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

BlueSkyDreams

With the new Rent changes in March 2026, will a landlord be allowed increase rents by more than 2% annually, if the apartment is considered new?

New meaning the commencement notice was issued after June 2025.

The 2% CPI rent increase cap during high inflation periods may mean that a new apartment is still restricted to only a 2% rent rise each year?

straight

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Villa05

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123915286#Comment_123915286

20024 had record commencement notices with a huge surge to meet an April 2024 deadline that was later extended. Just shy of 70,000 units in total. One would expect construction to be surging in 2025 based on those numbers but alas, we have 5 months of decline

I suspect notices were sent in on unserviced sites to pressure the government to service them thus increasing the site value. As I understand it there are plenty of serviced sites available

Also worth noting that the two big developers are engaged in share buy back programs. In times of such shortage one would expect available capital to be reinvested in more inventory.
We are told that cost of capital for building is @ double digit percentage rates, current margins are @ 20% Why would you use available capital to buy back shares when if you used it to build the combined savings plus margins amounts to 30%+ return on investment

We are told building is unviable and VAT must be cut to further enrich developers we are told this is a supply measure. The truth is that it just increases land values making it harder and more expensive to add new supply

The taxpayer is being played and is probably the Anglo/Irish nationwide of this cycle

BlueSkyDreams

9,235 housing completions in Q3.

3,300 in Dublin.

Some good news. Must have been a while since we built more than that in a quarter.

Blut2

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123931855#Comment_123931855

24,325 dwellings for the year at end of Q3 2025, and Q4 likely to be slower.

We'll be hitting approx 30k again for the year, no real measureable growth since 2022 and its 29,640.

If you'd told people in 2022 that completions would be at broadly the same level in 2023, 2024, and 2025, and the population would increase by hundreds of thousands of people in those years while we're at it, they'd tell you such a scenario would be impossible, unbelievable. That of course numbers would be increasing signficantly in that time period.

I think they'd actually struggle to believe there would be no growth in those years, given the surplus wealth of the Irish state in the same years especially. Its utter failure.

spillit67

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123912837#Comment_123912837

No chance, not with the tax and regulatory system in place

If there were to be a mass liberalisation from banking to planning to standards like in the 2000s then there would be.

This conspiratorial thinking is hogwash. Developers sell to get their margin. Margins are not increasing substantially for listed developers. They cannot afford to sit on land for too long. The simple fact is apartment building has stagnated, if declined a bit, because institutional investors stopped putting money into them. The previous conspiracy was that they were denying individual buyers, the recent evidence shows this is just not the case in any macro sense.

There will be incidents of investors or AHB doing that but it isn’t the case in a macro sense.

Developers have no issue with building 3 bed semi detached houses because they are viable and there is a demand.

The simple fact is that Irish people would rather spend €400k-€600k for a new build 3 bed semi detached house outside of Dublin rather than €600k (the average price) for a 2 bedroom apartment in Dublin. Even 3 bedroom apartments are not popular. Glenveagh correctly diagnosed this and have a policy in place for this, focusing on high density duplexes (which are popular). Developers would be building all the apartments in the world right now if there was demand and they were viable. I’d argue that living closer to the city in a smaller space is more worthwhile but most still don’t care when buying and dream of suburbia.

We need more apartments but studios and 1 beds to rent for younger people and they can go to all the Funds and AHBs in the world as far as I care. The inane policies like DLR demanding 3 bedroom “family” apartments as part of their local whims should be binned.

There’s no conspiracy. There’s “nice” regulations and there’s the associated viability.

spillit67

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123921480#Comment_123921480

Last 12 month completions is bang on 33,000, this is the highest since the Celtic Tiger. We’ve just had back to back record quarters. It’s fairly likely we’ll end up close to 35,000 for 2025.

It is not enough but we live in this weird world without nuance, where people catastrophise and throw out conspiracies.

spillit67

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123931855#Comment_123931855

Q2 and Q3 were the second and third busiest quarters since the Celtic Tiger.

Q4 of 2023 was the biggest (that was the one where we surprised everyone and actually beat the targets, not that people seemed to care!) with 10,289.

spillit67

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123931906#Comment_123931906

Sorry what now.

This isn’t correct. The last 12 months is at 33,000 homes.

10% is not a small increase.

The only reason that they’re at this level is because of the wealth of the State and them pouring money into it. Compare to the rest of Europe on housing output and we are top of the class.

Now we have some prime stupid regulations and tax here on housing, which is stunting growth, but it’s a function of being a high regulation/ tax society. Nothing to do with wealth.

Blut2

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123932881#Comment_123932881

"In the first nine months of 2025 there were 24,325 new dwelling completions"

https://www.cso.ie/en/releasesandpublications/ep/p-ndc/newdwellingcompletionsq32025/

CSO figures so rather definitive.

Cherry picking select non-annual 12 month periods to include two busy quarters is deliberately misleading. These are the official calendar year CSO figures, ie the most consistent data periods that are actually comparable:

2024: 30,330 completions

2023: 32,695 completions

2022: 29,723 completions

Thats no appreciable overall yearly growth for 4 years running, almost half a decade.

Especially considering 1) we've run huge budget surpluses each year, 2) our population has grown by close to 400k people in that time, and 3) its been a high profile housing crisis for the entire duration of that, with every estimate being we need close to 60k completions a year.

The government has repeatedly promised every year that numbers are going to increase rapidly, with their own (very modest, insufficient) goal even at 40k a year. But the results speak for themselves - utter failure.

The evidence is exceptionally clear at this stage that the very expensive for tax payers demand side measures very clearly just aren't working. The state needs to try other, more significant and direct, methods.

spillit67

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123932957#Comment_123932957

Sorry, wrong.

This is the rolling 12 month average from 2019. There is a clear uptick from the 29.5k you claim to Q2 of 2025. When Q3 is added, the trend mark sits on ~33k. In truth things have stalled around that 32/33k, but that is still 10% growth from 2022.

Ironic you claiming cherry picking when that’s exactly what you did. Why didn’t you start your trend in Q1 to Q3 of 2022- where there was a clear acceleration in housing from 22k-29.5k?

Also funny that you’ve decided that 2025 will be 30k - just cos that’s fits in your narrative.

If we could get people who want to have a serious discussion and not misrepresent things, what would be interesting is actually to do a bridge from say 2019 to Q3 2025 by typology (social and cost rental, BTL, BTS) etc. What we’ll find is a ramp up in two categories and a fall in another. For two of them with heavy State subsidies (FTB BTS and social/cost rental), youll see a huge ramp up. For BTL you’ll start to see a stagnation and fall.

Your argument is gibberish. The State spends the second highest in Europe on housing. Our output is near the highest in Europe. Criticisms are not regarding spending, it’s about inane regulations, taxes and laws that made the BTL sector unattractive. If we had paused and not listened to the idiots complaining about Funds, we’d almost certainly have another 3-4k homes built this year. I know where you’re going at the end- another “simple fix” State construction company lark.

An Ri rua

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123933365#Comment_123933365

Not all gibberish.

You state that the State spends the second highest in Europe on housing. So what? That's not a good metric?!

You're not comparing apples to apples. The State is rewarding major developers with market pricing for zero risk. Effectively paying finished prices for off the plan purchases. That's hardly value for money and nothing to be proud of (its also very clear why such nefarious waste is being allowed).

While also pushing up the price of housing stock for the hard-pressed private purchaser.

Gibberish indeed…

littlefeet

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123912837#Comment_123912837

Do you believe that building companies are committing fraud?

Blut2

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123933365#Comment_123933365

"This is the rolling 12 month average from 2019."

Rolling 12 month averages are highly misleading as they can easily contain most of two peak building periods. Which is why they're not used in any serious analysis.

I posted the calendar year CSO data, which you were apparently unaware of, which is the definitive data used when comparing years to each other - and for comparing overall growth over time. And it clearly shows no growth in yearly housing completions between 2022-2025.

We're very unlikely to surpass 30k by much in 2025 because Q4 is usually lower output, and we're only at 24,325 at end Q3. Nowhere near the government's goal of 40k for the year, or the 60k units that are actually required. Thats why its an utter failure of yearly output, again, on either measure.

"The State spends the second highest in Europe on housing" is also a rather hilarious defense. Nobody is doubting that the state has thrown billions of tax payer euros at the housing market. But the problem is the billions they've spent have been on demand side measures, which very very clearly aren't working - according to the cold hard data, going back half a decade now.

The data is very clear here we've had the highest population growth in Europe (one of the highest in the world per capita) over the last 4 years, and very generous government surpluses in that time, yet housing completions haven't increased at all. At a time of a severe housing crisis. That tells us that government policy isn't working, and needs to be changed drastically.

Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results

spillit67

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123933397#Comment_123933397

Because this person is putting our fiscal position forward as justification for more houses and making some claim that it hasn’t.

Firstly it’s bunkum because we ARE spending lots of money on housing and the output relative to the rest of Europe (who are also in a crisis) is far stronger. In terms of public housing, we are adding adding 1.25 per 100 annually. This is substantial, believe it or not.

Secondly, to get more houses, we need less regulation and tax. That’s the issue, that’s why BTL investors fled (along with higher interest rates). We have to be careful with this for sure, but this is a function of MORE state involvement, not less (the poster demanded more “direct” action).

I didn’t even deal with the stupidest point of all on population growth. The State hires the ESRI to model that. They have consistently underestimated our growth levels for 30 years and there needs to be a shift there but they are “experts”. What neither could have forecasted is Russia invading Ukraine. You can criticise the leaders of this country for putting in an open door with generous benefits which attracted far more per head than the rest of Western Europe, but it was an “emergency”. To claim we could plan for 125k additional people from this is gibberish. It’s not a good faith argument to bring up a number like 400k and talk about planning.

On prices, you don’t have a clue. The prices from the Chartered Surveyors are clear. We’ve had study after study. We are a high cost economy with significant regulations. Developers profits are not extraordinary here. Cairn has underperformed the S&P 500 here, for example.

spillit67

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123934087#Comment_123934087

Cut the crap.

You “cherry picked” a 2022 ending stat, when our house completions had accelerated from 22k to 29k over the course of a year and over the course of the pandemic.

Since then house construction has risen by 10%.

Rolling averages are the way to remove your “cherry picking”.

You then ended it all by making up a number on 2025.

I am very aware on the CSO data, do not start pretending you have some insight on this when I called out your posts with facts.

You either aren’t debating in good faith, or are simply stupid.

I actually want to have a proper debate where we can criticise policy (to which there is so much we can criticise). It is incredibly tedious that we still have the likes of you “contributing”. Again though it’s hardly a surprise- we had the Greens at this over the summer commenting on a fall in commencements when they know well it is because there were 70k in 2024 driven by the Government they were in’s policies.

To conclude with the population growth again. With no mention of Ukraine. Honestly what’s the point of you writing that out? If you want to make a criticism, criticise the generous benefits we put forward that incentivised more people to come here. You won’t do that though…

BlueSkyDreams

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123931906#Comment_123931906

13% up on Q1 to Q3 last year.

If we maintain that growth we will be at 34k this year.

Greater Dublin has more new homes built that the rest of the country combined every quarter this year.

Is this sustainable for promoting population growth outside the capital.

Greyian

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123934087#Comment_123934087

"Q4 is usually lower output"

Have you got a source for that? Because that does not seem to be the case based off the CSO housing completion statistics.

In 2022 and 2023, Q4 appear to have the highest number of quarterly completions, while in 2024 Q4 was 2nd highest (slightly below Q3)

spillit67

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123934344#Comment_123934344

Q4 in fact is the highest of course generally, in 12 of the last 14 years of CSO that is the case. The poster though gets the handy likes for making stuff up.

The poster also threw in another made up number on the 60,000 “required”. What is required varies massively depending on the assumption and who plugs the number is.

Villa05

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123932848#Comment_123932848

Can posters please backup there claims with facts

Current housing output is comparable with 1995 (30,575 units) after progressing from 1985 output (23,948)

Alots changed since 1995

http://Economy Measuring Ireland’s Progress 2012 - Central Statistics Office https://share.google/KweCu2TgKyvop2LC1

spillit67

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123936003#Comment_123936003

What does 1995 have to do with it and what specific point are you debating here?

Blut2

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123934115#Comment_123934115

Once again, the definitive CSO figures speak for themselves:

2025 to end of Q3: 24,325 completions

2024: 30,330 completions

2023: 32,695 completions

2022: 29,723 completions

If you can't accept that theres been no growth in completions thats on you I'm afraid - the data is very clear. Its utter failure of government housing policy.

Blut2

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123934344#Comment_123934344

Q4 is regularly below Q3. ie even just last year:

In Q4 2024, Ireland saw 8,732 new dwelling completions[1], Q3 2024 was 8,939 [2]

[1]https://www.cso.ie/en/releasesandpublications/ep/p-ndc/newdwellingcompletionsq42024/

[2]https://bpfi.ie/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/BPFI_Housing_Market_MonitorQ3_2024_12.12.24.pdf

The idea that we're going to surge from 2025's 24,325 completions at end Q3 to anywhere near the government's goal of 40k, as the poster was suggesting, is just completely insane - no historical data would back that up.

Greyian

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123941528#Comment_123941528

I believe the poster said close to 35k.

Also, "usually" would suggest a degree of regularity. As Table 1 shows since 2011, Q4 has had the highest number of completions every year apart from 2011 and 2024. Suggesting Q4 is usually lower output is clearly incorrect.

spillit67

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123941509#Comment_123941509

What’s definitive is the quarterly rolling averages, not the “cherry picking” you are engaged in.

It’s so tedious that we have people just prepared to behave like this.

spillit67

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123941528#Comment_123941528

Again, wrong. 12 out of the last 14 years it’s been higher.

There’s so many ways to criticise housing policy in this country yet we just get this rubbish from people.

spillit67

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123941738#Comment_123941738

We’re dealing with someone who cherry picked a number and decided to run with that as the narrative.

Simple facts on Ireland’s housing output:

• pre COVID to end of 2019 we had 21k housing completions
• During the acute COVID period of 2020 to 2021 we had an an average of 20.5k

2022 saw a substantial increase in completions to 29.5k, as homes delayed during the shut down completed leading to a substantial increase in completions. People keep claiming Ireland never reached the Housing for All target but they actually beat them in 2022 and 2023 (after missing them the previous year which was the first full year of the index).

Ireland went from being 7th pre COVID (Ireland would have been last or near last 10 years ago) to number 1 on the Deloitte Housing Development Intensity measure of housing output between 2019 to 2024.

There are massive criticisms to be made of housing policy here and the waste and delay, but it’s never grounded in serious debate. Just people making stuff up and demanding “big bang” State interventions (when that’s all they’ve been doing for 15 years). The referencing of times when we had far looser development (1990s and 2000s) which was often developer led and at times corrupt is hilarious given that. We have a lot of people who claim to care about housing but are just not in anyway serious about the topic when you scratch the surface.

Blut2

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123943171#Comment_123943171

Per CSO statistics, Ireland yearly completions:

1975: 26,892 (population: 3.2 million)

1980: 27,785 (population: 3.4 million)

1995: 30,575 (population: 3.6 million)

2000: 49,812 (population: 3.8 million)

2005: 85,957 (population: 4.2 million)

2022: 29,723 (population: 5.2 million)

2025 to end of Q3: 24,325 completions (population: 5.5 million)

The data on this is very clear.

Our 2025 per capita completions are nowhere near previous levels achieved, and have been stagnant for years. This despite the fact we've gone from being one of the poorest countries in Europe, with a corrupt and incompetent planning system, to one of the richest countries on the planet with huge yearly surpluses. Its very clearly an utter failure of policy making.

I'm sorry it doesn't agree with your world view, but it really would be worth your while actually doing some research on this topic to educate yourself before spending considerable amounts of time repeatedly posting rather lengthy diatribes on the topic as you're currently doing.

spillit67

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123944197#Comment_123944197

Let’s stick to what you actually posted.

1975 is not what you posted about.

I never said we were building enough houses, I merely pointed out your misleading statement.