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

I'm not talking about vacancy, and have no interest in getting into another pointless back and forth about the difference between long term and short term vacancy etc.

I'm simply making the point that it is amazing how many people, experts included, think using the metrics of population and average household size is a perfectly reasonable way of estimating how many houses are required to sufficiently accommodate a growth in population, whilst simultaneously ignoring those exact same metrics in assessing whether we have enough existing housing stock to sufficiently accommodate our existing population.

It seems totally ridiculous to me.

Because the problem we have has been caused more by the grossly inefficient allocation of existing stock rather than a catastrophic shortage of new build stock.

Taking measures designed to increase the efficiency of allocation could solve, or at the very least alleviate, the problem far quicker than ramping up new build supply.

The narrative that the only solution is to build more is creating a blind spot resulting in a ridiculous situation in which the argument goes something like this:

The vacancy argument is a pointless one because as long as people are convinced 100k odd units are irrelevant because they were probably occupied a few weeks either side of the census, it's a circle that cannot be squared.

Hence why I was concentrating on the total population and average household size.

That shows that we don't have enough people to fill those 100k units either side of the census. Or else the CSO somehow missed counting the guts of 300k people in the census.

Whatever way you look at it the data is pointing to a problem of inefficiency rather than new build supply.

Ok let, me put it another way.

If we are to believe there were approx 100k unoccupied dwellings that were turnover stock between tenants/owners on census night, and were probably occupied a few weeks either side of census night, that is a conservative estimate of 250k people moving out of old properties and into new properties around that time.

Where were those 250k people housed on census night?

And what happened to the properties they moved out of?

Based on your avoidance of the question I take you've finally seen the problem with the explanation that approx 100k houses were simply between occupants at that point in time?

Obviously it's because the new occupants would have vacated approx 100k houses and thus obviously there would yet another 100k houses on the market for rent or sale simply between occupants at another point in time a few weeks later.

And so on and so forth. It's very simple logic.

If you're theory was correct, then obviously adding another 30k new builds to the market every year would cause prices to drop significantly. The fact that they are not dropping casts doubt on your explanation rather than mine.

I haven't questioned the validity of esb measurements. I've only questioned the explanation that the bulk of these properties are unoccupied for a few weeks. It doesn't hold up to any scrutiny. As you can see yourself.

From CSO national vacancy rate in ireland (based on metered electricity consumption ) is under 5%. Less than 100k actually unoccupied long term. That sub 5% vacancy rate is low by European standards.

Can you show me where you are getting the comparison with European standards from? i.e that our long term rate as per ESB is low?

If you can link to that, I will happily point out the flaw in the comparison.

You need enough units empty and available for sale so that the whole thing keeps moving. We do not right now, as we are severely supply constrained.

Yes. Totally agree with this. Empty and available for sale. Or rent.

We're supply constrained with the existing stock that is available for sale. We need to address the problems of why that it is. Solely focussing on building new stock to try solve this problem is shortsighted.

This has been debunked numerous times. The CSO only includes what they consider to be habitable dwellings in their count of vacancies.

Granted, perhaps their definition of habitable does not mean somebody can move in tomorrow, but it is highly likely that somebody could move in, in less time than it would take to build a brand new house from scratch.

And it is highly unlikely the 33k available rentals were un inhabitable.

And the 100k properties available supply I mentioned in post you quoted were specifically referring to those properties tummy disregarded because he thinks they were probably occupied a few weeks after census night.

Some of the highest vacancy rates in the country are in Dublin 2,4,6 and South Dublin.

Dublin is one of the few areas in which vacancy rates are increasing.