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

Rental figures and trends for mid west

Limerick Council dealing with 231 notices to quit, that's almost 13 times the number of properties available for rent in Limerick City/suburbs

Meanwhile the state is stepping up the purchase of these homes served with notice to quit. Alot of money spent shuffling supply, rather than delivering new supply. We all know the winners and looser in that game

​Ireland’s largest construction company, John Sisk & Son, recorded a 40pc drop in pre-tax profit as inflation and supply chain woes hit the builder’s margins last year.

And yet private landlords are still stuck with 2% increases.

The leasing of social homes at scale is such an absolute con, its one of the worst policies the FG governments have made in relation to housing.

Billions of euros spent already, and vastly more to be spent in the years to come, on renting assets instead of buying them. And taking tens of thousands of housing units out of the private rental market while they're at it, jacking up prices massively for everyone else.

If FG hadn't been so ideologically opposed to the state just building the damn things over the last decade we'd be in a much better place today.

I understand why we weren't building, hindsight is 20/20 vision, but in 2013 we had ghost estates all over the country and we were still on our knees after 2008 (maybe there were signs we were turning the corner, but I started renting an apartment in Ranelagh in 2013, for €900 a month! You wouldn't get a shed in Tallaght for that now).

A genuinely can't see how HAP can be unwound. Some mess.

Much the same as me, except it was Four Courts. It was only upto 1100 by the time I was turfed out in 2020..

The average cost per built social housing unit in 2019 was 239k. Assuming an average cost per unit of say 200k in 2013 then building 5000 extra social housing units would have cost the state €1bn (assuming absolutely zero economies of scale from building in larger numbers, which is likely inaccurate).

Then take away positive revenue feedback from VAT, PAYE on wages related to the construction etc. And social welfare savings from having construction workers working instead of on the dole. And the yearly savings from not spending money on HAP from 2014 on-wards.

You're looking at actual additional costs to the state of 500-900mn (at absolute most) per year. That would have made very little difference to our overall deficit, the opposition and most of the country would barely have noticed - never mind crucifying anyone. I very much doubt any of the opposition FF or SF TDs would have been calling for the state to lease social housing instead of build it given the former's strong construction industry links, and the latter's ideology.

The EU deficit rules are completely irrelevant, as evidenced by your own post - and by in the last 30 years plenty of EU countries breaching it all the time.

5000 social housing units a year would have been a completely realistic, achievable goal with very little effort over the last decade. We built 9000 odd social housing units in 1975 for example, when the population was only 3.2mn - vs 4.6mn in 2013. And at a time when we were in a much more difficult economic position as a country than in the mid/late 2010s.

There were 90,000 households on the social housing list in 2013. The crisis was already brewing.

In 2013 there were TDs in the dail literally asking about plans to build more social housing to address this: "Deputy Bernard J. Durkan asked the Minister for the Environment, Community and Local Government the extent to which in the course of a review of the full extent of the local authority housing need arising from failure of his predecessors to make adequate provision in this regard, any plans have been put in place, to reintroduce a capital housing programme with particular reference to addressing the housing crisis"

Or: "Deputy Michael P. Kitt asked the Minister for the Environment, Community and Local Government the proposals in place for increased provision of social housing; and if he will make a statement on the matter"

etc

Those two TDs above are from FG & FF, nevermind the left wing parties who have always consistently called for it.

The National Economic and Social Council in 2014 were already releasing papers calling out the dangers of leasing social housing instead of building it: http://files.nesc.ie/nesc_secretariat_papers/No_10_Review_of_Irish_Social_and_Affordable_Housing_Provision.pdf

The idea that nobody saw this coming is completely untrue. There were plenty of people calling for the state to build social housing instead of lease it throughout the last decade - it was a deliberate, conscious, decision to ignore them.

I wonder what planet people are on when they say it would have been cheaper and better if the government had built the necessary housing rather than providing state support payments to help house the recipients. What is it that makes them think that that volume of housing could be built on time and at projected costs? Nothing in our history has supported such thinking.

HAP is the cheapest way of housing social tenants for the government and LA's. It limits there liability and forces LA's to carry out management of tenants for them.

HAP or a firm of it was in place since the early noughties. There was no way the IMF was allowing the government to spend money on house building. It's incorrect to say the giveaways doing nothing. There is as inner city regeneration going on during this period but funds were limited.

Labour is the limiting factor in house provision nowadays. During the mid 1900's we had a cheap sour e of skilled building labour( 50-70%) immigrated and build the US and UK infrastructure.

We cannot access the same cheap labour now. Factories in Limerick, Galway and Cork are full of former construction workers. They can earn 50k+ every year and not get wet or have to travel longer distances to work

I'm not saying HAP is not cheap for the gov, I'm saying it's not fair on private renters.