"average Dublin house prices should fall to ‘the €300,000 mark" according to Many Lou McD.

Not sure it's been said in thread already...what happened when you were growing up was not normal or sustainable. People buying new cars and holiday homes, her, Spain, Bulgaria, etc., all on credit should not be normalised for any generation.

My parents bought a house in 1956, worked hard, took in a lodger, had no holidays. That was normal for them.

You need to understand that for most people under 40 (and judging by the level of Armani and Canada Goose I see on teens its worse for under 20s) grew with with that as our base level of normal. Thats the measure of life for us, so anything less and we are unhappy, like I feel like a failure for my lot in life. So we wont vote back in parties that have us living below our base standard.

When I can afford to turn on the heating without giving it a financial thought. When home ownership reaches over 80% again. When we see no cars on the road over 5 years old and the 5 year old ones are driven by 17 year olds (my memories of 2006/07), when my co workers are doing their xmas shopping in New York again, then we can talk about a recovery.

Quote of the year right here

when my co workers are doing their xmas shopping in New York again, then we can talk about a recovery.

Absolutely incredible.

I can only say to you that you sound like you got everything you wanted when a kid ....that in my view is never a good way to start out in life. Yes, it's fun, etc but look where it's got you...wanting more, and more .

A lot of the CG and Moncler clothing are copies, fakes...because a generation want a lifestyle and clothing they cannot afford.

I take it you are being slightly tongue-in-cheek? However your point still stands in a way. That's what was base level normal during your/our formative years. One cannot really rewire ones brain and say tell it "oh that wasn't sustainable". One can realise that it wasn't however there's no getting around one feeling worse off/things not being as good as they used to be.

Personally we were a single income family with Dad in the civil service and being debt adverse there was no major boom in our house. Also a lot of the people doing these things were really not actually wealthy in the true sense of the word, just running around on borrowed money. Actually getting poorer while the real wealth got wealthier.

And? Are you saying because it’s in Dublin it’s better than a cert he would have got from Letterkenny?

No. I'm saying he went to college and got in through the cao system. Just pointing out that he didn't do a national cert to get into college. That's all.

Most of the Armani and Canada Goose you see are fake clothes which are easily acquired now

Ebay, Ali express etc is easily available to everyone now as people on the majority have easy and fast access to the internet

Not sure why you think only 17 year olds drove 5 year old cars. That’s just a baffling statement

The going to New York for Christmas shopping was few and far between. Mostly discussed because the odd person did and it was blown out of proportion because Irish people could never even contemplate doing it before, plus they never considered that someone might have saved for 2 years to do that.

Depends on what you think are "Working class people"

99% of the people I knew working during the Celtic Tiger never went to New York to do Christmas shopping.

I think the poster is hoping for a free house while they continue to spend above their means

At this stage it's starting to become a piss take and ruining the thread. None of this makes any sense, one minute they are claiming they can't buy an apartment. The next they are heading to New York to do shopping

If we increase housing output from 33k to 50k or even 75k, then the economy would be growing, as every builder would be flat out.

A massive increase in house-building is great as a soundbite but;

a) Every builder is flat out already. All that would happen is that they'd be charging even more for the same work. So where are the tradespeople to build these houses? I don't see SF with any plan for huge influxes of non-EU construction workers. Funny that.

b) if you're trying to drive down the price of a house, then the state has to massively subsidize the cost of construction. That means more taxes for those of us who work, which drives down economic activity and makes Ireland less attractive to inward investment. That will more than cancel out the (temporary) economic growth from construction. Or it means enormous borrowing, or both.

I'm delighted Mary Lou threw this glib shite out there, maybe people might stop listening to the easy answers being peddled and actually analyze if these lads have any actual plan. Spoiler: they don't.

You will never afford a 40k deposit if you keep spending 300 on a flight.

As I advised already you should discuss with a financial adviser, the money you spent on the flight + shopping will cover it and will be the best advice you will ever get

Also a reminder: the only concrete plan SF have is a referendum on a united Ireland. If successful, that will be the biggest hit to our economy in any of our lifetimes, it will absolutely dwarf the bailout and austerity period.

If you really want your free house, you might think about that.

No, and I accept that 75k is probably impossible.

I sense that SF want office/hotel construction to fall, and that capacity to move to residential.

Would that make much difference?

They came out with this nonsense before, shut down all other construction just to build houses

Except a lot of the skilled workers on office work won't have the skills for houses. So you will end up with a load of construction workers out of work. Very few additional houses built and then shut down another section

Like example is the concrete shuttering and steel workers on offices/hotels. What are they going to do?

It's more nonsense from Sinn Fein and the thing is a lot of people in Ireland believe this nonsense. Very easy to pull to pieces if you asked a person in the construction industry

Here is an example of excessive costs:

A developer paid 30m for 1.65 acres on Parkgate street in Dublin. Madness.

As a result, any apts built here will be way too expensive.

The initial planning application (2020) was for a mixed development including 481 apts

Site cost per apt = 62,000, this is too high.

The second planning application (2021) was for a mixed development, including 198 apts

https://councilmeetings.dublincity.ie/documents/s33444/SHD0012%2021%20Presentation.pdf

SF have no concrete plan on a United Ireland, they talk about a referendum but don't have any answers to basic questions.

The recent polls said Rep was in favor of a United Ireland, high result, then it was asked the same question but would you want a United Ireland with additional taxes. The results went below 50%. I can't remember exactly.

We can't have a United Ireland without additional taxes plus a lot of unemployment across ireland in the public sector for one.

Sinn Fein know this but would rather talk about a United ireland but never give a number of the cost because they know people don't want to hear it. Another example of Sinn fein and the nonsense they talk

As a party with access to budget on both sides of border they should of released a high level plan on what it might look like and see the reaction then

Parkgate street is in the city centre and is always going to command a high price.

That's the job of a quantity surveyor and all the construction companies have them and they are paid very highly.

If Sinn fein or any party want to work out these numbers all they need to do is pay one of the big companies and they will tell them exactly what they need but they won't do that because they know the answer already

A construction company won't blindly buy land in the hope they can buy houses at a profit on that land. The QS will be able to tell them how many units and at what cost on the land. it's then up to the construction company to buy the land.

Otherwise the company could buy the land for 5 m and then when the QS walks onsite tell them they will never be able to build enough units on the property to reclaim the outlay without a decent profit

As it's a crisis, we need emergency measures around land-use, zoning, land taxes, CPO, etc., that may mean really high land taxes, to drive up supply of sites.

When banks lend to developers, the banks expect to see 15% profit margins, although with recent input cost inflation, many projects are showing 10% margins.

On building contracting work only, with no development, margins are more like 5%.

My point is that is the sale of the product is guaranteed, by the amount of demand for houses, then 15% margin is way too high.

If the LA became developers, like they used to be, then these margins could fall, as risk is reduced / eliminated.

Banks charge developers higher interest rates than people might think, a good big margin on top of ECB rates, towards 10%. This is too much.

Again, if we could somehow forward-fund developments, then this finance costs falls.

We need to think of ways to harness the vast pool of domestic savings to help reduce finance costs in house-building.