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

Some posters have used every issues over the last 4-5 years to predict a house price collapse. Ukraine was, increase in interest rates, COVID, exit of LL's, vacant property tax, vacant site tax effects of Brexit and it would always start in 6 months time.

Nah Bass, I think get your kids to buy multiple houses quick... I heard on the grapevine the house prices are going up.

If by grapevine you mean "Daft quarterly report" or "CSO figures" then yeah I heard that too...

Might be a little early to wrap up 2023, but we can look back at the "Predicting 2023 Property Prices" thread (random post here)

From the opening poll post we can see the wisdom of crowds (even among the kind of crowds you get on boards.ie). The largest prediction cohort (+ 0-5% price increase) was more than a quarter of all respondents, with nearly 60% of respondents predicting somewhere between -5% to +5% price changes YoY, which I would put in the "fair enough" bracket.

But then of course you have the cranks, AKA herbalplants and the like, confidently predicting 20%+ price drops in 2023. Worth keeping in mind for any posters who want to apply some kind of weighting factor to the quality of advice being dished out here...

There is no chance of any falls in house prices.

There is simply so much demand, thanks to rising population, latent demand from people living with parents, and billions of savings on deposit.

Combine massive demand with low supply, result = prices rises.

The higher interest rates have cooled down the price rises, okay, but no falls.

You make great points in your posts. I don't think you should waste your time replying to posters who won't see any sense or logic.

For example, posters who think lots of rental property owners selling up makes no difference to the rental market. There seems to be lots of that thinking out there and I can't get my head around how people can be that naive. It's incredible!

Im now living with my parents until I can buy an apartment. We are sale agreed now for a 3 bed house in Meath. There are tenants in the house though so it all depends what happens with them. Im not of the glass is half full persuasion on this one.

We were renting a room in an old school friends 4 bed house for the last 4 years. He is away in Canada for the last 4 years. There were 2 other couples and a single person in the house with us.

Last year my friend decided that he wanted to sell his house because he said he just couldnt hack it anymore with the other tenants and we all got our notice. I moved into my parents and my gf moved into her parents when we moved out. One of the other couples wouldnt move out so the house isnt even sold yet. They were trying to persuade myself and another couple to stay and not bother moving out and we could drag it out for years. They are the only ones who wont move out though. The rest of us understand where the owner is coming from as we know him.

The other couple are pregnant and looking to buy a starter home now too but like us, having no luck so far.

The single room guy we were sharing with is gone back to his parents house too til he finds somewhere else. He is getting married next year and they will probably emigrate. That was a 4 bed house with 7 people in it. Now its a 4 bed house with 2 people in it who wont move out.

The market right now is just horrible. I cant see it getting any better

The next couple of months could be very telling in the everything bubble. Long bonds have lost more in the last 2 years than sharholders lost in the Gfc of 08/09

Its a bit more complicated than people engaging there brains, it's systemic. Issac Newton lost everything in a bubble.

David McWilliams explains it well on this Tuesdays podcast

And people saying a LL selling is a zero sum game accommodation wise

No idea. All I do know is they were trying to encourage the rest of us in the house to stay too and at the time they were saying they checked it out with threshold and were told that if we overhold it would be a minimum of 3 years we could stay before finally being made move out. Hopefully since they are on their own they wont be as bold, but its been a good few months now already.

Last I heard, my friend in Canada who is trying to sell the house now cannot buy the house they were sale agreed on over there because they cant get the money from this one and they still have a mortgage on it. I must send him an email and see what the current story is.

It is not zero sum - this has been explained to you many times over on this thread alone.

Rentals house more people per unit than an owner occupied house. So landlords selling up and leaving the market means more people are made homeless.

How is it not necessarily? where does the property go then? If there is a house that has 7/8 bedrooms then someone who needs those rooms will buy it and do their best to fill them. If the house that has 7/8 people in 2/3 rooms then its not fit for purpose to begin with. Your getting very specific. If a rental property kicks out its tenants they would be foolish not to rent it out again or to sell they would be losing money. If that is the case then a vacant property tax should be slapped on it at a rate that would discourage this practice but usually (it may take time) the property is sold and is either lived in or rented. So one property out of the rental pool and one property either back into the rental pool or pool for buyers

Agreed I never said they will come from the rental market. But do you think that these 7/8 people will live together in perpetuity if not then we need to look at the system and look at the pool of properties available? The fact is if it is a 7 bed house more than likely the buyer will have a need for 7 beds? The fact is its 1 property coming off the rental side and 1 property going back into the rental side or someone is buying it as they have a need like a big family or their parents moving in. Why would you buy a 7 bed gaff if you had no need for it? It may happen but I reckon this would be against the grain especially as prices for 7 beds are a lot more expensive. Also people on here are talking about houses that may have 3/4 rooms rented out so 4 people sharing why in your examples are you not including things like a family of 6 buying it and in this case more people are being housed - people are picking figures to suit the narrative.

Is there evidence that its only 2 people moving in? Is there any evidence that they wont be selling or re-renting? I mean not for nothing but a good way to get over the whole rental cap is to have a room yourself and rent the rooms individually you can charge more than the caps

The homeless accommodation has been freed up. Once again your getting very specific like to counter your analogy what if 4 people move out of the house share and one has enough to buy the 2 bed and all 4 move in and why are you seeing a couple as 1 that's just barmy I suppose if they have 8 kids its still only 1?? a couple is 2 ? and we have a lack of property for buying, renting and for homeless I have never argued otherwise. I am arguing the specific if a house is taken off the rental side as in the tenants are turfed out there is no way of knowing if more or less or the same amount of people are being housed in the house in question afterwards. In some cases it will be more in some it will be less and in some it will remain the same. Another scenario is if a house goes from being an owner occupier to full rental and they decide to slap 10 families in there?

Look the way the system is not helping anyone I completely agree.

I am talking of all properties not just specific example if the opposite was to happen where someone had a 2 bed and decided to rent it to a large family say 7+ people then there is a gain of the same numbers? You only have to look at primetime to see that this is happening in a large scale here.