Couples on 107K can’t afford a home

One example when I was in Sydney few years ago our rent was €723 a month. A 3 bed house in the same area was about €1100. We saved nearly €400 a month in rent, that was 7 years ago. Electricity was cheaper with less rooms. There's a bit of an issue over there with housing but as of today a 3 bedroom house is €2890 and a 2 bedroom apt is €2170 pm.

Or indeed the other way around - any time we have seen deflation in property prices we have seen plenty of other negative consequences……

(Again I am not saying that we shouldn't be doing something about the increasing unafordability of housing but simple statements like we should build higher - that'll bring the prices down…. - make no sense.)

Nothing wrong with Donaghmede. Would love a gaff in Donaghmede.

…jesus christ, this is not what happens in reality, this is just nonsense neoclassical economics, which is just completely disconnected from reality…..

…the main culprit in rising prices is largely to do with the availability of credit in an economy, the more credit is pushed into property markets, the higher prices rise, this has happened in most economies around the world that have tried this approach, including ireland….

…under such conditions, the higher the demand, the higher prices go, and also the higher supply, the higher prices go, i.e. it creates a positive feedback loop in regards pricing….

Your question was about other capital cities. I gave you an example of my experience living in Sydney which is a capital city. If you don't like my example that's fine we'll just move on and let go of the back and forth. It's not fair on the other posters who want to have their own say.

The only thing that needs to match is your name, you can put any details you want on your passport details and the system is none the wiser. Once the passport you present to the desk agent matches you then you're allowed to board.

So have house prices in Sydney gone down over time due to the increasing numbers of apartments being built?

I'd have no issues with your answer if they answered the question I had asked. You even used figures in your post that directly contradicted what you were trying to say.

Building high hasn't reduced property prices in Sydney. They continue to rise, pardon the pun. It is exceptionally difficult to reduce property prices in a managed way and I'd suggest it's not been done before outside of the crashes we have seen that have caused chaos with peoples lives and in those crashes very few people could actually buy a property despite their relative cost at those times.

People say match supply with demand and things will improve. That's not going to happen any time soon unfortunately. So what other options are available to manage a reduction in prices?

Of course, obvious is obvious.....

However what country has managed to reduce housing prices and rents by building more houses? Didn't we build more houses back circa 2003 to 2008? It took a global financial crash to bring house prices and rents down then..... Building more houses didn't bring down prices.........

Right now, how do you build more houses to bring down prices when we are told the costs involved in building houses AND apartments make the sales prices of these very very expensive.....

Everyone thinks these are uniquely Irish problems and easily solved if the will were there.

As others have said the Irish state had a vested interest on getting property prices up from their lows around 2010 to 2012 as it directly or indirectly owned a lot of mortgage debt/housing.

Detroit managed to collapse property prices. They first had to destroy their industry though.

So again where have you seen that has managed to bring down house prices without tanking the economy?

As I said before, in all seriousness, building houses is just way too slow to put a dent on the crises. We need to create large scale trailer parks like they have in the US. Building houses is a long term solution.