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

RichardAnd

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120463918#Comment_120463918

Is there any solid data on just how many private sector workers have received pay rises, and by how much? Speaking personally, I got a 4.5% pay increase this year, along with a 4.5% bonus (which is taxed) and a reward card. This was, I should add, performance based, and it was only awarded because the company had a good year last year. What the civil service unions want is a blanket pay rise regardless of performance, and heedless of where the money comes from.  

That aside, the solution to inflation is not to chase higher wages. The only thing that has ever worked to tackle inflation is to reduce the money-supply, be it through interest rates or some other means.  

newmember2

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120462641#Comment_120462641

Have a look at...

https://www.dublincity.ie/residential/housing/i-am-looking-home/i-want-apply-council-home

rob316

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120462223#Comment_120462223

I think its the sustainable model we need to be moving towards, the state the largest landlord with secure long term tenancies. Demand is huge for these schemes

RichardAnd

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120464106#Comment_120464106

It's based posts like this that keep me coming back to this forum. God bless you, sir!

DownByTheGarden

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120464111#Comment_120464111

The problem in our place is that they tried to use the argument that giving salary increases was not good for inflation for over a year. Then people started leaving for other companies that did give salary increases. And it was now very difficult to compete for replacements for them with what was on offer. They ended up having to give new, less experienced staff even more money to attract them than they would have had to give the existing experienced staff who left to stay. It was too late though. I had gone to an interview myself actually and was given the surprise salary package between the interview and the job offer, so i stayed.

There are a good few staff who work in a different departments where i am who really would find it hard to move so they didnt get increases. They are getting them now as it was noticed that moral and productivity had really dropped when they werent getting the raises everyone around them was. It was cheaper to give them the same increases than go through the process of either moving them on and replacing them, or threatening them and you never know what way they will react.

There is only so long long you can resist inflation, no matter how big your resolve.

Every company will be following if they have not realized that already.

fliball123

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120464842#Comment_120464842

Every company wont follow as in a lot of cases in the private sector - private companies are now essentially locked out of borrowing due to the high interest repayments they don't have the bank of TAX PAYER POCKETS to pay or borrow for everything. The cost of everything like heating, petrol, insurance and every other necessity that someone running a business has to pay has shot up over the last 18 months and in a lot of cases pay rises to staff will be the wave that drowns them. Already insolvencies in Ireland in 2022 are up nearly 40% on 2021 and PWC are predicting that this figure will ramp up this year. Yeah but its hunky dory in the private sector pay rises for everyone maybe in the Walter Mitty land you work in but it is not the case for the vast majority of private sector companies out there.

https://www.pwc.ie/media-centre/press-releases/2023/restructuring-update-q4.html

Villa05

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120461080#Comment_120461080

Your post reminds of this excellent podcast from March which explains the presidential cycle in relation to asset prices

Government spending and policies ramp up 18 months out from an election so that it's given time to filter into the economy. This boosts the job market and asset prices through Bidens inflation reduction act. (the irony of the name)

Ireland and us elections will be very close to each other this coming term. Think of what the Irish government have implemented

Changed the mortgage rules

Implemented a shared ownership scheme

Doubled the housing spend from 2 billion to 4 billion (most of it buying existing property and propping up rents)

All these policies increase house prices and rents, therefore our government are still in the camp that higher house prices = more votes.

If your major issue is housing this government is working to make your issue worse

45 minutes of Jeremy Grantham thoughts and opinions for free. Enjoy

David Rosenberg was charging 120 dollars to listen to his interview with Jeremy

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/audio/2023-03-09/jeremy-grantham-s-market-meat-grinder-podcast

RichardAnd

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120464842#Comment_120464842

Yes, but the difference is that many (if not most) of the civil servants who will get a pay rise would not find a job in the private sector that would offer a higher salary. As I've always said, if one believes themselves to be underpaid, that must mean that there is someone who is willing to pay them more than their current employer to do the same job. If there is not, then they are not underpaid.  

Taking myself as an example. I earn slightly above the average salary for someone in my area with my level of experience. I would like more money, but I would not get a lot more if I were to move to a different job. Ergo, I'm not underpaid. The civil service unions are trying to get a blanket increase for people regardless of performance, and regardless of the demand for the job that they fill. This is also ignoring the many boons that working in the civil service offers such as security, flexibility, a pension and near impossibility of termination.

"Every company will be following if they have not realized that already."

Private companies are not the civil service. It's apples and organges. If they were comparable, then thousands of civil servants would have been made redundant during the crash.  

DownByTheGarden

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120465184#Comment_120465184

If everyone around you got a raise but you, how would you feel? If you stayed in your job would it effect your productivity?

I think people overblow just what a nice job a public sector job is.

I did a contract in the department of agriculture for about 18 months. What I saw were a few wasters alright but the vast majority were just exactly the same type of workers as you see anywhere else. Just normal people doing a normal job.

fliball123

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120465389#Comment_120465389

Overblown?? come on -

no redundancies when the economy is falling apart.

pay rises no matter how good, bad or ugly you are at your job.

The tax payers pockets and over 200Billion of loans to continue pay rise after increment after pay rise.

Pensions that us mere mortals in the private sector cannot afford.

Paid over 20% more on average than those of us working in the private sector.

All negotiations entered into on wage increases have gov on one side unions on the the other and the pay rises being discussed have a direct impact on all of their take home pay as in the more of an increase the more both sides get. Not to mention inflation only gets mentioned when it suits the narrative of how much more they should all be getting paid and not a whisper of pay cuts when inflation has been a lot less then their pay rises.

I think you mean overpaid not overblown :)

mcsean2163

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120464171#Comment_120464171

Thanks, I didn't realise how it works.

Single adult

€40,000

2 Adults

No Children

€42,000

No wonder there's so much talk of not getting married etc. Basically discourages working..... Madness.

J_1980

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120465969#Comment_120465969

single adults get pokey 1beds. Families all get houses/ large apts.

much easier to house singles. Waiting list is far shorter.

Villa05

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120466071#Comment_120466071

Pokey 1 beds are more expensive than 3 bed houses. I suspect many singles on 30 to 40k are sharing or living with parents, many may not be aware they qualify for assistance

mcsean2163

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120466071#Comment_120466071

Never knew how it worked, a pokey one bed would've been fine for me starting out. In fairness, rent used to be a LOT cheaper...

ingo1984

https://www.ontheditch.com/irish-fund-biggest-landlords/

Great little country.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120466829#Comment_120466829

Is that not what the majority of the people complaining about landlords have been requesting? Small/accidental landlords out and professional landlords to increase their presence in the Irish rental market.

Are we now upset that professional landlords are using favourable tax treatment to allow them to build up a large property portfolio and extracting maximum rents for their units.

Was there an expectation that they would start providing low cost rentals?

SwimClub

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120467652#Comment_120467652

The important thing is that they are willing to provide security of tenure, you will never be asked to leave your pokey one bed in Gardner street once you pay your 2k rent a month.

L1011

If you go back 10-15 years ago on here you'll find threads of people pleading for corporate landlords to come in to the market. Poor service, poor maintenance and no fault evictions for weak or fake reasons being the reasons given to prefer them over single unit owners.

I'm not sure what people expected to happen when they did come in!

Bass Reeves

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120466071#Comment_120466071

LA have very few one bed units. It's costs little more to build a two bed than a one bed. Basically you are adding 9-10 sq metres to a small unit. Living area, bedroom and bathroom are similar in both units.

Most single people who are in good health are unlikely to get a LA unit. They invariably end up in the private system. The HAP will only generally cover a room in a shared unit for a single adult.

What has happened is that one beds units are targeted by couples. However not single adults get the couple hap rate.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120466195#Comment_120466195

This is especially true of young single workers moving into large urban centers. Most do not realize they are entitled to a HAP payment even in shared accomodation. They might not get the full single rate but they might get 50-80% of it.

42k is a substantial wage for a young adult starting out.

Bass Reeves

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120467797#Comment_120467797

Go back even 7-8 years REITs were going to be the best thing since the sliced pan. I pointed out at the time that in trying to replicate what was elsewhere we were failing to take into account how property was so much more expensive to build compared to when these original institutions started renting on the Continent 50+years ago and that the REITS in Ireland would have higher costs

Guildenstern

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120467797#Comment_120467797

Yes, that was the case and yes, that professional approach would mean they would provide a better service. The downside is it leads to a monopoly which along with the dysfunction that had now developed, result, sky high rents!!

An example if you keep just tweaking away on policy initiatives one issue gets solved but brings on another one. And on and on we go.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120467789#Comment_120467789

While professional landlords would be less likely to reclaim a rental unit for the reasons allowed by the RTB I wouldn't say that ongoing security of tenure will be a given.

I'm sure as rental prices will continue to rise over the long term especially when there are less providers of rental units available. Once they have the market sufficiently cornered these wealthy individuals will use a portion of their income to lobby the government to allow them to keep rents on existing rentals at pace with what the market can afford.

Guildenstern

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120466829#Comment_120466829

It is characters such as these who upto 2019/2020 were engaging in entering into 10/15/20 year term leasing schemes with the State mostly through deals with ever desperate councils who couldn't keep up with demand.

This had been going on for years with paddy public taking little interest until the media put the spotlight on what was going on with the development of houses in Maynooth. Middle Ireland eventually woke up to the fact that houses were being sold off as block purchases. Houses that in a normal market would have been first time buyer territory.

Leasing opportunities has now been replaced by building up portfolios of PRS. I'd say the strategy is to build a portfolio and sell off to a fund. Kerching!!

DownByTheGarden

I really dont understand why anyone is surprised at all.

Ive seen this video and several others like it, posted every now and again for the last decade or so. There were more even older ones basically saying the same thing going back to when rent controls started in Ireland. There used to be great examples around the world of what rent controls did. But now Ireland is the poster child for this folly.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oJvTTGOHFkU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBragREvqXg

RichardAnd

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120465389#Comment_120465389

But everyone is not the same. If someone in another company gets a pay rise, there could be all sorts of variables behind it. Is his/her company profitable? Is he/she providing a service that is in demand? Is he or she underpaid by industry standards and thus could get a higher salary elsewhere. My brother recently got a 10% rise, so he told me. He, however, works in a different industry and is a far, far more talented and skilled individual than I am. Thus, it's apples and oranges, once again.

In the case of the civil service, many (though certainly not all) people in there are working in jobs that in reality are not required. There is massive bloat in the civil service, and many of these jobs simply aren't needed. In such a situation, the individual working in that job has no right to expect a pay rise. They should simply be happy that they have a job at all.

Please don't think that I'm saying this out of acrimony. I'm sure many civil servants are fine people, but there's no free lunch at the end of the day. If they get a large salary increase across the board, taxpayers will have to pay for it, and it would only worsen inflation.

DownByTheGarden

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120467970#Comment_120467970

But thats the nature of the beast. If a workforce is on x relative to Y then when Y goes up X is going to go up too. Otherwise its a salary cut.

BoxcarWilliam99

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120467970#Comment_120467970

They are getting a rise this month. They got a backdated rise last year too . They will be getting a further rise again later in the year on top.

coolshannagh28

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120467797#Comment_120467797

One of the implications of the visit of the troika was an end to mom and pop landlords and a move to a more European model of long term rentals with security of tenure etc, we chose the Irish version which was big US capital incentivised by tax breaks and rock bottom prices with the end result of monopoly and scarcity . In exchange we have got massively increased tech/pharma investment and a rapidly increasing tax take in a sort of quid pro quo , you cant have your bread and eat it .

RichardAnd

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120468034#Comment_120468034

Honestly, I think that the entire civil service needs to be audited (independently) and massively reduced in size. With the money saved, the staff who are needed could be given a pay rise. However, that's not happening, and we all know that.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120468062#Comment_120468062

Bless them ....

So we have moved on from small landlords being responsible for the accommodation crisis to it being public service workers fault now?

In our quest on boards to find out who's responsible for the accommodation crisis might I suggest we target pensioners next. Look at them all sitting at home slippers on in front of the fire watching countdown. Not working, the state throwing money at them and the mortgage paid. Am I doing this right?