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

Where would all the middle income and social housing renters rent, if the subsidies are removed?

The private market can afford 2,400pm for a 2 bed apartment in South Dublin. There arent enough of them.

If you remove the subsidies the landlord isnt going to accept 800PM from someone on the social, they are going to rent exclusivley to the private market.

The govt doesnt have homes of its own to house these folks, so they have no choice but to pay market rate.

Just out of interest I checked 2022.

€22.5bn total value of transactions. €180m total value of HTB.

0.8% of total spend coming from HTB. 99.2% coming from cash, mortgages etc.

I really don’t think it can be fundamentally changing the market in the way people seem to think.

I think there is a greater argument that HAP spend is distorting rental markets significantly and having knock on consequences on values due to inflated rental yields.

But a presumably related fact is that yet another characteristic of our market that makes Ireland an outlier is the relative affordability of the cheapest areas of Dublin vs the most expensive.

In what way is Ireland an outlier? The increasing gap between supply and demand, and between salaries and house prices is a global phenomenon.

Theres more than just HTB that the government is doing on the supply side though - things like the First Home Scheme etc.

That aside removing HAP and getting those 60,000 odd households out of the private rental market and into social housing would have massively more of an impact though, and save the state a fortune while we're at it, yeah. But thats going to require the building/obtaining of large numbers of social housing units after the problem was ignored and let fester for the last decade or so. Its not instant, it'll require more of a 3-5 year plan.

Removing the supply side schemes could be done almost instantly, in contrast. So it might be a much smaller effect, but it at least it would be much sooner.

I honestly have no clue what you are try to say or imply here.

So your idea is to cram those pesky poor people in tighter? Nice.

Again, Shared Equity has had a total of 100 houses purchased in 2022 and 1,000 in 2023. Looks like it will level out at 2-2.5k or so in 2024 and beyond.

I can see pros and cons to it, but on balance, I don’t support the First Home Scheme and would remove it if Minister for Housing.

That said, I think its impact on house price inflation (so far anyway) would be so small it couldn’t be measured. Perhaps it will be inflationary in future but for now the numbers are so small it’s largely irrelevant.

Agreed on HAP that there is no quick and easy way to unwind it without causing major societal issues.

The 110% mortgages were an off plans new build thing, price locked in with booking deposit, value increase before closing so 100% mortgage on inflated value at drawdown despite fixed price. They were short lived before the bust.

In the last few years, the loan to income cap has been the only thing keeping a lid on prices, the recent increase in the loan to income cap was a mistake when it was really kicking into action in Dublin.

The big risk in keeping the loan to income as it was may have been a reduction in construction output. I'm convinced this would have been temporary until site prices reduced accordingly but politically, any reduction in output would have been catastrophic given current demand.

He is correct that it is a major part of the solution. The other part is control of immigration. Both are needed.

Given the current demand from income earners who do not need subsidies, what would you do with the people who could no longer afford rent without subsidies when they are evicted? Maybe you think rents would drop, unlikely in the short term given the demand for rental accomadation.

And more pertinently, which government party would risk their policies making tens of thousands more homeless?

I can’t help but get the sense that you favour those who don’t avail of subsidies at the expense of those who need them. What you advocate could cause an exponential rise in evictions as rent becomes unaffordable for an enormous cohort of income earners who currently need subsidised rent, those that can afford it will get the accomadation they want, LLs continue to get high rents.

It's 2024. Regardless of the rights and wrongs of what we did in 2008, it's water under the bridge now, banging on about very much isn't part of the solution and is not remotely in that guy's job description.

Pie in the sky stuff.

You want to build another Ballymun for people receiving HAP? What are you going to do if they don’t want to leave the areas they are in?

As for your last sentence, I’m sure those in receipt of HAP appreciate it. It just suits your narrative to ignore the recipients and hurd them into social welfare estates.

While it might not be the most palatable thing for some people, eventually you reach the point where beggars cant be choosers.

Otherwise you end up in the current, ridiculous situation where people are refusing free houses becuase it doenst have enough stable space for their horses.