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

Building regulations have added a lot to the construction costs, add in the requirement for a wheelchair accessible toilet downstairs, solar panels, heat pumps etc too.

Maybe start by telling us what the differences in building costs are? Then we might get somewhere comparing different countries to each other.

I showed above where the SCSI attribute 100k of the building cost of a unit to the raw land component. That would correspond to 44k (punts) in 1995 discounted by the CPI. The Euro equivalent is approximately 56k. The average house price back then, according to the CPI, was 76k.

132k (punts) in 1995 is equivalent to 300k today. Which you propose as the modern day cost to build a "shell of a house".

Here is a simple point, which I am surprised that many can't grasp. You can have a field which is worth 10k per acre. The local council makes an arbitrary administrative decision to zone that field for residential. It is now worth (for arguments sake) 1m an acre.

Why is it suddenly worth 1m? It's because that is what someone is willing to pay for it. Why are they willing to pay the 1m? Because they do their sums and know that I can sell the finished product for X, it will cost me Y to manufacture it, therefore I can pay up to (X-Y)= Z for the input and still make money.

What is the relevance? Well people on here appear to think that X is fixed by some fundamental law of physics. It isn't. And if X comes down, then Z can come down as well. And portions of the Y can also come down, but even without getting into that, there is still room for X to come down.

Below is the image of a site that the LDA recently bought from NAMA for 44m. A developer had been due to buy it at 45m up to last year, but then pulled out. There is no fundamental reason why that land should be valued at 44m vs 34m or even 4m. As you can see, there is plenty of other vacant land sitting there too. And before you go off on a tangent, I am not proposing that the developers get cheap land or anything of the sort. I am simply making the point that there is scope for the price of the end product to reduce.

Shut down commercial construction.

This will free up enough diggers and JCBs to knock over every ATM in the country.

It’s not rocket science.

A packet of King crisps.

I'm not proposing that a shell of a house should cost 300k to build. I'm simply stating that comparing a house from the 90's to today is not a like for like comparison as they are built to different regulations. So people saying house prices have risen 10x in that timeframe, how much of that 10x is down to changing regulations. And as another user pointed out the 10x calculation excludes inflation.

Which is why my initial reply was to the poster who mentioned 10x without accounting for the building spec of houses being completely different and ignoring inflation.

Supply of houses and apartments. Im not talking about giving away anything.

Renters wanted bedsits gone. Once they went they started to complain they wanted them back

Well I don't remember the 10X post, but assuming it is true and aimed at the same period, adjusted for inflation would still be over 5X

The central point to keep in mind is that Sinn Fein are offering simplistic answers to complex questions which should raise red flags for anyone thinking of voting for them in the next general election.

FFG have made some mind boggling blunders over the years but as much as I detest them the thoughts of a government lead by SF and including the likes of PBP etc doesn't make me worried about negative equity it makes me worried that Ireland could be plunged into a situation where employment levels plummet and societal issues become exacerbated.

We should be doing everything we can to keep con artists and buffers out of power, particularly ones who are outlining policies that will make people's quality of life worse. I don't worry much about my home being in negative equity once I have a job that allows me to pay the mortgage, which under a SF led government isn't a given. And people hoping to ever own their own home in the future may forget about it completely in that situation.

Beyond tanking the economy to just settle scores with "the man" I'm not sure what a SF led government offers to the people of Ireland. Do they form a coalition with the loonie left and put Richard Boyd Barrett in charge of housing and start building khrushchevka like good little socialists?

Honestly, and I’m no expert, I’d say f!ck all of the major increase in house prices is due to changes in regulation. Many of the comparisons being made after all are for the exact same 2nd hand houses built in the 70s/80s or earlier.

In the estate I grew up in (Co Meath but commutable to Dublin) houses resold for 50-60k in the mid 90s, the exact same houses now sell for 250-300k.

So not a x10 increase but massively increased compared to salary increase and general inflation. People should expect to work hard and save prudently to afford the house they want (and not just require as a basic right/social housing etc) No skimping on avocado makes up for that massive difference in house prices realistically. Also what’s seldom commented on is that if everyone stayed in , hardly ever ate out and didn’t buy new clothes the city and town centers would die.

And more anecdotal and less quantitative bit at least illustrative is the simple example that houses bought by teachers and similar paid civil servants in the 90s are now only affordable to doctors and solicitors and similar paid jobs. The street I now live in ,a Dublin City suburb , is a spectacular example.

I agree... people who think they deserve something without achieving it themselves... empty headed nonsense!

I'd like to get data on GB building costs. Do you have any?

Yes, I suggest building thousands of bed-spaces in blocks for students beside every uni and IoT in the country, on a large scale.

That should ease the demands on family houses.