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

Fictional scenario as I don't know the exact figures.

So, if a tenant currently pays €200 per month and HAP pays €1300 per month, the landlord gets €1500. Now, under your scenario, the tenant tells the landlord that there's no more hap and they are only going to pay €200 per month but the landlord doesn't agree so they start eviction proceedings which can take years because of our stupid eviction laws.

Do you expect the landlord to take €200 per month in rent for the two or three or four years the eviction process takes? Pretty sh1t scenario if you are a landlord.

I'd agree with the removal of the subsidies if the subsidies were paid until the eviction process was complete.

Decrease IS possible.

Govt. lowers the amount the amount it pays in HAP by 20 - 30%.

They effectively control the rental market.

It would be hard on landlords.. but so what.

34 properties for rent in county Meath

34 Advertised on daft. Not the same thing.

That wouldn't be fair to the landlord. They have an agreed price for their property. You are forcing them to take a €300pm hit on their income. If a landlord can't suddenly up their rent by €300, they shouldn't be forced to take a cut of €300 either.

Your proposal has to be fair to both landlord and tenant.

Presumably your conclusion is that owner occupiers will be buying them? So that there will be one less rental property (and also one less renter).

So you'll be left with a smaller pool of renters, where you have removed the (presumably) wealthier ones so that it is even more concentrated in lower earners.......... I don't think that rents would be going up..........

Yes, probably owner occupiers because if rents were slashed, I doubt landlords would be buying them as an investment.

There may be some less renters if they buy properties but in many cases, the buyers will be people living at home with Mammy and Daddy while they save deposits.

Less properties will always mean rents go up - in the long term.

You can compare average salary to average house price, or compare median salary to median house price. What you're doing is comparing median salary to average house price in order to get the maximum unaffordability which is just massaging the numbers.

And average is not "the ideal couple", it's the average couple. Yes, if you're single it's harder and if you earn significantly less than average it's harder. But how would that ever not be the case?

Ah the poor auld landlords. We fought to get rid of them in the 19th century and now we welcome them with open arms. Oh and rack-rent foreign absentee landlords, we love you too.

Tell us the one about the blond girl and the three bears that a better fairy tale.

The reality is that most rentals are by single people or couples with no children. Most HAP is family units. Your whole idiotic fairy tale assumes that these family units on HAP can buy the property.

Now I will conceed that house prices might fall in the short term. However if they did it more likely the buyers would be young couples that have no families and that are often in shared accomodation.

So the Hap family unit get evicted and a couple with no children move out of a shared rental unit. So two people move into a unit previously rented by a family unit.

You are blinded by you dislike of LL and have no understanding of the market. Actually the more you waffle the more apparent it is you know nothing about building or rental. You seem to have an idealogical barrier to understand what will work and have this idea about a fairy tale ending that fails to deal with the reality on the ground.

Even your obession with a vacancy tax which will solve nothing. It's not enforceable on property where a person only own's a second property It's too easy to have a child appearing to rent it or to claim it's a property for you own personal use. Remember the present condition is that it is used for 30 days a year. Full occupancy will never be a condition for to avoid a vacancy tax

Even if it was it could take 2-3 years before it would bring property to the market

Like all the solutions by those who have idealogical positions they just do not work or will take too long to work.

The stick has been used as a solution for the last six years and has failed dismally. The assumption that all fairy tales have happy endings is not the reality that is out there.

So tell us the one about the brother and sister and the witch that was going to eat them next.

No need for the victim complex and paranoia. Not everyone who points out simple problems, solutions, and explanations that you don't like has some "dislike" of landlords (whatever that is supposed to mean anyway. anyone can buy a property and rent it out). There is a fundamental issue with public money being used to inflate private markets and to subsidize private, rent-seeking, enterprises.

A vacancy tax can be brought in under whatever rules and conditions are deemed appropriate. There is no fundamental law of physics that mandates whatever 30 day condition you think it should be.

While you could potentially put down a child as a tenant, well as I am sure you will know, that can and will affect the child's CAT lifetime allowances under normal circumstances (save the child being in full time education for example).

A couple could also pretend and say that one is living in another house but that could cause complications later in the event of a separation/divorce. While you might get away with it with Revenue, you would have additional risks such as insurance. If you insure a house as being occupied, and something happens and it has been unoccupied for long enough and they have evidence of that, well good luck getting your payout. Maybe you can lie to them and maybe you will get away with it. Or maybe you won't.

Just because some people might be able to lie to avoid it, doesn't mean that all will. And if it is high enough, it will pay them to monitor it and spot check certain individuals. That wouldn't catch everyone but it might deter some chancers.

If you take your blinkers off, you might realise that a solution for your imaginary family on HAP is to ramp up public housing and put them there. The State has loads of land. It is the one that builds the roads and transport networks and it is the one that controls planning and zoning. So rather than granting planning permission for a development of towers on a carpark in Blanchardstown, and contracting to buy back apartments at 460+k from it, in order to make GS happy, it could rezone land it owns in the area as residential.

Your solution isn't simple though. It's actually far from it and not realistic. I can't see how it would be workable as you've suggested it. You can't just rip away subsidies and expect that things will work out. Fair enough, there'd be some winners but there'd be an awful lot of losers.

If the subsidies are so good for landlords, why did the State have to make it illegal for landlords to refuse HAP clients?

An individual landlord does not have to accept HAP tenants in order to benefit from its effect on the market. Because it will raise all rents.

I find that people tend to understand the conceptual issues more easily when asked what do they think would be the effect of rents in an area (suppose no RPZ in that area) if HAP was doubled or tripled?

They will argue until the cows come home, convinced that HAP as it currently stands makes no difference, but when they run through that other hypothetical scenario, it is easier for them to understand that it does indeed inflate the market compared to there being no HAP.

HAP, and other subsidies, inflate the market, and then chase the market. How do they get to zero HAP - well first they have to admit there is a problem with that model. The first stage of any problem is identifying it and admitting it is there. The next step is to bite the bullet and get social houses thrown up. Import them in pre-facbricated if necessary. Get foreign firms to do it if they can do it quickly and for a more reasonable price. Once they can get ahead of the curve, it will become easier.

They won't be able to. The market rates will come down though. Not to that level but they will come down. I assume there is an in-between person who gets a bit of assistance (rather than just the binary of getting 0 or 1,300)? That persons HAP-less rent might decrease to the level they currently contribute.

The person on SW can go into social housing. The State owns a lot of land. It shouldn't be entering into pre-purchase agreements with Goldman Sachs for apartments @460+k each out in sh1tholes like Blanchardstown. Or what was the example a few years back in Dundrum? They rezoned a site for a German Fund and entered into an contract with the fund that they would rent the whole lot back from them for 25 or 30 years, at more than it would cost to buy them (never mind build them).

All the fund had to do was raise the money, hire a builder and then have it's guaranteed income. The State could probably have borrowed the money cheaper at a fixed rate less than it was agreeing to pay in rental payments.