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

The Student

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119627248#Comment_119627248

I agree we need social housing but I would remove the whole idea that once a person reaches 18 they register for housing support.

People should try house themselves and if unsuccessful by say 30 then register for housing support.

Evictions for anti social behaviour and non payment of rent should be streamlined. 99% of people in social housing are the nicest hardworking honest people you would ever meet

It is the 1% who destroy areas. I would remove the differential rate for calculating rent and replace it with one that takes account of household income (with no max rent fig which I believe is €260 a week) and availability of local services/amenities.

Finally I would include the type of property in the rental calculations to reflect a single person in a three bed property.

All revenue from above is then ringfenced as a self financing model specifically for social housing.

jimmybobbyschweiz

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119627062#Comment_119627062

I would contend that this view is flawed with goldfish memory syndrome which ignores that a mere ten years ago the property market and economy was on its knees with a grim outlook for the country - how did this happen if the place was so great and booming only five years before that!?

What has changed in the last ten years in terms of things that make a big difference to the quality of life for those in the country? Minimal infrastructure, energy, housing, education and health (pre-covid) investment and improvement, so I'm dubious that we have much to show for the last ten years.

To think the place is booming now is to effectively admit there is no prospect of the economy and property market crashing - this is necessarily the outlook for someone having such a view.

jimmybobbyschweiz

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119627478#Comment_119627478

How many are renting with families in tow? That is where the fun relationship breaks down in a lot of cases - totally unsustainable long term here when the cheapest, habitable 3 bed rental is €3k+ pm (especially now with general cost of living added on top of that, you would need to be clearing €140k+ in salaries at a minimum to be renting as a family needing 3 beds; that's a minimum amount).

manniot2

We are absolutely blessed that a few tech and FS companies are in Dublin for tax reasons. Without them it would be Birmingham. Probably harsh on Birmingham.

Timing belt

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119627248#Comment_119627248

If your to solve the housing crisis fast then you need to build basic houses in new council estates like was done in the past but was stopped due to creating ghettos. The vast majority of the people don’t cause trouble so in order to deal with the few bad eggs You need powers to evict anti-social tenants. 3 strikes and they loose their right to be housed by the state. it’s far from ideal but it would be the quickest way to solve the shortage.

Villa05

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119628066#Comment_119628066

They started fine but evolved into ghettos, I know a few who started in those estates but were offered grants to move out to free up for new applicants. They didn't start as high unemployment blacks spots. Would it have been better if those offered grants to move were instead offered the chance to purchase at replacement cost. Probably,

We have 4% unemployment right now, there is no reason for any estate to be dominated by unemployed persons

No arguments on policing,

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119627695#Comment_119627695

That is absolute rubbish. There was a global recession which affected every economy, not just Ireland. It is a testament to our resilience that though the economy was “on its knees”, we endured, and picked up again. Our economy improved before many others thanks to foreign investment, low corporate tax, prudent fiscal policies and our will to succeed. Ireland was a great place to live, even in the worst of times.

You seem to have been unleashed back to your previous iteration, just with a new moniker.

Being of the opinion that the place is booming, and that there is a prospect of the property market crashing are not mutually exclusive. The majority of people in Ireland who own property and/or have good jobs can hold the opinion that things are not as bad as people like you say they are, while accepting that costs are rising and that there is a possibility, or even a probability that property prices will fall at some stage. But having a fatalistic and myopic view that if it is bad for me, it must be bad for everyone is a nonsense. The fact is that for most people Ireland is a great place to live, we would not live anywhere else, people such as yourself believe that if you don’t get what you want, it must be bad for everyone.

Ireland is a country with a high number of well paying jobs, there are a hell of a lot of people in their 20s and 30s who are paid a lot, they are your competition when you try to buy a home, that is life.

The flaw, is that you think that just because you have an education and/or a job, you deserve to be able to buy a property wherever you want. And yet there you are in the land of clocks, happy, but unable to afford to buy a home. Go figure.

One of the downsides of the recovery in our economy and the success of some people, is that we have a generation who now think that they are owed what others have by virtue to sharing the same nationality.

Villa05

@Dav010

When your generation and mine have covered the cost of the mess we've created and passed on to future generations, maybe then we can lecture them and pass on our percieved wisdom

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119628868#Comment_119628868

Widom is borne of experience, advice is a form of nostalgia where we leave out the bad parts and focus on the good that we want to pass on. We did not ever live in a country/economy without debt, it has always been there, and it always will. Neither you nor I, nor our contemporaries will “cover” the cost of this mess, nor will we be required to. Every economy exists in a state where debt is managed, sometimes it goes up, sometimes down, but we don’t all lose the run of ourselves, and we don’t all think it defines us, or this country. At this moment, the savings that people have on deposits in banks has rarely been higher, even during the last boom. The problem this time is that there are a lot more people with high incomes and savings so they can outspend and outbid people their own age. That is unfortunate, but we all make choices, some choose careers that pay more. You see a country that is terrible, most of us just get on with life, we have seen worse times than you see now, and we still managed. The problem now is that you and others think that a country with full employment, a good quality of life, a good education system, for the most part an happy population, is awful because you aren’t thriving. Anyone that thinks things aren’t tougher now as a result of higher prices is in denial, but Ireland is not unique in that, we didn’t cause Covid or start a war in Ukraine. There probably isn’t an economy in the world which hasn’t seen prices/debt rise as a result of global events. Things may get worse before they get better, but history shows that this has always been the way.

If you are not happy here, the world is a big place.

houseyhouse

…

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jimmybobbyschweiz

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119628251#Comment_119628251

All fine, but completely falls apart into mush when we talk about the rental market.

It is at such catastrophically high prices and null supply that it has choked the prosperity out of the country for those that are in the rental market, which of course is dominated by the well paid tech workers whose jobs brought any sort of recovery to the country - this gift horse has been looked in the mouth.

Your post is unfortunately common among a lot of the mé féiners in Ireland that unfortunately share two negative characteristics with the worst of the Americans; greed (I have my lot and you can stuff it) and stubbornness (if you don't like it, you can leave).

There are far too many Irish people that have this nasty entitlement side, from NIMBYs to property tax objectors to pensioners expecting pensions that they never paid for while living in mortgage free homes.

The country is in a state right now with savings at record highs and house prices soaring, yet people are crying that they can't afford their energy bills - that shows how the prosperity to me is a sham.

The country is not booming despite the FG propaganda and this is playing out now with the whinging about energy bills and mortgage rates.

Unfortunately the mess the country is in is largely due to its own greed (get homeowners out of negative equity at all costs) and having the inner circle feast from the trough (Exchequer cash) instead of building something sustainable and open for young Irish and international people to settle here and have a functioning housing market and general life. Anyway, for other reasons, the inflection has occurred and you reap what you sow - it's not going to be pretty.

I will just use the two examples again from the last few posts;

1. Why, if the country has been booming and is a great place to live, have there been pathetic improvements in our infrastructure, education, housing and health sectors during these booming years? The cost of housing has accelerated due to supply being managed to stay low while the State throws good money at the overheated demand side, businesses are charging high prices because of taxes and an out of control insurance industry - neither are expensive because they are fundamentally high quality offerings.

2. The French embassy wouldn't post a warning about the country if it didn't have some substance behind it, with the substance being direct experience of French people who came to the country to work and study.

https://www.irishtimes.com/ireland/social-affairs/2022/09/16/students-and-workers-from-france-forced-to-return-home-due-to-lack-of-accommodation/

The embassy warned the housing situation in Dublin is much more expensive than Paris and Lana from Bordeaux, who moved here from London, says the price of accommodation and transport is also much worse value than London.

jimmybobbyschweiz

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119626222#Comment_119626222

The time to do this was a few years ago but it wasn't done and now the country's further growth prospects have evaporated until the economy cools or corrects. It's a runaway train on a downhill trajectory that we will have to leave to itself.

0 rentals available in the country means no more jobs which means no additional income and corporate taxes which means a need for additional taxes and spending cuts that aren't happening or else more State borrowing which of course means higher interest repayments for the State which means more taxes and spending cuts are needed that aren't happening.

It's a viscous spiral from here and is really a time for individuals to manage spending, increase savings, pay down debt (that shouldn't exist anyway after the COVID boon) and make sure you are doing a good job in your work. Over a year ago in summer 2021 I posted on my other account to go low for long with a mortgage rate and by long I meant 10-20 years. Late last year and early this year I said that the ECB would make an embarrassing U-turn and admit inflation is sticking around and is not transitory so will ultimately raise rates - when you see Philip Lane in such a prominent position at the ECB you know that the private sector is ten steps ahead of the ECB and the private sector plotted the course they ultimately took, way before they ultimately took it. You have previously qualified your defence of the current housing market costs by noting that a hit to demand would do something to alleviate the issue and I have replied many times pointing out that the big MNC hiring frenzy will stall or reverse into job cuts which will hit demand - this has been on the cards for a while now and is not surprising to see it all materialising now - what happens around these jobs losses to the State are that FG, Inc. will blame the global economic slowdown and not say anything about the housing market impact on the job losses/hiring freezes.

There won't be any State bailout for mortgage holders this time around as the money isn't there. There is already no hope for renters who need to move to a new place so best to just take stock if you're sticking around.

To think otherwise, is effectively to have solved the housing crisis so please, if you disagree with the above, tell me how the housing crisis has been solved.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119629562#Comment_119629562

Again, with experience comes knowledge.

People like you cry “why me? Why can’t I buy a home?, I deserve to be able to”. Our economy have recovered incredibly well from being on our knees 10 yrs ago. So much so that we have full employment even though our population is at its highest since pre famine times. People have not had to emigrate for jobs for almost a decade, that is a stark contrast to what went before. But an unfortunate side effect is that house building didn’t keep pace.

Our experience tells us that over supply of housing helped to exacerbate the last recession, then, developers were pariahs because they built too many units and people fell into mortgage debt traps. Now they don’t build enough, yet they and the Government are still pariahs.

You and your like wallow in misery, you do not see that for most people our economy’s recovery has been a positive. Those MNC‘s that so many think are the root of all evil have created jobs for our highly educated tech graduates, who would have had to emigrate otherwise. The consequence of that? They have the money to spend, MNCs put 16bn in direct wage payments into our economy last year, the trickle down effect to other businesses/people is enormous. Is this a bad thing? Only if you think success is bad, begrudgery is good.

The French embassy posted about accommodation, so what? Are they telling you anything you don’t know, does it affect our lives in any way? No it doesn’t, in a couple of days time only people like you will think what someone in the French embassy thinks is important. But it suits your narrative.

I think you and your comrades could do with being a little more “me Fein” and do a little less whinging that the Government/society isn’t helping you more.

Greed drives economies, profit allows expansion, without both, what do you think drives business owners to succeed? You call it stubbornness, maybe we are just mentally stronger and more durable than you.

On one point I do agree with you though, State intervention has completely wrecked the rental market. RPZ legislation and failure to address the difficulty in removing errant tenants has contributed to LLs leaving the sector. But SF are about to make it worse, so be careful what you wish for.

combat14

It's going to be very difficult to keep those new celtic tiger prices from heading south when banks start cutting the money .... anyone not selling now could regret it this time next year

Buyers struggle to get mortgages as rising prices limit loan offers

The ECB is expected to increase interest rates aggressively in the coming months

Higher interest rates mean higher monthly repayments, and record inflation results in borrowers having less disposable income.

Stricter net disposable income requirements mean every extra €50 to €70 a month in costs for a single income family reduces the amount they can borrow by up to €10,000.

Borrowers are being told that even though they can borrow a certain amount based on the income limits set by the Central Bank, the impact of cost-of-living increases on disposable income are trumping this.

https://m.independent.ie/business/personal-finance/property-mortgages/buyers-struggle-to-get-mortgages-as-rising-prices-limit-loan-offers-41995940.html

Tonesjones

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119626222#Comment_119626222

Who's going to live in these houses paid for by taxpayers ?

Taxpayers

Balluba

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119627523#Comment_119627523

I believe that we have no system of bidding for a house in Ireland that is transparent and auctioneers seem to be accountable to nobody.

yes on the Sherry Fitzgerald online system you can see the bids as they come in however some of those bids could come from friends or relatives of the seller helping to raise the price of the property.

Timing belt

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119629753#Comment_119629753

Yet again cherry picking with what you want out of articles. Why didn’t you post the next sentence?

Borrowers are being told that even though they can borrow a certain amount based on the income limits set by the Central Bank, the impact of cost-of-living increases on disposable income are trumping this.

Not all borrowers are affected, but the cost of living rises are proving problematic for many first-time buyers and switchers, particularly single people and single-earner families, Ms Hennessy said.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119629803#Comment_119629803

You’ve missed the point, he/she is asking who pays the difference between the build cost and the purchase price, not who is going to live there.

Timing belt

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119629587#Comment_119629587

You also posted saying that the threat of war from Russia didn’t exist and was only being used by the west to justify inflation and speculators were doing it to make money from higher energy prices.

You have also claimed rent will collapse by up to 50% but have never been able to explain how this will happen or what conditions will change to cause it.

your post putting down Ireland and calling it a **** hole seem to have gotten worse since you emigrated and left the country. Are you trying to convince yourself you made the right decision? Because that’s what your posts have come across as and I have seen multiple times where people have emigrated only to get nostalgic and within 5 years and returning to Ireland.

If you have emigrated for good like you claim then why do you care so strongly about the Irish the Irish economy maybe you should redirect your energy to where you are living, planning to live in the future.

growleaves

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119626138#Comment_119626138

Are they though?

I think people just belatedly realise that the Anglo-American influence on Ireland has been harmful, especially since the Celtic Tiger onwards. The draw of this commercial culture is supposed to be that people have opportunities to get rich.

Instead what you have is a cornered market in housing, and the opportunity to attain rental income is being taken from small LLs and given to big corporations (in effect).

Add in insurance industry price gouging, higher energy price rises per capita than in other Euro countries, and people just see that everything in this country is a con. Direct comparisons to other European countries are possible because of our shared currency.

An acquaintance of mine works in housing. He says there are private developers who build faulty/unsafe apartments then wind up the LLC that is responsible for them, then rinse and repeat, and apparently there is no comeback to this.

There needs to be transcendent standards of commercial integrity that everyone insists upon. Otherwise there will be cynicism.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119630101#Comment_119630101

But there are opportunities, and the people who take them profit from them, those that don’t aren’t. If you have the skill set to take advantage of that opportunity, you are ahead, if you haven’t, then perhaps you should ask why not, and why you think it is someone else’s fault.

growleaves

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119630136#Comment_119630136

I do see market opportunities though they are few and far between. I'm not complaining about my own situation btw but making general observations.

I'm not explaining myself very well what I mean is that a lot ordinary people people were sold on a get-rich Celtic Tiger dream and so opened the floodgates wide to Yankee scam culture. Casinos on every street, BLT properties bought with loans ('accidental landlords'). The openness to a lack of commercial integrity was a piece of cuteness that has backfired.

Now post-2008 it is hard and getting harder to make money or even keep it. Most people can't even get a decent savings rate. Yet the Faustian bargain they made doesn't have any comeback.

So it becomes like in America, 'The little guy always get shafted', 'You can't fight City Hall' etc. Cynicism abounds.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119630203#Comment_119630203

Who sold us an easy-to-get-rich scheme? I don’t ever remember anyone telling us we were all going to get rich. What casinos are you talking about? No one bought BTL properties “by accident”, people invested to make money, but as everyone knows, investments can go up or down, there was never a guarantee it would go up. Investors learned from the last boom/recession, that is one important why there has not been the same level of investment by developers and BLT landlords. The prudence of CB caps on mortgage lending has meant that we did not lose the run of ourselves by borrowing beyond our means, but the opportunities offered by all those high paying jobs means that even with the caps, a lot of people can still afford to buy houses. Low ECB rates helped keep mortgage repayments low, albeit at the higher rate than elsewhere in the EU due to higher risks associated with lend here/the inability of the lender to recover an asset when the debt is not being repaid. The trade off for low borrowing rates is low interest rates on savings, banks cannot lend at low rates, then pay high rates on savings, they would lose too much money and therefore be unable to lend.

newmember2

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119630136#Comment_119630136

This opinion is so dangerous - if you're having a problem then it's your fault.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119630294#Comment_119630294

That is not what I posted. Lots of people who don’t work for MNCs and don’t have well paid jobs don’t see themselves as having problems. But if there are opportunities out there and you don’t or can’t take them, what is the point of blaming others for that? Should a teacher benefit from MNC/Fintech level wages even though they do not possesses the skill set to work in either? There is no fault, just a realisation that not everyone should have whatever they want, just because they live here.

combat14

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119629983#Comment_119629983

exactly "but the cost of living rises are proving problematic for many first-time buyers and switchers"

Bass Reeves

There is no doubt we will see a slowdown, whether we will go into a technical recession is another matter. Most news stories generally paint the worst case senarios. However a lot of these are easily seen to be hyped by the news providers, family in a tent, married couple moving back in with there respective families.

But the presumption that the whole economy will go down the toilet is a bit far fetched.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119629753#Comment_119629753

House prices may drop but as I predicted earlier in the year it will only be in the 10 ish% max region. However if the fall most people will get waiting for them to fall 20%+ which is unlikely to happen. If the fall much with 10% builders will slow building down or stop building completely. This will exacerbate the he problem.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119629562#Comment_119629562

You might think what he says is mush but there is a harsh reality in what he states. 90% of what happens in your life you or your parents decide for you. It decisions and actions taken by you and your parents make the decision on your career, education etc. After that decisions you make yourself de ide you life and lifestyle. Government action is only responsible for 10% of your life's outcome.

jimmybobbyschweiz

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119630326#Comment_119630326

To be a bit facetious; rent is around 30% of income in Ireland and the government supports 50% of rentals in some way so they are a hefty part of the reason that so much of a salary is hoovered up in rent; it's more than 10% of our lives they impact.

This point is a bit ironic as I am the one calling for a more free market, but to be clear we absolutely do not have a free housing market which is the problem! It is being manipulated significantly to benefit homeowners but this is coming at a cost to renters who are paying for the homeowners to have high prices. The government bailed out banks that lossed money to property so the government, then stuck with high value loans collateralized against much lower value properties, wanted to get some sort of return so pushed a lot of cash and effort into getting the value of property up again. This is entirely a manufactured scenario and was so one track focused that infrastructure, education, energy and health all suffered from a lack of investment. Even with the billions spaffed into the property market, there is very little return to show for it in terms of an efficient and better functioning market.

jimmybobbyschweiz

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119630052#Comment_119630052

Well, there is analysis that points to high energy prices being the result of gouging rather than fundamental production costs. Inflation was around a lot longer than the war in terms of data showing how the war impacted inflation.

I have emigrated and likely will be part of the silent voiced, post-08 crash youth that the country lost. I stuck around after college and worked through the tough period in a pub, it was very bleak around 2009-2012, but then I saw the recovery and around 2015-17 the country was on a great trajectory; immigration was going well, there was an optimism about the place, but the country needed to be managed very carefully then to avoid a scenario where we would not let the prosperity bed down properly and it would result in an overheating of the economy. Unfortunately this has happened and it has resulted in a country on the brink (past the brink in my view) of collapsing under the weight of its own growth - zero rentals says it all. Somehow there is nothing at all to rent. The whole economic model stalls from here and therefore breaks. I care because I have invested so much time and effort into building a life there, of course I have friends and family there but there is nothing sustainable in Ireland the the future direction looks grim, especially with SF likely being in power. I feel like I was on one of the last choppers out of Saigon and am now in the clear from it all, already feeling relaxed and relief at the future in Switzerland for myself and my family.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119630569#Comment_119630569

What is your timeframe for the collapse we are past the brink of?

You should watch Ken Burns docuseries on Vietnam, it will put hardship into perspective and illustrative the absurdness of your Saigon analogy.