Irish Property Market chat II - *read mod note post #1 before posting*

looks like crippling inflation is feeding into planned state infrastructure projects now too:

"School patron bodies have said they are "bitterly disappointed" by a Department of Education decision to put on hold the construction of 58 new school buildings across the country."

A total of €860m has been allocated for school building projects for this year. In 2022 €792m was initially allocated but that was later augmented by an additional circa €300m, bringing the total for 2022 to €1.12m.

https://www.rte.ie/news/2023/0309/1361112-school-constructions/

I think you're missing the point a bit? A central case can be 'negative', even a positive case can be 'negative' if the overall outlook is bad. The central case is just what they consider to be the most likely

We have had ten years of growth off an artificial low. The low caused a situation where we had very few houses build for 6-7 years. The first 3 years of that growth was in Dublin only and the next two years only larger urban centres benefited

In the last five years our population has grown by 10% and that is ignoring the Ukrainian refugees. Dublin suffers from a massive shortage of construction labour. 50% of that workforce travels in and out of Dublin every day and needs a premium over what they would earn local to them.

Travel costs have further exasperated that along with carbon taxes adding to construction costs. There is no magic bullet. Unless the price of construction of new houses drops substantially ( which no one can see) it would take circumstances that would cause significant structural issues in this country's to drop prices by more than 10-15%

There are some posters that think shafting certain sections of society will cause a situation where prices will drop significantly. They would quite willing shaft the rental market, the Ukrainian refugees, refugee's in general, older people who have bought and paid for there houses years ago etc to achieve a short term price collapse with no consideration of medium or long term problem that would arise.

I accept what you say, and I don't really disagree. However, let's imagine that the growth continues unabated. What will happen then? If there is a crash, a lot of people will lose out, but if things carry on as they are, so too will many others. You mention older people who have bought and paid for their houses, but what about younger generations who cannot even acquire a house?

Regarding what you say about the growth being on top of an artificial low, could one not equally say that the Celtic Tiger was an artificial high? It was made possible largely though an abundance of credit. Indeed, the growth that has come in the 2010s was largely through the "printing" of fiat money, and that went nuclear during the lockdowns.

As I see it, the current chasing of constant growth is not going to go on forever.

Well then they will be hitting the wall. At some point they are going to have to cut their profit margins a lot thinner. Construction output is down over 20% over the last 2 years and this will continue as people who were going to be getting work done this year or next will be locked out of lending with the higher and higher interest rates. So the question will be who last longer a person who may or may not need work done or a builder who needs to work to pay the bills

The government profiteering (substantially) off housing needs to come to an END.

Good to see the news of the potential removal of CGT in certain scenarios.

Penny might be finally dropping with these idiots.

Here are a couple of simple solutions that the government could implement tomorrow:

1. massively increase property tax
2. a multiplier on same for vacant/underused/low density property.
3. Zero tax on building 6+ story apartment buildings inside the canals.
4. A new “antisocial objection” fee of €5000 to be allowed to object to an infrastructure project.

This is the exact reason we have such a shortage of construction workers now, and if we continue with that way of thinking it will stay that way.

Fluctuating wages don't exactly attract people into a career.

Unless efforts are made to make it a more stable industry, we are going to continue struggling to get people to do apprenticeships, and stay in the industry (and indeed the country).

The alternative is lose your young workforce to other countries in the next downturn, lose people to other industries - and we are still feeling the effects of that 15 years on from the last one.

I don't work in the industry, but with the country playing catch up on housing, and infrastructure, I think there's a long way to go before demand for construction dissapears.

Also with the energy targets we've signed up to, the retrofitting of housing, electric car infrastructure, clean energy projects etc.. all need construction workers.

This is a good point , add this to the fact that the Irish property market has been captured by big US capital and by controlling current sales and rentals are essentially monopolising the market . Our govt has no interest in changing this , just tinkering around the edges to placate lobby groups. The dividend in corporation tax from tech MNCs more than compensates for the dysfunctional property market , you cant have your bread and eat it.

I was surprised to hear that the UK is building more stock as it clashed with my own anecdotal experience, so I looked up the numbers.

UK built 204,000 homes last year, which works out at approx 3,000 per million population.

Ireland built 30,000 homes last year, which works out at approx 6,000 per million population.

Darragh O’Brien tells councils to buy 1,500 homes to prepare for evictions

Is this the most expensive transaction ever recorded on the Property Price Register? €255,375,000 !

What palace of sybaritic luxury and excess has been bought for this King's ransom?

None.

Looks like the site cost for a social/affordable housing scheme.

It's space for over 1,000 homes, 2 parks, shops, cafes, a community centre and a creche all within walking distance of the city centre. That's going to cost money.

1: Its not the 'least prime area of Dublin' whatsoever. Its very central and well serviced by public transport

2: €255,000 to build a house is all well and good (is it even enough?), apart from you know, the land you need to put it on! Guess what they're buying here? Land to build homes on