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

I suppose it's a case of what happens there may happen here. To be honest, I think it's just a form of wishful thinking. There are people up and down this country who are praying for a crash in property prices.

interesting article comparing dublin property with very similar cities such as bejing, london, berlin

A snapshot of house prices in five cities around the world and how they compare to Ireland

Most people live/work and study in the Raheen Castletroy areas.

The bus commuting time is well over an hour in rush hour. There is no direct route between the 2 areas, all services go via the city.

Many of the companies have changed there shifts to accommodate car commuters with children in school, to synchronise work and school finish time so many start at 7am or before. Public transport is useless for getting to these workplaces. Get a scooter or a bicycle

If a property crash were to happen, it would be downstream from something else. For the prices to crash, there would need to be some sort of event that would quickly reduce demand. There are a few circumstances that could bring that about, but none of them are too likely at this point.

I'm not one to wish for a crash, but I will say that I were working my backside off to pay rent with no hope of buying, I'd be more than happen to take my chances in another 2008 scenario...

I remember it well. I started my career in 2010, and it was hard. Would I be lucky enough to keep my job? I don't know. However, I would take my chances of an uncertain future if I felt that there was no future here.

Again, I own a home so I'm just talking hypothetically

What makes you think an economic crash wouldn’t make matters even worse, it’s hard to buy a home with no job/lower wages/no access to credit. Was everyone able to buy a house 2008 - 12 when rents and house prices tanked? Do you think developers will build during a recession, or that the Government will suddenly kick into overdrive at a time when there is a sharpe decline in tax receipts which would accompany an economic crash? Polarisation would become more pronounced between the have and have nots during a recession, in all probability interest rates would drop making life easier for home owners who keep their jobs, and more difficult for anyone who doesn’t own their home and is unemployed. Are you comfortable with life getting a lot worse for many of your fellow young home buyers, if it benefits you? Seems machiavellian, but you will at least have crossed your polar divide.

The last crash was a big part of the reason why so much housing stock around the world is now held by institutional investors. They had the capital to take advantage of fire sale prices in the aftermath and could borrow huge additional sums for basically nothing.

I’m not seeing how another crash like that will help anyone to own their own home. If you’re hoping for another one, it probably means you were still in school for the last one.

You appear to be discounting the fact that an economic crash may make the situation even worse. This isn’t a choice between two options, status quo and improving your lot, for some reason you don’t want to consider the third possibility.

That is naive.

I think you’re following a common misconception that no young people can buy homes anymore and everyone is despairing.

2023 will set the new record for number of FTBers securing a home since records have been kept. By a country mile. Almost every single month this year broke that month’s record for most FTBers securing a home. The second best year ever recorded was 2022.

Theres a big backlog due to the lack of housing built in the downturn and we do need to ramp building up more. But by every metric, things are going in the right direction. We even have wages going up faster than house prices for the first time in forever.

Why would anyone want to go back to 2012 where far far far fewer people were able to buy homes, and far fewer homes were built creating much of the issues we now need to work through today.

Don’t fall into the fatalist trap that things are hopeless. More people than ever are getting on with it and buying their first home.

Anyone questioning the margins in building houses needs to look only at the prices paid by developers for land, either with zoning or with potential.