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

The solution is for the state to stop wasting billions of tax payer euros on ineffective demand side measures like HAP and leasing large numbers of high end apartments for social housing, and instead re-engage in large scale building of housing (both social and affordable) to supplement the private sector. As was practised for most of our post-independence existence, and is currently successfully in action in numerous other polities around the world.

The problem is that neither of our otherwise generally fairly reasonable/centrist main political parties have shown any willingness to engage in this (based on the evidence from 2011-2024) under their current generation of policymakers.

Which is a huge problem for everyone. For the Irish economy and country in general, but also on an individual level both for those locked out of the housing market, and long term for homeowners as they become a smaller and smaller slice of the electoral pie. And also for said political parties, as even their core demographic of ABC1 voters drifts to more extremist options like SF purely as a result of the housing market.

Based on Dublin open days for new build launches (was at Cherrywood and woodbrook) it’s at least 50% foreigners.

these people seem to have a lot more flexibility with regards to property type too. Happy to buy new build estates in less desirable areas (many Indians buying in clongriffin) or apartments (all the privately sold big blocks in SD along the luas seems to be 80% foreign owner occupiers) if that’s the only thing fitting the budget. Irish buyer seem to be waiting till houses in Blackrock drop in price. Typical SF voting idiot strategy.

Who is holding off in the hope of buying a semi-D in BlackRock?

That's the biggest strawman yet.

Home ownership will not decline that much, but it will decline. The real thing to be worried about is the shrinking rental supply coupled with an increase in population. The rental market is going to get so much worse in the next decade. The government will try price controls to appease voters, we all know the effect of price fixing attempts. Then we see homelessness rocket.

Unless rental investments are made attractive the supply is going to dwindle away to nothing. Even REITs and foreign funds no longer see it as attractive to invest in rental schemes here.

I suspect there is a lot of truth to this also, I'm working in a large tech firm and the Indian guys will often look to buy immediately once allowed.

from the roughly 25 colleagues / ex-colleagues I know the areas of choice are

D13 (Clongriffin and Baldoyle)

D18(Clay farm, Glencairn Gate developments)

Kildare (kill mostly) - Even heard from one of the guys "this will be like Sandyford in 10 years"

with some others thrown in, as another poster said there's a preference for new build and decent transport links.

It makes sense many of these guys are on good salaries and have seen their rents continuing to rise, its also not completely uncommon for two or three families to band together and split the cost of a new build.

Thats...wildly factually incorrect. Home ownership rates have been dropping since 1991, they didn't increase in the 1990s/2000s.

"People are continuing to buy" is always going to be true, a certain number of people will always be buying a house. The issue is the per capita rate of buying is dropping consistently every year, and so is our home ownership rate. The data doesn't lie. The 35% future home ownership rate estimation is from the ESRI, not me. I'd imagine they know far more about this than either of us.

Any immigrant background of renters won't matter when it comes to the ballot box. They'll vote for measures in favour of renters, and to the cost of home owners/landlords, just as readily as native born Irish renters.

SF, and the other opposition parties, have all stated they'll expand state building of housing massively - which is more than either FF or FG have achieved since 2011. They've laid out how in detail in their policy documents, have you read them?

Its not just the majority of young people, its now 30%+ of ABC1s - the highest earning people in the country - across all age ranges. Those people are going to vote for SF almost purely because of the current housing market disaster, 30%+ of the highest earning people in the country are not natural Republican Socialists. Thats how badly FG and FG have handled the property market over the last decade.

Not to get too personal but, I could have done what a lot of my friends (strangely the ones who now have their own houses and apartments) did back then and went straight into the workforce and started saving for a house deposit. But instead I went on for my masters (total waste of time). I worked for a couple of years saved for a deposit and was about to buy then with my then gf, but then we decided top go traveling for a year, which turned into 3 years (i wouldnt say that was a mistake but it cost a lot of money both in spends and earnings forgone). When I got home I ended up eventually in a good job, but i had the travel bug and probably went somewhere at least every month.

I added up all the money I "wasted" (my own definition of wasted) and I could easily afford a nice big house now if i hadnt spent it all on experiences and cars. I spent some serious amount of money of coffee over the years added up too (if people want a shock tot coffee money up). Im a bit late learning that spending money instead saving it and getting your major financial needs out of the way young are very important as there was only one time in history that the market came to people instead of running away from them.

Its kind of like not funding your pension until your 50s and wondering why its not going to be enough when you retire. Time is everything and time at the beginning matters most. Thats one thing ive learned from my job in finance. I learned it too late though. But at least ive learned it and am taking on the responsibility to fix my situation, which hopefully will be sorted in the next few months.

Or I could keep going as I was and just moan about it and blame others and see if that helps. But my proof to myself is looking at who has and has not bough their houses among my friends. ITs so obvious to me looking at that.

@fartooreasonable 'Moreover there's plenty of small towns with no planned developments. I'm in one at the moment the latest planned development was blocked because it would overwhelm local services.'

I don't think that anyone denies that the situation is multi-factorial. But the factors I'm talking about are often hushed up to an extent.

Most of the population supported the lockdowns, often in a quite hysterical manner, and so maybe feel like fools now admitting there are/were huge drawbacks and consequences to artificially shutting down building and the economy.

Lies are continually spun about the direct relationship between wages and numbers of workers in a sector. Once you admit the (obvious) connection between the size of the labour supply and wages it becomes harder to justify carté blanche immigration policies. Business lobbyists and left-wing so-called 'anti-racist' people have their own agendas in this regard.

Let's also not forget that, in addition to closing construction, the state flooded the domestic economy with billions in fiat currency whilst simultaneously closing down supply chains. The lockdowns played an enormous part in exacerbating an already problem with accommodation. Mind you, there's something very strange about having a shortage of housing after a pandemic, but I don't think we live reasonable times anymore.

You're literally lying in this post, or else are apparently unable to read. You're claiming, and quoting me, as having said "‘the per capita rate of new buyers is falling consistently each year’"

When the very post you're quoting of mine says "The issue is the per capita rate of buying is dropping consistently every year, and so is our home ownership rate."

Per capita rate of buying is not the same as the raw number of FTBs, thats you very deliberately (or very obtusely) attempting to move the goal posts.

The home ownership rate in Ireland went from 69.7% in 2011, to 67.6% in 2016, to 66% in 2022.

That means the per capita rate of home buying, and home owning, is dropping, very obviously.

A lot of tenancies would have been voluntarily given up back in 2020 and I have no doubt that LLs who already had one eye on the door took the opportunity to exit the market.

"per capita rate of buying" does not mean "per capita rate of first time buyers". They're entirely different statistics. Trying to conflate the two when called out just shows intellectual dishonesty.

Older home owners dying and not being replaced by young home owners is largely responsible for the decline in the home ownership rate, yes. I don't think it takes much to understand this, but I'm glad you apparently now do.

The home ownership rate in Ireland went from 69.7% in 2011, to 67.6% in 2016, to 66% in 2022. The share of 25-34 year olds who own their own home more than halved between 2004 and 2019, falling from 60 per cent to just 27 per cent. Those are the indisputatable facts about home ownership trends in the current Irish housing market.

Trying to claim - and I quote directly - "things are the best they've been in a long long time" - purely because overall FTB numbers are increasing from an incredibly low recession era level, while the Irish population has also been expanding massively, is a pretty spectacularly bad (or politically blinkered) view of home ownership percentage trends in the Irish housing market.

And, again, this isn't my speculative opinion, or even just down to the data above - if things were going so well the opinion polls wouldn't be showing housing as the number one issue for voters in Ireland. Which it is, because things are going so very badly in the real world.

No. I was trying to make the point that, despite you appearing to agree with posts denying this, it is clearly more difficult for you to get your foot on the bottom run of the ladder today than it would have been whatever years ago your buddies got on.

If you would have gotten onto the ladder after say 2 years of work 10 years ago, but you find yourself struggling to get on it after say 4 years of work today ..... then either your earning capacity has decreased substantially compared to 10 years ago (unlikely) or else the market is much more difficult now.

I'm not talking about you being focused on getting a house for the entire period in between. Of course you would be in a better position had you done that. I was talking about your story which was you saying you pi$sed around until your late 20's and then started.

Don't forget that there are people who are currently the age you were 2014, for whom buying a house in 2014 wasn't an option. (I'm using 2014 to represent whatever year you are talking about). I think you are more focused on kicking yourself for not getting onto the ship before the tide lifted it up.

The reason I asked you is that you gave the impression that all your buddies bought while in their early 20's and you could have done it too back then. Did I take you up wrong on that?

Not to besmirch your father but, there was a period between the early aughts and the GFC that I could've got my dog a mortgage easier than humans can today.

I can't tell if you are a bit melancholy or made peace with not buying earlier but, in reality, you could've finished Uni with the target of buying a house ASAP, walked out the door for your first Monday of work and got hit by a bus.