The great myths of housing

Ace2007

Ubbquittious wrote: »

Load of bollix. I know plenty of people in Mainland europe and most of them own their house. Tis a load of sh1te trying to push people in Ireland away from home ownership with this fable

And i know plenty of people who have made sacrifices and not lived the good life and now have their own house, while their peers who traveled world and live new experiences and never saved are complaining about house prices.

Ace2007

Ace2007 wrote: »

And i know plenty of people who have made sacrifices and not lived the good life and now have their own house, while their peers who traveled world and live new experiences and never saved are complaining about house prices.

No you don’t.

We’ve had a year of lockdowns. Nobody has gone anywhere. Have houses become more affordable?

Ace2007

Ace2007 wrote: »

Explain why it's the government fault that Irish people want to buy their own 3 bed semi in the city and are annoyed that the can't afford it. Most of Europe, people don't buy their own house.

The issue isn't apartments, it's people unable to buy houses in the areas of the city that they want to because they can't afford it.

As pointed out, most of Europe do own their own houses. That’s a myth. It actually comes from years ago when Ireland had a high ownership rate, possibly when you bought.

When did you buy, by the way?

Ace2007

Ace2007 wrote: »

1:45 on the train right into the city

Just so we are all clear, Longford came into the discussion because someone wanted to buy house, couldn't afford Dublin and bought in Longford as that's all they could afford.

More than 3 hours would be there and back and door to door.

Yellow_Fern

bureau2009 wrote: »

Conor Skehan was Head of the Housing Agency at one stage.

I remember hearing him interviewed on radio during this time. According to Conor everything was going to be wonderful, houses would be brilliantly designed, plentiful etc etc. A lot of people raised eyebrows at the time.

So whatever he said in the Sindo I would take with a large pinch of salt. We need many different voices to speak on the housing crisis in Ireland. However, I'm far from convinced that Conor Skehan is a constructive voice on this issue.

To be fair new Irish houses have some of the highest standards in the world

Pawwed Rig

Cyrus wrote: »

its not as rare as people want to think, anyone in the big law or accountancy firms with 10 years experience will be earning that or close to it, and they very often couple up,

the people who left and went to industry will out earn them unless they make partner.

there are loads of people in their 30s earning that kind of money.

I have been working in big accounting firms for years and am at a reasonably senior level. It is very rare for the spouses of the senior guys to be in a similarly high paid employment. To the contrary actually the most senior people have a stay at home spouse that provides the support required for the long hours that are necessary to get to 150k +

Cyrus

Pawwed Rig wrote: »

I have been working in big accounting firms for years and am at a reasonably senior level. It is very rare for the spouses of the senior guys to be in a similarly high paid employment. To the contrary actually the most senior people have a stay at home spouse that provides the support required for the long hours that are necessary to get to 150k +

Yes once people have a few kids one person will take a step back but that's someone in their 40s they generally have their house bought at that stage.

People that stay in practice in big 4 will make director in their early to mid 30s if they are good, that must be 150k all in these days?

I'm speaking from experience also.

Ace2007

fvp4 wrote: »

No you don’t.

We’ve had a year of lockdowns. Nobody has gone anywhere. Have houses become more affordable?

Ok, if you say so - my friends didn't save the last 6/7 years and buy while peers went to Oz and blow savings on the once in life time round the world experience. Those same peers now back home complaining that they can't afford to live here - while not saving when travelling etc.

You want to live in the city - make sacrifices - everyone is saving it - either scale down, live different area and suck it up for a few years. Or else you can come onto social media and moan and winge.

Ace2007

Ace2007 wrote: »

And i know plenty of people who have made sacrifices and not lived the good life and now have their own house, while their peers who traveled world and live new experiences and never saved are complaining about house prices.

fvp4 wrote: »

No you don’t.

We’ve had a year of lockdowns. Nobody has gone anywhere. Have houses become more affordable?

He likely means people who have saved for 3/5/7 years etc.

You reckon to save a deposit you should only put the travel the world etc on hold for a year? Informative to be fair.

El_Duderino 09

It's behind a pay wall so I haven't read it. From reading the OP's highlights, can anyone tell me if the actually article uses the term "Pull the ladder up, Jack" or is it just heavily implied throughout?

Smells like it was sponsored by the Association of Homeowners Concerned About Absolutely Nothing Except The Value Of Their Own House.

It's old people talking to old people. No need for young people, who are experiencing the reality of trying to buy a house, to read that nonsense. They have enough to deal with, paying exorbitant rent to one of these boomers so they can save to buy a house from another boomer, working for another boomer for stagnant wages. Postponing having a family because they can't afford it and be called an eegit in articles like this at the same time.

L1011

This thread is for discussion of this article, not the general property market - there is a specific thread for that.

nokia3310

I'm not sure where the figure of 24,000 annual purchases and 6,000 purchases from first-time buyers is coming from. The CSO statistics from last year show those numbers to be 48,396 and 12,584 respectively. The link to the data and a screenshot of the figures are below.

https://data.cso.ie/table/HPA02

Furze99

Ubbquittious wrote: »

Dereliction is a big problem


Every village near me has houses that are boarded up and unused, then you have holiday houses that some fella uses a couple of weeks in August

This. Plus add in housing stock that is vacant because the owner/s are in nursing home care. Current 'Fair Deal Scheme' greatly disincentives the renting or selling of this property until the owner has passed on and even then add a year or two for probate etc.

We should place far more emphasis on remodeling what housing stock we have. If it's not suitable, then clear it and build on the brown field site. That's how other countries manage partic in the bigger cities where land is at a premium. Instead of the endless urban sprawl beloved of the Revenue and developers here.

Furze99

The DayDream wrote: »

There's a lot of issues with that overly simplistic logic. These should be obvious but I'll spell it out.

The urban centres that have the expensive houses are where most of the jobs are. You can't just say, 'Oh, I'll go live in this little Northwest village where I can afford a house on my 50k/year wage.'

Simples - go work for yourself.

Yellow_Fern

El_Duderino 09 wrote: »

It's behind a pay wall so I haven't read it. From reading the OP's highlights, can anyone tell me if the actually article uses the term "Pull the ladder up, Jack" or is it just heavily implied throughout?

Smells like it was sponsored by the Association of Homeowners Concerned About Absolutely Nothing Except The Value Of Their Own House.

It's old people talking to old people. No need for young people, who are experiencing the reality of trying to buy a house, to read that nonsense. They have enough to deal with, paying exorbitant rent to one of these boomers so they can save to buy a house from another boomer, working for another boomer for stagnant wages. Postponing having a family because they can't afford it and be called an eegit in articles like this at the same time.

I wouldn't agree. Conor Skehan is a real independent thinker and has lots of very original ideas. He had a great Brendan O'Connor interview a while back.
I dont agree with many of its points but it is not crazen defence of property value.

here it is is

Populist solutions are not the answer, and State intervention may make things worse
New builds are not the solution to the housing crisis as we already have more than 200,000 vacant homes here
Many myths and unrealistic expectations have arisen around housing and accommodation that need to be examined because these are the real drivers of affordability.
Closer scrutiny of the four great myths of housing makes many claims appear to have little basis in reality.
‘The First-Time Buyer’ is a myth that needs to be put into perspective as the ultimate tiny tail that is wagging a very big dog. There are about two million houses and apartments in Ireland. Out of about 24,000 annual house purchases, only around 6,000 are first-time buyers.
This means that national policy is driven by the needs of one third of one percent of all homeowners, and one quarter of annual sales.
‘Generation Rent’ is a myth-making trope that is used to persuade people that they are victims. Through boom and bust, for over 50 years Irish people have been increasingly choosing to rent rather than to buy. Today 30pc of us rent — a sign that Ireland is maturing to align with the European norm in advanced economies.
It is sobering to consider that the club of EU countries with the highest levels of home ownership are headed up by Romania, Slovakia, Lithuania, Croatia, Poland, Bulgaria — all with home ownership rates of between 85pc and 95pc.
Compare this to our ‘club’ of countries with between 60pc and 70pc home ownership — a club that includes the Netherlands, France, Sweden, the UK, and Denmark.
‘Dead Money’ is another phrase that is used to create a myth of victimhood among renters. It implies that rent money only serves immediate needs, unlike a mortgage repayment that is a form or saving or investment.
This is the equivalent of saying that food money is a waste because you’ll be hungry again tomorrow — so buy a cow, a chicken, an orchard instead.

Renting or buying are simply different choices, each with different advantages and disadvantages. Studies all over the world show that, in the long-term, the renter edges ahead of the owner in terms of lifelong social and economic advantages.
‘The Housing Crisis’ is the greatest myth of all. Readers are invited to google the words ‘Housing Crisis’ followed by a country of their choice. For starters, try Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Israel, Norway, France and the Netherlands.
Your research will tell you that there is hardly a country in the world that does not have headlines about rising rents and house prices, lack of supply, affordability, homelessness, price inflation — to name but a few ills.
Powerful forces from the property sector, charities and political activists, aided and abetted by a clickbait-hungry media, continually try to convince the population that they are housing victims.
We need to move beyond this victimhood by accepting that we can be our own saviours. This means learning to see through these provocative myths, as well as accepting responsibility for ourselves.
To free ourselves from being made victims in the housing debate, we need to start to accept the consequences that flow from our decisions as buyers, producers, as well as from governments.
The location decision is the most fundamental driver of affordability and availability for buyers. When we choose to live near the centre of a city, or in a mature suburb, or in a beautiful seaside resort, then we are choosing to live in a more expensive place with fewer housing choices. As a rule, the further we choose to move from the centre, the less we choose to pay.
Our choices as buyers have consequences. When we decide that we must have a three-bedroom new-built house with quartz worktop kitchens and Italian tile bathrooms, then we are choosing to move away from affordability.
The ‘starter home’ in other states has two bedrooms and is largely sold unfinished — without kitchens, bathrooms and many internal partitions. As a rule, the larger and more finished a house, the higher we choose to pay.
We have more than 200,000 vacant homes across Ireland. When we encourage or allow the Government to support new-build housing instead of refurbishing then we are choosing to move away from availability and affordability.
As a nation we have to accept that a big driver of housing cost has been the much-needed and absolutely justifiable regulatory issues around safety, energy and sustainability. This happened in the car industry too, but that sector managed to continually produce better cars for increasingly less cost by ‘value engineering’ and by using increasingly sophisticated production techniques.
By contrast, the housing sector still largely uses late 19th century ‘hand-made’ techniques. The sector needs to choose to move onto a next generation of increasingly ‘factory-finished’ large building components, to drive down the costs of elements like kitchens, bathrooms, stairs, as well as electrical and plumbing cores.
There is no doubt that more can be done to help to address housing issues — but such help will always be limited to making the unsolvable ‘wicked problem’ of housing less bad. Populist solutions of control — of pricing, ownership, location or tenure type — do little to help.
Government interventions in housing as a market almost always increase prices and reduce supply.
Real solutions lie in the long, hard slog of addressing unglamorous issues such as increasing build-to-let, reducing vacancy, improving rental legislation, attracting more professional landlords, and co-ordinating development of scale to facilitate more ‘factory-finished’ housing.
Yet the most important work remains taking on the job of ‘myth-busting’ about housing — which risks incurring the wrath of those with a vested interest in keeping the population in a state of victimhood.
If we frame our questions differently, we might be pleasantly surprised to learn that housing can be more affordable than headlines suggest. If we can free our minds to think differently about housing, then we can be our own saviours.

El_Duderino 09

Yellow_Fern wrote: »

I wouldn't agree. Conor Skehan is a real independent thinker and has lots of very original ideas. He had a great Brendan O'Connor interview a while back.
I dont agree with many of its points but it is not crazen defence of property value.

here it is is

Thank you for posting that for context.

He mentions the Ireland is part of the "Club" of renters rather than buyers. But he didn't mention what proportion people in various countries spend on renting. Would you like to guess where Ireland ranks in terms of % of in come spent on renting? It's strange that such an independent thinker as Conor Skehan didn't include that important information in his article. If he wasn't trying to push an agenda, then why omit this information which runs contrary to the point of his article?

He also never lays out any detrimental effects of building affordable housing. He just tells you it's a terrible idea. I'd say it's pretty obvious that the reason is pure selfishness i.e "my (and your) house price would be threatened by changing the status quo We bought houses when they were affordable and we did nothing while their price went up and up. Building new houses would make housing more affordable by reducing the price of our houses".

But he never lays out the reasons against building affordable housing so we'll never know for sure. he just calls it a myth and astonishingly that seems to have been impressive to some people.

Have a guess at what % of their income Irish people pay in rent and where we rank in the world.

PMBC

schmittel wrote: »

Well they'll be in control of the levies and the cost of the land is not a factor in the price.

Here is an example of 4 bed A rated new builds in Kildare.

https://www.myhome.ie/residential/brochure/beechgrove-beechgrove-bracknagh-rathangan-kildare/4451988

Without wishing to rehash the old town vs county costs debate, it does seem entirely plausible if these homes are being sold for 245k including land costs, levies and profit then the state operating at scale and not for profit can build houses for 230k not including land costs.

Beautiful looking houses. Bracknagh is tiny and would not suit a lot of people - I wouldnt mind, though. Doesn't give floor area or bedrooms.

Cyrus

PMBC wrote: »

Beautiful looking houses. Bracknagh is tiny and would not suit a lot of people - I wouldnt mind, though. Doesn't give floor area or bedrooms.

134m2 4 beds according to the ad.

hometruths

Cyrus wrote: »

134m2 4 beds according to the ad.

That seems to me like a decent size for the price.

Cyrus

schmittel wrote: »

That seems to me like a decent size for the price.

around 166 a sq foot give or take?

pretty cheap alright.

the gravel patio, external plumbing and the outlook at the front gives some hints as to where money has been saved.

ec18

Nice and affordable as those house are according to my home it's 90 minute drive to Dublin. They still aren't a good option for someone that works in Dublin

hometruths

ec18 wrote: »

Nice and affordable as those house are according to my home it's 90 minute drive to Dublin. They still aren't a good option for someone that works in Dublin

Sure, but that was never the point of posting them in the first place - if those houses can be built and sold for 245k then it is not fantasy stuff to believe houses could be built and sold for 230k by the state excluding land costs.

ec18

schmittel wrote: »

Sure, but that was never the point of posting them in the first place - if those houses can be built and sold for 245k then it is not fantasy stuff to believe houses could be built and sold for 230k by the state excluding land costs.

But the price of land and labour in different counties will be more expensive. You could build houses cheaper again in west Kerry ?

hometruths

ec18 wrote: »

But the price of land and labour in different counties will be more expensive. You could build houses cheaper again in west Kerry ?

Price of land is irrelevant if it is not included in the sale price.

A developer building at scale will not see much difference between labour rates in Kildare and Greater Dublin.

Cyrus

i dont think we need to flog this dead horse,

i would say that a developer could build similar houses in dublin if the state provides the land for the state to sell at 230k,

that's not to say that they will, if there are other options that provide them with greater profit margins then they will deploy their resources to those.

hometruths

Cyrus wrote: »

i dont think we need to flog this dead horse,

i would say that a developer could build similar houses in dublin if the state provides the land for the state to sell at 230k,

that's not to say that they will, if there are other options that provide them with greater profit margins then they will deploy their resources to those.

Exactly. The point is it possible.

Cyrus

schmittel wrote: »

Exactly. The point is it possible.

i dont disagree.

ec18

schmittel wrote: »

Price of land is irrelevant if it is not included in the sale price.

A developer building at scale will not see much difference between labour rates in Kildare and Greater Dublin.

If you're excluding land and the transfer of the land to the purchaser all you're essentially doing is providing long term rentals.......(that is a dramatisation but the T&C's around the leasehold need to be properly defined as you don't want to end up with what happens in mobile home parks in the States)

Cyrus

ec18 wrote: »

If you're excluding land and the transfer of the land to the purchaser all you're essentially doing is providing long term rentals.......(that is a dramatisation but the T&C's around the leasehold need to be properly defined as you don't want to end up with what happens in mobile home parks in the States)

isnt that what sinn feinn are proposing,

if there is security of tenancy i dont really see an issue, main problem with the old corporation houses is that they allowed people buy them.

timmyntc

ec18 wrote: »

If you're excluding land and the transfer of the land to the purchaser all you're essentially doing is providing long term rentals.......(that is a dramatisation but the T&C's around the leasehold need to be properly defined as you don't want to end up with what happens in mobile home parks in the States)

Cyrus wrote: »

isnt that what sinn feinn are proposing,

if there is security of tenancy i dont really see an issue, main problem with the old corporation houses is that they allowed people buy them.

Their proposed leasehold just states that if you re-sell the house it has to be at an affordable price linked to inflation - i.e. you cant use it as a speculative asset. You can hold onto it as long as you like, pass it to children (I presume). Proposal isnt really any different from normal purchase but with restrictions on re-selling.