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

I think a good portion, maybe 25%, of the part V properties should be used for essential workers who need to live in the area. This would have huge benefits for schools looking to hire new teachers for example, who would struggle to find a place to live in Dublin. It could be time limited (say 5 years), but would give them time living in subsidised accommodation to save up. It would also reduce pressure in PS negotiations since the money would be going precisely where it is needed, rather than say giving teachers who own a property in Terenure a raise just to help younger teachers who have nowhere to live.

The clue is in the name.

I wasn't originally going to point out the irony that you said "I didn't see anyone whinge" and immediately started a standard whinge of having to pay income tax on income within the same sentence.

The councils arent entering into agreements with developers at the planning stage to build social homes.

They are swooping on private projects when they are at completion stage.

So homes the wider community believed will come up for rent or sale, never actually make it to market.

The councils, if not building their own stock, should enter into procurement contracts with private builders at planning stage to build social homes and leave the private market to look after itself.

That way, EVERYONE has a chance of getting a home, rather than just those on social welfare.

Its ironic that when a private developer builds a new apartment block or housing estate, they have to allocate 20% for social housing.

But when the councils scavange a new build development that was intended for the private market, they dont allocate ANY homes back to the private market.

Where is the councils 20% contribution and commitment to mixed developments? (and its the potential private renters that are paying for the council to steal the homes from under their noses, ironically.)

How many 20, 30 or 40 somethings are living with parents because they earn too much to qualify for social housing but not enough to rent in the ultra high end developments, which are the only ones that generally make it through to the private market without the councils stealing them for social housing.

Those folks dont exist on any housing list and are roundly ignored by the govt.

But exist they do and they are the folks leaving for Australia and Europe, taking their skills & tax commitments to ireland with them.

It may be the case that councils should be building on land they own but it may also be the case that it makes more sense to sell that land to developers and with the money purchase land elsewhere to build on. It would very much depend on how much they can get for the land they own, how much land they can buy with the money and where the social need is for new council housing.

On the other point, you may not like charitable housing trusts buying up properties but what you are really saying is that you are against social housing since, as I have argued earlier, it is impossible to have new social housing without impacting private buyers.

Not quite. By entering into agreements up front they should - if competent - be getting a better deal.

They could potentially fund the development, or even if not, the developer should be able to get a reduced cost of financing because of the guaranteed sale reducing the lenders risk.

A deal would also remove the market risk at the sale end for the developer. Less justification for compensation needed as a result.

Certain expenses such as marketing and legal could be saved and most of this saving should accrue to the buyer if they do their deal competently

It does matter when the local council or AHB guys and gals turn up for the photo op grand opening of the estate to claim they have delivered social housing for Ireland - all they have delivered is one cheque and a bad deal for Irish taxpayers.

The reality is if the council was involved at the start and building on their own land the units would be a social housing spec - modest and cost effective, when they jump in at the last minute to buy up houses they are buying much more expensive private market spec homes.

I can back that up with Tuath just after buying up the full first phase of a development in Cork which includes 41 houses - these houses have large separate living rooms and kitchen/diner, master bedrooms have en-suites with walk in wardrobes, the main bathroom has a bath and a separate shower enclosure all in a prime location just outside Douglas - they are as far from just putting a roof over peoples head as you can get!

But this is just a general complaint about the perceived unfairness of social housing. The same argument could be made if councils directly employed workers to build houses. You would still get resources pulled away from those seeking to purchase their own homes.

It does matter, because if the council entered into agreements upfront with developers, the private developments would be safe guarded and the net result would be more homes delivered, for everyone.

The Councils arent doing their due dilligence up front and entering contracts with developers often enough (there are some LDA schemes where they do this - so its not the case that it never happens)

If private developers build 10,000 homes and the councils schedule just 1,000 and then rent 2,000 of the 10,000 private developments to hit their targets at the last minute, the net result is 11,000 new homes. 3,000 for social housing.

If the councils entered into contract to deliver the 3,000 social homes up front, the 10,000 private homes are not diverted to social upon completion.

Net result is 13,000 new homes instead of 11,000 and 3,000 social homes are still delivered.

At the end of the day, you are correct in one way - without increasing capacity to build houses, we are stuck with the current level of housebuilding.

There are a number of obstacles to that, one is the logjam at Phase 2 training caused by poor management in ETBs, another is development finance by the banks, a further one is the mess of the planning system due to incompetence in the local authorities and ABP, one of the biggest is Dublin City Council and their councillors who object to their own plans and a final one is the proclivity of local representatives, particularly SF and the small left-wing parties to object to every single private development.

Many of the bottlenecks are out of their control, and I suspect that some agencies (opposition parties in charge at local government) are actively trying to stop the government's plans from working.

Bottlenecks such as Sinn Fein objecting to planning for thousands of homes?

Maybe we should let SF into gov and then they can object to themselves and the circle will be complete.

If we end up with a SF government, hopefully the new opposition parties (FF and FG) will realise that the electorate want parties to play politics rather than solve issues. Objecting, blocking and complaining would therefore be what the electorate want, so they should play the same game.

Its not just paper profit from the captial appreciation as a landlord, you have a yearly rental income of tens of thousands of euros on top. A far, far higher yearly return on investment than almost any stock pays in dividend. And with no highly taxed deemed disposal afer 8 years to deal with as you have when holding an ETF.

The very obvious answer to that question is to become a landlord you need substantial available capital to begin with (at the very least a sizeable deposit, and an income high enough that a bank willing to give you a second or third mortgage). Most of the country isn't wealthy enough to become a landlord, its not that they don't want to be.

Theres a reason huge numbers of financially successful Irish people own multiple properties in this country. Every single person I know, once they've had enough money to have the option, has bought additional properties to rent out. Because its so profitable.

I think increasing capacity is essential.

It's shocking they haven't really tried any measures to attract existing workers, or school leavers, or tried to import workers (bit late now).

I would think that to get to the required level of construction workers in the state in the longer-term we will have to move to the state directly employing such workers.

The private market just isn't attractive enough for various reasons, not least the memories people have of the last construction crash where loads of construction workers were forced to emigrate.