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

Having near 20% unemployment also helps make housing cheap...

I'd say the 1 in 5 who didn't have a job don't look back on it quite as fondly as some in this thread

I know quite well what ESG is. My reservations come from my own belief that the people who are in charge (at least in the West) are not acting in the best interests of the people over whom they govern. I'm fully aware that I may be wrong, but after the last few years, I for one simply do not trust the state or global financial system.

Also, how can you be so sure that the policies that ESG espouses are indeed beneficial? All that I see in the West is an increasing costs, declining standards of living and society that is fragmenting.

I could be wrong, of course...

Conspiracy theory Forum is below this one. This is a final warning on this, there have been others on this thread before.

Do not reply to this post

grocery price inflation in UK running at about 16.5% - 17.2% according to Sky News are we any better here?

many house holds here now coming under pressure again with cessation of energy credits while still no sign of price cuts from providers

as one previous poster mentionned the real pain has yet to come when many short term fix rate mortgage terms expire and tens of thousands of mortgage holders brace themselves when they find they are on much higher rates costing hundreds extra every month

Far more teacher training days now than there were strikes in the 80's

Covid and the energy crisis have brought the coats back into the classroom

In the 80's mortgage lending was 2.5 times income 1 plus 0.5 times income 2 giving a total of 3 times income, we are now at 8 times (4 + 4) with new homes prices well out of reach of the median income. This is with ftb grant, shared ownership, and tax breaks for developers.

This pretty much underlines how one sector has held the entire economy to ransom in relatively short period of time. Pure dysfunction and cronyism

You mention Advant, but they only take the low hanging fruit by only accepting applications from absolute prime borrowers.

I dont know what Advant's market share is, but Finance Ireland and ICS Mortgages had 15% market share between them in 2022. Their lending has since stalled. FI is now 6.2% variable. If they cant source alternative source of funds to lend at comparable rates there is a risk they will exit the mortgage market, further consolidating the stranglehold AIB & BoI have on the market.

The government policies do nothing to make houses affordable, they only make unaffordable houses affordable.

I was absolutely furious when they announced it but I know people who were waiting at the end of 2022 for that to come in so they could borrow more and have more affordability. It never entered their mind that everyone they were competing against were in the exact same position and the only winner there would be the seller.

The only reason that legislation changed in 73 was because it had to if we were to join the EU. The reality was that it lived on long after that and it was only in the late 80’s and early 90’s that married women entered the workforce in large numbers.

Source: https://www.esri.ie/system/files?file=media/file-uploads/2016-09/QEC2016AUT.pdf.

Come up so many times in this thread, but again, the government have no influence over lending limits. Thankfully it is all controlled by the CBI.

I agree the timing of increasing them was unfortunate, but it has absolutely nothing to do with the government.

The Central Bank did a public consultation on it. The public was overwhelming in favour of increasing the limits.

They wouldn’t just take it 100% at face value and follow it blindly. They would just gather views of lots of people and use it to assist their decision making process. Fairly common thing for them to do on a variety of topics. Should in theory help to avoid narrow thinking by a relatively small number of fairly like minded people.

The reason I mentioned it was just there’s regularly an accusation throw out here along the lines that Leo Varadkar personally increased lending limits to increase house prices despite nobody wanting it to happen. Nope, it was decided by an independent body and widely welcomed by the vast majority of the public (I’d argue that they were misguided but, hey, that’s just my opinion!).

The CBI is made up of a lot of professionals of varying backgrounds jumping in and out of private sector, often stopping in CBI just to boost their CV. I know lots and lots of them, current and former, many towards the very top. I can assure you, they couldn’t care less what Leo Varadkar or any politician thinks of them. He has zero power/influence over them and their professionalism and long term career ambitions way outweigh making reckless decisions purely to gain some political favour.

And if you think Gabriel Malkhouf -

A) Was personally involved in the lending limit change in any material way

B) Made his individual contribution under some Godfather style intimidation by a politician that he’d be fired if he didn’t (which is close to impossible to do)

then lol. Belongs in conspiracy theories forum tbh.

All the above totally aside. If you do insist the government control lending limits in some sort of shadowhand way and do so purely to increase house prices - then why on earth would they preside over some of the most stringent lending limits in a first world country?? Even after the 4x we’re still very conservative relative to peers, so if anything as a proponent of low LTI limits (I am also btw), you should be praising them.

Unfortunately in Ireland it has become the norm to just blame all of life’s woes on ‘the government’. Sometimes it’s justified, but reaching like this just detracts from genuine mistakes they make.

It has been suggested that unused commercial real estate such as office buildings be converted to housing units to tackle the housing shortage. From the governments perspective, I can see why they would not be enthusiastic about such a move and why converting them to migrant accomodation would be preferable. You see, if office space is made available for housing, that would increase the supply of housing units which would put downward pressure on house prices. The government wants house prices to stay high, at any cost because they don`t want people defaulting which would put further downward pressure on house prices.

Hence the government`s preference for migrant accomodation over increased house supply. Besides, as young Irish people emmigrate, I guess they want the migrants to stay and pay the 200 billion they borrowed to inflate house prices beyond their reach.

The bigger issue is the cost of converting offices into housing whilst is actually quite high, the building regulations are very different.