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

There are over 20k people on the Fair Deal scheme alone btw. So whip them off whatever number you are using.

Regardless, what you are talking about is irrelevant. If people are hypothetically deciding not to rent out or sell properties, then by all means hit them with a vacant property tax, but the real solution is still to build more houses. If you want to buy or rent a property, houses that are vacant but not on the market might as well not exist. They are irrelevant.

Vacancy discussion is to go here. And never back on this thread.

In terms of fixed rates I think the BoI 4yr green rate of 3.65% (accounts for recent increase) is lowest fixed I have seen but no cash back on that.

CCPC website has very good comparison tool.

Interesting article in the Journal today on the housing numbers: https://www.thejournal.ie/housing-targets-6132292-Jul2023/

Some highlights:

"A recently published report, commissioned by Fianna Fáil MEP Barry Andrews and carried out by Brussels-based group Housing Europe, lays out a critical piece of the puzzle. Looking at the period between 2011 and 2022, it estimates Ireland should have built 345,000 homes to meet demand. Instead, just 163,000 were delivered – leaving a shortfall of 182,000.

This matches up with estimates from the Central Bank. In a report published in 2019, the organisation said Ireland should have built about 27,000 homes a year to meet demand. But what we actually built was an average of 10,500 homes per year, leaving a big gap which has been growing every year.

The problem is, while everyone knows this, it isn’t factored into the Housing for All estimates. “They look at it fresh every year,” says Dara Turnbull, the author of the Housing Europe report. “They assume, in year one of the housing plan, that everyone who needs a house has one. They don’t say ‘We’re basing this on population growth, plus the 182,000 that we also need.

So the result of this is that even if the government hits its Housing for All targets, there would still be a shortfall of 182,000 homes which was never addressed. “It’s fundamental,” Turnbull says.

[...]

Unpublished research by the Housing Commission, first reported in the Irish Times earlier this year, suggested Ireland should actually be aiming for between 42,000 and 62,000 homes annually."

I already have

all the data supports a housing shortage

It doesnt matter what the state aims for. They can only build whatever amount of houses they can build at a maximum rate. And our maximum rate is nowhere near what it needs to be., In fact id say its not much higher than we are at now.

The problem here is that they let it go on too long. Its like if you had a leak in your boat and you start bailing with buckets straight away and you have another couple of buckets you ncrease the rate you are bailing. You can keep control of it. If you wait to have a smoke before you start bailing you will be so far behind you will never ever catch up. That is where i believe we are now at this point.

Big numbers going in Accenture job cuts.

Not directly property market related, but arguably could be indirectly related if others are similarly hit.

To go back to the original point. There is no bigger bucket. The buckets are too small. Where are we going to find a bigger one. Never mind that the water is coming in way, way faster than the volume of the buckets we have.

Its gone too far. We can try as hard as we like, and im not saying we shouldnt, but we will never, ever catch up at this stage now.

To say we can't build more than 30k a year is massively defeatist. There is no reason why this is impossible. But there are barriers. If we address the barriers there is nothing stopping us.

The main barrier (as I see it) is probably labour shortages. The way this can be solved is to incentivise people to get into construction, de-incentivise other areas. This could be through tax credits, fully funded apprenticeships, reduced funding for non-construction sector college courses, direct state contracts, publicity campaign for careers in the industry, fully funded conversion courses etc. Import labour by loosening visa requirements for those in construction sector, restrict visa requirements for other sectors, bonus payment for those who come, ability to bring family members, tax breaks for workers. Other things that could be done are look at where the labour bottle necks are and see if there are ways to optimise them - are there too few in certain trades, is a lot of time wasted by waiting on state bodies, are there planning or capital issues that slow projects down. Is the construction labour force tied up in other areas that don't solve this emergency (home renovation, hotel and office construction, infrastructure construction etc.). Can we remove all grants for home renovation, "ban" hotel and office construction and really look at which infrastructure projects we take on versus solving housing crisis.

There are other areas too - planning process, capital, developers sitting on land/properties etc.

There is nothing stopping the government actively targeting these challenges. But step one would have to be admitting the problem (too few houses and targets not ambitious enough) and then figuring out the barriers to getting scale we need (labour, capital), then introducing schemes to remove these barriers.

Not admitting the problem is the worst thing we can do.

This is how you might solve the problem. I 100% believe that FG an FF know this. But that they do not want to solve this problem due to the impact it will have on the house prices of their core voters.

Do you have any other examples of obvious large layoffs that we should expect in the near future?

Just a very rough idea of the timeline and numbers involved e.g. X workers to be laid off in Facebook in 2024 etc.

Perhaps even an idea of numbers for any other similar consulting firms that we should see in the near future?

Isnt it not long since we had the same tax suggestions about IT workers?

Or teachers living in Dublin.

Or Gardai.

Not going to happen.

Wishful thinking.

All of these things are possible. They might be difficult but if there was will they could be implemented. I don't really understand why you think they are impossible? I'm assuming you are so jaded with decades of lack of progress in key areas that you find it hard to believe anything can be done to solve things. I can understand that.

Is it Malahide the Dublin suburb you are talking about?