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

I can accept that. It isn't easy to save when you're paying 2k a month to rent an apartment, I would assume. At the same time, I just don't believe that handing out more money is a solution anymore. It's very easy for the state to throw money at the problem, and that's all that it's done for years. It doesn't help as the fundamental issue doesn't change: too little supply, too much demand.

32k homes in 2023 is absolutely horrendous going given we're now multiple years into this housing crisis, the state in very recent history was building 90k houses a year, our population grew by 100k in 2022, and every analysis is now saying we need 50k+ houses a year. Its like a child coming home to you after years of getting straight 'F's saying "oh well at least its not an NG". We can absolutely do better if the state applies its resources even slightly more smartly.

FG and FF have been in government since 2011. Through the last almost 13 years in power they've made an absolute disaster of housing in Ireland. SF and the other opposition parties have promised to build vastly more houses, and have laid out plans to do so in their manifestos. They may not be able to achieve this fully in government, but at the very least they have plans to try so won't do any worse.

This is it. Anyone who thinks they can do worse is smoking the kool aid.

And when do those of us who predicted 0% change in house prices get to pat ourselves on the back and give a giant well done(for accuracy if not precision)!??

Just dropped back in to the thread briefly and still seeing people comparing us to the UK? Does comparing Ireland to 1 or even all 195 countries in the world prove anything about our market. Baffling repetitive nonsense.

On second thought, I would give someone credit if they did a cost analysis of 195 countries and their fiscal housing operations over the last decade, and compare to us.

Now what happens if the central bank decides to loosen lending rules again? Now there's a scary thought. Maybe 4x lending capacity for 2nd time buyers in 2024? I could see it in the endless sea of clowns and collaborators. Can't wait to see the Central banks cut rates 0.5% only to wring almightly inflation down upon us all and furiously raise them again much further than they otherwise would have done. Maybe then people will realise none of these people have a clue what they are doing?? That's my prediction(Sorry if there's a prediction thread somewhere?)

How is 32k homes "ok" when we would have needed to build 35k homes to house our 100k population increase in 2022? Nevermind replacing old housing stock, or actually expanding our housing stock.

Our housing crisis literally worsened to the tune of a deficit of 3000+ houses in 2022, it didn't get better at all. Thats absolutely horrendous going years into the housing crisis, at a time when the state is awash in cash.

There are multiple ways to get extra houses built at a time of full employment, that have been discussed at length in this thread. Diverting the construction resources used in the last few years on offices/hotels to housing would have been the most immediate/obvious. Ramping up our apprentice and retraining programs, if begun 5 years ago, would be paying off now - but theres no reason to not start this tomorrow, the sooner the better. Or the more difficult, but still achievable one would have been to import builders, house them in temporary accomodation (of the sort being used for Ukrainians), and put them to work.

Hmm true, but the 80-90k houses and apartments build back in the celtic tiger days was possible because a huge chunk of the economy was aimed solely at keeping a Ponzi scheme on the go. Also, the quality of many of those houses was questionable at, to say the least. One would hope that modern builds are better, but we'll see in twenty years.

It's my sincere opinion that the only thing that will "fix" the housing crisis a severe and lasting economic downturn. Such an event would render the state broke, and thus unable to directly interfere in the market, reduce the population through emigration and take a lot of cash and credit out of the system. I don't WANT for that to happen, but as this has persisted for years without any real action or even honesty about the causes of the problem, I don't any other means of change.

Dont know about that. If the economy tanks that bad watch them increase property tax, income tax, another special tax on second homes, raid pensions again, reduce social welfare and so on. A crash never has only the casualties people want.

We don't take the hard decisions nor are they fair. Simple example is road tax why not impose the charge on the price of fuel the more you use the roads the more you pay. With businesses fuel costs are an expense so can be deducted accordingly.

Look at property tax as another example similar sized houses with 20 mins of each other are charged different rates based solely on the value of the property. Why are two houses with access to exactly the same amenities etc charged different rates they are not consuming more street lights than the other, they don't have better footpaths etc.

Spending less does not equal votes. Its easy to spend someone else's money when they don't have any choice in how its spent. Without turning this into a political discussion we are going to far to the left in politics.

To bring this back on topic if we as a society actually made people take some responsibility for their decisions maybe some people would think twice before making some decisions knowing they have to live with the consequences rather than the rest of us have to.

More than half the price of fuel is tax

Property tax proposed by the imf was envisaged as a wealth tax and inhibitor to runaway house price growth.

I suspect our property taxes are amongst the lowest in the world and come nowhere near covering the associated state costs

Property tax applied correctly encourages older people to downsize etc but it’s would be political suicide and as such nearly all political parties are not in favour with SF being the strongest opponent

So you think the whole economy should be plunged into crisis, so you can buy a house?

What makes you think you will be unaffected by an economic crash?

People don’t understand the reality or have been lucky to have not been impacted in the previous downturns and as a result think they are immune and forget that there deposit they have saved will be meaningless unless they can buy 100% with cash if they loose there job etc. And even if they could buy with cash would they be able to pay the bills to run a house.

Road tax is a crude taxing method (ironically the vast majority of which does not go to the road network).

Property tax is based on the value of your property (if you extend your house for your own comfort/increasing family size) your are liable for the band your house value relates to. You did not increase the size of your house as an investment opportunity, you did it out of necessity. How is it fair then you should have to pay more property tax?

Did you get an extra street light outside your house? Were flowers planted by your council to offset some of the increase in tax?

While the above may sound silly remember the State through inheritance tax still get their cut of your estate. Albeit they need to wait till you pass but as housing values increase so does the tax take for Revenue.

You are thinking of council tax which in other countries is used to fund council services such as lighting, water, sewage, amenities etc. There is no such tax in ireland.

Local property tax is not the same.