Is housing really that bad or is it just another hyped up 'crisis'?

The majority of LL would not be caught by interest rate hikes. However other costs are gone up. Now annual reg fee ya only 30-40 euro but it's an added costs. Electrical cert for a house 500+ every five years. A HAP inspection will invariable ost you 500-1k in bits and pieces. Recently had a leak, just to get the leak fixed was 120 euro. Getting the odds and ends fixed, a few doors planed so they will close again, hole in ceiling repaired, bit of painting is 2-3 days work, handy man is 150/ day( strictly cash to him) costing me 250-300 per day, I cannot get a handy man to take a cheque or get paid by bank transfer.

Property tax has gone up anything you get done now is 1k. I would hate to have to get a house repainted and they are only two bedroom it would be 2k++

institutionals dont like to buy up the odd house here and there. Its a nightmare for maintaining a network of properties dispersed all over, they prefer centralised like apartment blocks or housing estates.

When the small landlords sell up, its mainly council or PPR buyers. Great more people buying their own house, except that PPR houses have lower occupancy rates than rented houses (rented houses more likely to be house shares - a 4 bed house could have 4-6 people living in it when rented, when a homeowner buys it could be between 2-5, usually on the lower end.

What this means overall is that as rental market shrinks, the number of people without a place to live increases.

Too busy with fake crises like climate change and what flavour vape pen to get next

Average house price in Ireland is 7.3 times the average salary. This puts us better than 90% of the world, but worse than the US, worse than 3 or 4 European countries, and worse than some oil rich Arab countries who's economies are hardly comparable. We currently have some of the lowest interest rates of comparable countries (which has not usually been the case but our high level of savings on deposit due to our strong economy have allowed banks to absorb a lot of the recent rises) and have some of the strongest protections out there in the event that people can't pay their mortgage or their rent.

We do have issues with a lack of liquidity and options out there, but prices are not out of line with the majority of other developed countries at all. You often see people talking about how everyone is going to emigrate because of house prices when they compare premium locations in Dublin to locations in the middle of nowhere that have low salaries and high unemployment in other countries, when you may as well be comparing house prices in Longford to those in Kensington.

We enjoy high salaries and high standards of living in Ireland, and that is accompanied by high prices for most things because the people providing services have high salaries and have to comply with high standards throughout the supply chain. Being relatively isolated from the rest of Europe and having a relatively low population with less competition has an impact too. But it generally balances out for the most part.

It's a fair question and I think there are are likely several answers:

• it's been a long slow burn - much like the fabled frog in the pot of boiling water
• The people most affected are a dispersed grouping. You'll find them all over the country but they don't have that cohesive bond, that say, those in a union would have - which would make it easier for them to network and organise
• Learned helplessness. I remember there were threads back around 2010 wondering why people weren't on the streets protesting about the crash. A common answer was that unlike, say the French, Irish people didn't tend to protest. Now, to be fair since then we have seen the water charge protests and in recent times the migrant protests so maybe this is changing. You could argue as well that the housing crisis is the biggest driving force of the migrant protests. If there was capacity in the housing system refugees probably wouldn't be getting placed into buildings in small regional towns and villages. Also, a common trope that fuels the protesters is that migrants are getting on the housing list ahead of Irish people.
• People who own property are probably objectively unhappy with things like increased homelessness and hearing about horror stories in the rental market in the media but at the end of the day they are content to see their own equity expand. That's the reason, to answer your last question, why FF/FG are still on 40% support. They are content with the status quo. That is also, by the way, why you will never hear a politician from the major parties explicitly say that they think house prices need to fall. They will say that we need more affordable houses. They will say that we need more houses. They will say that we need more help for first time buyers. But they will never, never, never say that house prices need to fall. That's because they are signaling to the contended home owning class that, although they will pay lip service to fixing the housing crisis they can be trusted not to rock the boat.

They're not really addressing it though. All they're doing is shouting down everyone else's attempt to address it without providing solutions themselves.

They're absolute only manifesto is, "we're not FF or FG so sure how bad can we be...." and people are (and will continue to be) moronic enough to vote for them on that basis.

Have you thought about the fact that a lot of people who vote for FF and FG would like to see the housing crisis resolved, but don't think SF are the best or even a good option? It isn't either/or. I remember SF going on about the EU stealing billions in fish from us and also we were giving away hundreds of billions in gas and oil, huge deal apparently, complete silence about it now though for some reason. It seems they have managed to convince the younger generation that they can solve the housing crisis. I think if they do anything, it will be increasing social housing for the unemployed. There will be no more houses built, but the people getting them will be different.

Valid criticism is fine. But you lumped every single landlord into one group and reckoned they were all lazy ba5tards, don't do maintenance on their property and rob tenants blind while wiping their ar5e with €500 euro notes......sort of.

Hang on now. Do you realise what you are saying?

If someone can't pay the agreed rent because the Government are stopping the subsidies, you expect the landlord, out of their own pocket, to drop the rent and effectively subsidise the tenant themselves? Get ta fcuk.

You seem to want tenants to have rights and landlords to have none.

Fine. No subsidies then. Let everyone on HAP try find their own accommodation and pay for it themselves. That'll work out very well.

It will be up to you as regards whether you want to negotiate a new, actual market, rent with your tenants which they can afford, or to commence proceedings to evict them (for however long that takes) in order to replace them with different tenants who will still only want to pay the new actual market rent.

You will have the same rights as previously. As will the tenants.

The State can use the billions saved to buy in prefabricated modular buildings for new social housing as well.........given that we keep being told that there are no Irish builders left.