Why aren't areas like Beaumont and Walkinstown more popular.

5k a year!! In 1973 TDs got a pay rise from £2,500 to £3,126. people who bought house then earned above the average. People on average or below got council houses. Married public servants were well paid at the time in most cases. That is not the case now. You can't go back to the planned economy of the 1970s to fix the problems of today.

It seems I was wrong on that.

https://www.cso.ie/en/releasesandpublications/ep/p-hes/hes2015/aiw/

However, that was a throw-away remark on my part. The cost of housing was lower compared to the real value of money. Earlier in the thread I gave an example of a Stillorgan house selling for 11k in 1973. The value of 11k adjusted for inflation is nowhere near the price of the house in 2024 (11k in 1973 would be about 150k today whereas the house in question sold for 800k).

People always forget - or ignore - that interest rates in the good old days were multiples of what they are now.

For example, borrowing 100,000 over 20 years at 12% is a total cost of 264,000. For most of the 70s and 80s, this was pretty standard. Borrowing 200,000 over 20 years at 4% - standard enough rate for the last 20 years - is a total cost of 290,000.

So even though the "price" of the house has gone up 100%, the increase in actual cost is only 10%.

And with wages so low and taxes so high, the cost of servicing a loan back in the day was massive relative to family incomes.

Price is a very simple thing, affordability is a lot more complicated.

Familiar with both areas. Beaumont would not be considered a "working class' area. Has always been very settle/middle class, even as far back as the 80s. Would be a couple of notches up from Walkinstown on any socio-ecomonic scale.

To anyone saying their grandfather bought a house for a 5 figure sum back in the 70s...would you genuinely trade places? Bearing in mind the house would have no insulation, horrible decor and furnishings, no en suites, no electric shower, no Internet, no wide screen tv with 100s of channels, no coffee machine, no central heating, no avocado and poached eggs 😀

You wouldn't last the weekend.

That may all be true, but my whole point was that housing has become far more expensive in recent decades. None of what you said negates the fact that houses have increased in value far beyond the rate of inflation.

I wouldn't argue with that. Again, I'm not saying that the past was wonderful, but I am making the observation that housing was more accessible to those on middling income compared to today. My own parents bought a house in 1988 in Dublin 3 when they were in their mid-20s and on very basic wages. That would be impossible for the same type of people today.

To put it another way, the problems of the past do not negate the problems of the present.

Property prices never follow inflation and areas desirability changes with time. Stillorgan is now and expensive place to buy in and out of the reach for lower incomes. That is just the cost of progress and increased population. The answer is simple that people buy where they can afford and not expect to get what people could get in the past.

Workman's cottages in desirable areas go for a fortune but when they were built they were lowly housing that were cheap. Back in the 70s/80s there were tons of derelict housing left to rot. That includes housing that is worth a couple of million now. There is certainly a sense of entitlement and greed from many people that make statement like you. Tell them a landlord bought one bought a property in the 80s repaired it and rented it out and still do they will claim the landlord is a parasite and greedy for making so much money. They want the landlord to rent cheaply or sell it cheaply so "ordinary folk" can afford it.

The utter entitlement, jealousy and greed from such views is over looked. A landlord of 40 years provided a service and certain people want the landlord to subsidize somebody else's living because …?

You should check out interest rate, unemployment, migration etc… of the time when property was so cheap and you would see that people couldn't afford houses back then and left the country meaning house prices couldn't rise. I was old enough in 1988 to remember how things were. My brother is only 2.5 years older than me and emigrated as there was no possibility of work. By the time I finished education Ireland had dramatically changed and I didn't need to emigrate

Indeed. My entire point was that housing has become more expensive than it was in the past. You've just agreed with this, underlined it with some reasons as to why and then peppered in a few ad hominines. Good man, Ray.

Different things are important to different people. If you have no kids and work at home, then schools and transport don't matter, and maybe a trendy coffee house and artisan bakery are critical.

House prices have really rocketed up in the last 10 years

But are only fractionally above what they were 17 years ago.

you're going to have a rapidly process of gentrification in some areas

Good. I say this as a lifelong resident of Dublin - there are a lot of parts of the city which are absolutely horrible and in dire need of a bit of gentrification.

Whether they should rise with inflation or not is one thing. I'm merely pointing out that they did not. If it seemed that I did, then I was unclear. Good day.

When you're talking about communities that have been riven by drugs, crime, unemployment and every other social problem you can think of, what exactly is the problem with them being gentrified?

If a community has failed, why would we pump more and more public money into keeping it on life support?

That is never really the case. The social contract is different in areas and general behaviour is lower. A simple way to see it is with the statue Lady On the Rock is not in any window in a high cost neighbourhood. The teenagers dressing like thugs to fit in with their peer group and targets if they don't. Drive through the rough parts of Dublin and you will see the same things and it isn't a minority but the majority of the area that looks run down. The expression of a few bad apples includes it ruins the barrel by spreading to other apples in the barrel. Same happens in such neighbourhoods where people will be fine buying stolen goods and can be sold door to door.

How small do you think the minority are? 1%,5,%, 10%, 20%…?