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

He also said the the owners solicitor told them that it could take years to get them out ........ so it's fairly safe to assume it's not a licensee scenario.

Some interesting (if horrifying) figures for the new year. Not good news on the housing completions front from this government, things are only going to get worse for years to come apparently. It can only really be called gross incompetence at this stage, years into the housing crisis:

"It will be “a number of years” before 40,000 new homes per annum can be delivered, according to Tánaiste Micheál Martin. [1]

"Two separate pieces of research into required housing targets are currently being conducted by the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI) and the Housing Commission. Both pieces of research are expected to recommend the state needs at least 50,000 new homes a year, significantly more than the 31,000 expected to be built this year."

[1]https://www.irishtimes.com/politics/2023/12/30/tanaiste-micheal-martin-says-it-will-be-number-of-years-before-40000-homes-per-year-built/

[2]https://www.businesspost.ie/news/esri-we-need-to-build-50000-homes-per-year-to-meet-demand/

I cannot find that video, but I saw one where mom owned house (US) with bad tenants that refused to leave. So son was made a tenant with official rent agreement and moved in. Bad renters soon after left and because tenants are protected so no one can complain about new tenant. I wonder if something like that would work in Ireland and @SharkMX friend could get bad tenants out.

Maybe if the house was rented per room?

only took 2 days. nice job

The Irish House Price Report Q4 2023 was released today by Daft.ie

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/2058328750/house-price-predictions-for-2024#latest

summary of predictions for 2024

I think wage increases of 2023 will feed into the market more so in 2024 than they did in 23.

Same with increased borrowing limits and various government schemes designed to drive prices higher

Buyers need time to adjust to such changes, save deposit etc

Thats absolutely fair. My take on it being incompetence does assume FF/FG want to fix the housing crisis, but that may well be a charitable assumption given the evidence of the last decade.

Its just all so very short sighted of them even if its that though - a stablisation of property values, slight lowering of rents, and high property ownership rates would result in pretty much a permanent FF/FG government. Its been known for decades at this stage that once most people own property they start voting for more right-wing parties to defend the status quo. Thatcher wildly successful strategy to expand home ownership in the 1980s proved this very well.

But in Ireland we instead have continuous upward trends in rent and property values, a steadily declining property ownership rate, and a massive cohort of under 40s locked out of the housing market getting more and more desperate. Its going to lead to the voting out of FF&FG and the voting in of far more radical parties.

SF polling at double the combined total (!) of FF&FG in the 25-34 age demographic (as is currently the case), and at 30% and climbing in all ranges of the ABC1 demographic, is almost entirely down to the housing crisis. ABC1 voters aren't exactly natural SF supporters.

I think FG are acutely aware that their best path toward more votes is to get more homeowners. Hence shared equity/HTB etc.

Right now the primary issue in Ireland preventing home ownership is a lack of houses. Not the price of them. Every single new build across the country is snapped up. Second hand supply is at record lows. The market is dominated by FTBs. There’s just not enough houses to go around.

Whats the best way to get more of something supplied? Higher prices. Once someone buys, whether it cost them 500k or 700k they are more likely to be FG voters.

Strong confidence from the building/financing sector to try to stimulate more supply is the clear intention. Higher prices is merely the mechanism to deliver that.

You have a very simplistic way of looking at things. In the same 2011 to niw period we have gone from being bust with a 14% unemployment rate ( and substantial number emigrating) at the same time.

Last year we created 100k new jobs, the expectation is we will create the same number or more in 2024. We are at full employment so people immigrating into the country are necessary to fill these jobs.

Housing is the most significant bottleneck but it hard to solve in an economy with full employment. Construction labour and labour costs are now starting to be the biggest factor in housing costs especially in Dublin.

60-80% of those working in construction in Dublin migrate in and out of Dublin. They demand a premium above working in therebown locality. Just as an example 12-18 months ago blocklayers in Dublin were charging about 2 euro per block, outside Dublin it was about 1.3-1.5/ block.

At present locally 10 miles from Limerick city rhe rate seems to be heading to slightly above 2/block, there was a significant push before Christmas by some blocklayers to push it to 2.5/ block.

Where dose that leave Dublin rates.

Plot house prices on a graph beside numbers of new home completions over the last 25 years and see if you credibly state higher prices doesn’t equate to higher output. It’s nonsensical.

You also posted data yourself recently showing how the home ownership rate had its biggest declines from the period of 2006-2016. Prices were extremely cheap for most of that period? Could it have been because everyone stopped building?

Also, on the Tyranny piece.

Here are the bottom 8 European countries for lowest home ownership rates. All worse than Ireland. Most significantly so.

1. Switzerland
2. Germany
3. Austria
4. Turkey
5. Denmark
6. France
7. Sweden
8. Finland

Most seem to be surviving ok.

The housing data speaks for itself. You can discuss bricklayer rates as much if you like, but the issue in a thread about the Irish Property Market is the home ownership rate dropping consistently over the year last 13 years of FG government, and being projected to drop much much further. Thats a very big sign of bad governance.

Plot house prices against numbers of new home completitions over the last 25 years and you'll still find the number of housing completions in 2023 are still far below whats required. To the tune of 10,000-20,000 housing units a year by the ESRI and Housing Commission's most recent estimations that I posted on the last page.

The idea that continually driving the price of houses up will result in a situation where theres a stable property market, accessible to the majority of the population, is whats nonsensensical. And thats not just my opinion - we have the evidence of 2011-2024 to show what happens when this approach is tried - abject failure, in the form of the Irish housing market in 2024.

I didn't say the country wouldn't survive, it absolutely will. But in an Irish democracy where our political parties are almost all inherently populist, landlords and home owners will get absolutely hosed by taxation and regulation if we reach a situation where only 35% of households are home owners.

To use comparable EU countries from your very own list - Germany has a home ownership rate of 47%, and has property taxes of up to 1% of gross value a year, Denmark has a home ownership rate of 59% with property taxes ranging up to 1.4% per year, France has a home ownership rate of 63% and property taxes of up to 1.5% per year. The idea that an Irish state with 35% home ownership rate won't have taxes significantly higher than these is very, very naive.

Saying they are below where they need to be is very different to saying they don’t increase with prices. I agree they still need to increase (which they will continue to do I suspect).

Plot prices against completions per capita and I assure you’ll find the same conclusion. Higher prices and more output are almost perfectly correlated. So logically if you wanted to close the gap to the ESRI projections, you would need to push prices higher, not lower.

You mentioned ‘the Tyranny of the majority can get extreme’ which is very different to some increases to property taxes to more normal international levels (which I personally believe we absolutely 100% should do right now).

Bizarrely the party that all the non-homeowners seem to vote for, want to abolish property taxes altogether. Go figure

Agreed, the Irish rental system is broken across the board and needs a radical overhaul. Good tenants have too few protections and bad ones have far far too much. It’s a shambles.