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

these articles are aimed at the UK. Sealed bids are more common in the UK, certainly in Scotland anyway there’s a closing date set and all parties that are interested send in their sealed bid, the highest bid gets the house. There isn’t the lose the run of yourself desperate panic bidding we see here, which in a tight market sends prices spiralling. I’ve seen 50k bids coming in for houses last year, this type of bidding sets future expectations. Any seller and agent aware of what’s going on around them will sit on a house until it reaches the amount they want, it looks good for the agent to achieve high prices. It’s only those going into a chain where they need to sell within a timeframe that might let their home sell for less than they expect as they don’t want to lose their future house. On that note I’ve been lied to about a house being in a chain by an agent who was selling both the vendors home and the home they were purchasing. He didn’t want buyers to know they needed to sell so he could negotiate the price up to their ‘minimum’. He played ‘dumb’ about it when we found out they were in a chain, even though he was involved in both transactions.

What does Leo mean by "enough housing for everyone to buy"? Is renting not viewed as acceptable anymore given that "to buy" is fundamental?

Blast from the past, October 2002

Shock, horror

Really should have rules about public representatives being the beneficiary of public spending

Agree with you on property tax. At a minimum they should be double there current rate to compensate the state for the services provided to most homes. In the overall context taxes are far too low on property, removing them (a daft policy) is not going to move the needle much

Property taxes would be double had the government not changed the rates due to house price appreciation. The purpose of the tax was to diversify state income and but a brake on house price appreciation.

Instead of this we have a series of charges on new builds affecting new entrants like water connection fee ensuring the burden is passed to the minority rather than spread across the population, a continuation of the 08 bust where the majority of the heavy lifting was put on generations to come.

These charges while being a kicking for our youth were a transfer to homeowners as the value of their properties rose as the cost of new supply increased

Housing supply depends on the approach. If your policy is to increase price to increase supply, you get what we have now in that a record low proportion of new builds are available for sale, possibly less so for rental as the price means that its only viable for short term letting or other niche markets. This policy also increases land prices making affordability far less likely and a barrier to entry for smaller operations

The other noticeable change is the number of self builds over the last 3/4 years which now accounts for 25% of new supply. This shows us that there a large number of small operators that could be levaraged to provide multiple units in our towns and villages and provide competition for the large developers that seem to constantly have the current governments ear

Had we a policy that reduces costs, we could get more builders providing more supply and more competition which further cools price appreciation.

Maybe it was the start of the crazy stuff as the loose lending really ramped up after the dotcom bust

96 to 02 was a more genuine supply issue coupled with falling interest rates and mortgage terms more aligned to a 2 income household

@Villa05

Need to drill a bit deeper into that stat as it looks suspiciously like a shrinking pie rather than a bigger slice.

With the government demonstrably useless if not malicious on housing I am hardly surprised people opt to take matters into their own hands. Guessing they also fly under the radar of the NIMBYs and BANANAs as it sounds like obtaining the planning permission was not that difficult.

3% a year for me would be about 3k. I would only want to see something like that happen is there were major cuts in VAT and income tax. Indeed, I am strong of the belief that tax in general should be kept nice and low, with major cuts in public spending to make up the different. How many civil servants could be let go and replaced by AI for a start?

You’re talking about civil servants and unions….do I wouldn’t be counting on change on the back of AI or any change in general unless country is bankrupt and IMF step in to cut spending.

The way I'm seeing this is if a small builder can churn out 2 one off homes a year. Could they build 4 terrace homes a year in a village or town, then leverage up with 2 small builder firms outputting 10 homes a year

One off homes are usually bigger than terrace homes and more inefficient to build. A switch to terraced or semi-d in central locations would result in greater profit for builder coupled with greater output for the consumer.

If successful it would be serious competition for the large developers so sitting on sites and land hoarding could be a more risky business. It might be time to get off the pot if your not going to do anything with it

True. I guess we have the golden opportunity to reform the civil service 15 years ago, and it was squandered. Oh well....let's print more money.

AI came up in the recent pay deal with the unions seeking assurances that new tech would not result in job losses.

In my opinion the unions missed a trick and should have asked the government to use AI to automate payroll in the public service.

The complexity would have crashed and killed AI in its infancy

Terminator 2 Irish style