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

One post where I cheerlead them please.

Just one post - to try to prove you are not just completely and absolutely spoofing.

I've 18k+ posts. One will do

Thanks.

(You're going to look very silly......you'll spend a while looking for one, then you won't find it, so you'll just ignore this post and pretend you didn't see it)

BTW, as for replying to someone talking about trades, the post I replied to said

you should remember that ... you posted it

ok fair enough. Apologies that I was a bit aggressive in my response as I am far from a person who follows anything SF say. If one of them happens to say anything in line with what I say, I can assure you that that is a coincidence.

I'm not looking at any details as per SF. I'm focusing on the point about the developer margin. I've made the same point on other threads through the years. The other easy point - which I've also focused on before - is the price attributed to land costs. Developers and speculators outbid each other to buy land and then demand that that is the value of the land and they deserve X on top of that. That is not the normal way things should work in a functioning market. If someone overpays for something, then they should take the hit. We can't have situations like the apocryphal story of Sean Dunne asking his missus blindly to pick a number between 1 and 100 and then bidding that number in millions for a house in D4.

100k from each unit under the SCSI costings is attributable to the land costs. Not doing anything with the land - just as a result of buying it.

I am not here to defend SF, and I don't support them, but I have not seen SF suggest that they will create a State building contractor?

Note the distinction between property development and building contractor.

Property development takes years to assemble sites, get planning, get finance, deal with loads of hurdles, etc. As a result, property developers are expected to earn 15% net profit margins. There are loads of risks along the way.

In contrast, say UCD or Dalata hotel group hire a building contractor to build a new block. The building contractor is not involved with site assembly, design, planning, finance, etc. They simply build according to the plans. As a result, there is lower risk, and their profit margins are lower.

As far as I can see, SF hope / plan that the State in some form (LA? AHB? LDA?) will do more property development, and so remove the 15% developer's margin, and reduce the finance costs.

I don't think SF expect for the State to become a building contractor. They see the State as hiring building contractors much more to build more houses.

Maybe the PBP do propose for the State to get involved in building contractor?

Ok, lets say there are 10,000 sites.

If any government builds on 1,000 of them, now you have 9,000 available sites. Then lets say they build 1,000 more. Now you have 8,000 sites.

Can you see where I am going with this?

How desirable are all of those brownfield sites? How many 3-bed semis can they support?

The only way this even nearly works is if you start replacing houses with apartment blocks and even then you are just stretching out the timelines, the end result is the same.

That is exactly what we should be doing.

Everything within canals in Dublin should be 4-6 storey blocks, yes.

I walk along Cork street / Meath / Thomas streets, loads of vacant and derelict sites.

I have a radical suggestion. Replace all low-density 1 and 2 storey houses within canals in Dublin.......

.....with Hausmann-style apt blocks like in Paris.

What are you talking about? None of that made sense. Are you trying to say 5 people on 100k a year can build 100 houses? you are aware of the different trades required to build a house?

Hire these contractors from who? so outbid the people the contractors are already working for?

I am not sure how you got that from Sinn Fein because they have never mentioned anything of the sort. In all communication they have said they dont want to rely on Private sector which would rule out all sub contractors. See below

https://www.sinnfein.ie/housing-4

Sinn Féin are determined to end Ireland's shameful housing and homeless crises. Shortage of council and affordable housing to buy or rent is one of the most pressing issues facing our society.

We must reject the Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil approach - and their reliance on the private sector - and get back to building houses.

Sinn Féin would deliver the largest public house building programme that Ireland has ever seen that will deliver secure homes for all.

We must reject the Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil approach - and their reliance on the private sector - and get back to building houses.

I read this as increasing LA new-builds and AHB new-builds.

I read this as follows: if the 31 LA and te AHB sector build more new houses, then we can reduce reliance on buying units from private sector developers.

Have SF actually stated that they would establish a semi-state building contractor?

per EOB it would be done through approved housing bodies (Cluid and the like) and the local authorities.

This is an even worse idea. Why?

1. Because the LAs do not have any experience in delivering large scale housing. That means 30 LAs need to be staffed with experienced and competent construction managers, rather than just one central body. That’s a multi year project even to be able to start work on the first site, and will create huge duplication and redundancy.
2. if the LAs are given quotas to hit, they’ll end up competing with each other for labour and materials. Thus, the cost goes up and up.
3. When (inevitably) some councils do better than others, we’ll end up in a situation where your access to affordable housing depends on your postcode, and you’ll have every local politician screaming about unfairness and preferential treatment.

I’m sorry to be so negative but this is important. Peddling easy answers is great for winning votes but this is going to be an unholy mess when it comes to execution.

If the fix was so easy, I’m pretty sure the current government would be rolling it out right now.

The discussion was on the margin of 5m+ which would be due to the developer on top of all the regular profits/costings for those 100 houses. All the other inputs have already been compensated for at that point before the final 5m is tacked on.

If you think that that is an appropriate margin on top of everything else, then I simply ask whether you think that his magnificent input could be replicated by hiring a team of people as in the purely hypothetical example I gave. That team of people only replace what the developer personally adds. All other inputs remain the same - professional fees and subcontracting out the work etc.

The increase of the money available in grants for derelict properties etc. was immediately reflected in the asking prices for many such properties which were put up for sale as a result. One could always argue that maybe they wouldn't have been put up for sale otherwise, but there would be other alternative methods to bring such properties to market.

How many people would be put in to negative equity on SF's idea of a 300k average Dublin house price?

They'd have to crash the country to get remotely near what they say. They'd be putting a lot of construction workers out of jobs as housing becomes even more unviable to fund as well.

Then they would have to address the banks because their balance sheets would be smashed.

Lots of job losses, people in trouble with their mortgages, their assets devalued...

I don't think they think they have thought it through.

They will crash the whole economy, not just the housing market. Mass unemployment and all you will hear from Sinn Fein supporters is "Eoin wrote a book" :-)

Because he knows there is a very high probability that there will be even more money in it for him if he hangs on until next year, and so on