed. Of course they wont come because they never do, but at least there will be an amount of people housed that can make a difference.

We are where we are and cheapness and great speed is the only way to get anywhere near the amopunt of houses you need. But people will object. Noone wants that development besdie them. Noone wants to have to move that far from Dublin. Noone wants cheap houses. Noone wants everyone bunched together because of anti social issues. Noone want to move in anywhere without all the other facilities being there first.

In short its never going to happen, we will continue as we are, not playing catchup, but actually accelerating in falling further behind. There was a time when there was a way out of this, but I just dont see it now.

Its probably worse. Its the 70s and 80s model. Either we can house a lot of people fast (will never be cheap, but not as expensive as the other option) and have a glimmer of a hope of ever catching up or we house few people slowly and expensively in good quality housing and never catch up.

I dont think there is a middle ground. To be hinest I dont even think the fsast way is anywhere near fast enough either at this point.

I think that that's what he's saying; it cannot be done. As I said earlier in the thread, the estimated level of housing needed is 500k units by 2030, and I believe that that figure predates the conflict in Ukraine. Either way, the bill for that much housing will run into tens of billions, if not more.

Also, there is the environmental impact to consider. How much land would be needed for that much housing? How much CO2 would be emitted in the building thereof? How much strain on the environment would that many more people inflict?

You need to take this in conjunction with properties for sale which is starting to decrease again.