Lack of properties in Ireland and Europe

Esho

According to the news, there is a shortage of properties all over Europe, not only in Ireland.

Is there a conspiracy theory to explain this?

The Nal

The population of the world was 6 billion people in 2000. Now its 8 billion.

hometruths

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/2058252833/lack-of-properties-in-ireland-and-europe

Not so sure of the figures in the rest of Europe, but certainly in Ireland there is no actual shortage of physical properties. The problem is too many of the existing properties are empty.

i guess you could argue a conspiracy theory that this is known and understood by the politicians, who could fix it easily if they so wished. But they don’t wish to do so because the status quo suits the base that vote for them.

Ginger83

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119284696#Comment_119284696

There is no incentive for people to rent out empty properties due to government meddling. 45 different pieces of legislation since 2008, the system is a mess.

sydthebeat

There's a myriad of reasons there a lack of housing in Ireland.

Top of these are part five of the planning and development act 2000, and the Housing (Standards for Rented Housing) Regulations 2008 and 2009.

hometruths

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119284731#Comment_119284731

Agreed, part of the reason so many are empty.

A property owner is currently incentivised to hold a property empty, due to likelihood of strong capital gains.

However if that likelihood diminishes or reverses, then we're like to see the "shortage" of properties problem solved very quickly.

Ginger83

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119284791#Comment_119284791

It won't change.

HerrKapitan

Anyone currently thinking of buying a house or apartment should immediately stop and keep renting. They will save money in the long run as they are going to be priced out of it soon anyway.

There isn't a conspiracy theory, but an entity that the world leaders have been meeting with before covid, Ukraine, have been pushing for an end to private ownership. Coincidentally there has been a spate of world events whose effects have helped them with their agendas.

We have seen how houses and apartments have been increasingly taken over by investment funds. That is done by design and is dealing with stopping common new buyers.

Now they need to tackle the problem of common people that already own property. So are raising interest rates until everyone has to default on their mortgages.

Those houses will come under the ownership of the Investment funds when the banks sell them on.

The amount of available rental properties will then be drastically increased. Not by the usual landlords, but big corporate and it will be celebrated as the housing crisis being sorted.

Dohnjoe

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119605475#Comment_119605475

Whose been pushing for an "end" to private ownership and why?

The Nal

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119608685#Comment_119608685

Klaus Schwab, great reset, you'll own nothing, Chinese credit system, cultural marxism etc

silliussoddius

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119608794#Comment_119608794

You won't just own nothing, but you'll also be happy. Poor Russel Brand got upset about this.

Dohnjoe

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119609010#Comment_119609010

Ah Russell Brand, another stupid person's idea of a smart person. Has tapped right into the thick vein of crazy that the pandemic has energized, and the void from Alex Jones, he's raking it in.

astrofool

Majority of accommodation is still being bought by private individuals rather than institutions. The "own nothing" plan isn't working that well.

Wanderer78

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119609187#Comment_119609187

...with money thats largely created in the private domain, i.e. credit via banks, the conspiracy being modern political and economic ideologies that believe that this approach is far more efficient and effect that the state, only problem is, theres absolutely no evidence to support this claim and plenty of evidence to support, its a fcuking disaster!

Esho

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119605475#Comment_119605475

The investment funds have nowhere to put their capitol. It makes no difference of they rent out or not.

Rent is a bonus- this is why they are happier to keep s block only partially rented

im not an expert in construction but i feel like the two year interruption to construction may have somewhat affected construction

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119609010#Comment_119609010

And this is all going to happen inside 7 years.

The Nal

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119610178#Comment_119610178

Yep. These are going to really quick repossessions. Take America. 140 million homes. All to be taken away from their owners.

I'd love to see someone's plan for that.

Assume they'll have to call in, er, help for the 2 million homes in Ireland.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119612460#Comment_119612460

Well I mean they can just pay the army to... oh wait...

Bit cynical

Too easily explained by economics to be a conspiracy. After the financial crisis, banks have been reluctant to lend to developers and home buyers, and central banks place strict lending limits on individuals. At the same time, very low interest rates (also a hangover from the financial crisis) have inflated assets such as land and existing houses thereby exacerbating the problem.

JoeCat

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119612460#Comment_119612460

You might not realise that we are entering the biggest inflation in history (thanks Central Banks!) and interest rates sky rocketing + politicians putting massive "green" taxes for everything. Most of the population might soon struggle to survive economically. So they will own nothing as the big reset says. Hedge funds already pushing house prices to unafordable prices for most of the population.

The Nal

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119741169#Comment_119741169

The theory is that no one on earth will own anything.

In 8 years.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119742462#Comment_119742462

It's October and it's all meant to be by 2030. So more like 7 years now...

silliussoddius

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119741169#Comment_119741169

So what imaginary part of the internet did the big re-set say that everyone will own nothing?

Padre_Pio

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119761229#Comment_119761229

the part that believes our government of teachers and publicans is part of some global cabal.

sprucemoose

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119284752#Comment_119284752

im not necessarily disagreeing but id be interested to hear your reasoning here?

sydthebeat

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119761572#Comment_119761572

quite simply because it took the responsibility for provision of social housing away from the local authorities and put it in the remit of private developers.

this might be a good idea in the middle of an economic boom where loads of houses are being constructed, but when that invariable bursts, as it did (not least due to over supply) then the economic attractiveness for private developers to construct houses falls through the floor, equating to no social houses being constructed despite it being the time of greater demand.

i understand the philosophy behind the need for integration of social housing into general housing, i just think the whole system of private landowners selling zond land to private developers for providing housing to maximise profits needs to be looked at.

sprucemoose

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119770538#Comment_119770538

cant really argue with that tbh, i think its a good idea in theory but it falls down massively in execution definitely

i do think your last sentence is particularly interesting too. from my experience, 99% of developers will look to simply squeeze as many houses as possible into every square mm of land that they can and just meet any other requirements they have to at the bare minimum in order to maximise profits. id like to see some sort of incentives (tax breaks maybe) to reward 'good' design (quality green space, better amenities/ services etc,), if its just left to the developer's own goodwill we'll most likely continue to just get the rubbish we've traditionally built

Ubbquittious

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119605475#Comment_119605475

This is not a new idea and has happened to some extent during the various recessions over the past century. When people take out a mortgage, they are effectively dependent on the money from mortgages that haven't been issued yet in order to pay back their own. A plumber for example will find himself completely fcuked if the banks stop giving out mortgages and the lucrative new house plumbing jobs dry up, all the plumbers will be 'atin each other fighting over the couple of repair/refurbishment jobs that are left but that won't be enough to pay the bills.

Now when the banks collude to stop giving loans there will be a whole bunch of fellas who won't be able to pay back their mortgages and the banks will be able to swoop in and repossess a whole bunch of houses for nothing. They're then free to rent out those houses or do what they like with them. Every 20 or so years the banks will pull this stunt, unsatisfied with just sitting there collecting easy passive income from the majority of working class eejits their greed knows no bounds.

Banks are the absolute worst.

Chelsea2022

Interesting, I wonder.

maninasia

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119284696#Comment_119284696

This ole trope.

The mysterious empty properties everywhere. While there are some the actual number is lower than most countries. Most houses are packing folks in in this country. There is no mysterious reserve of empty houses suddenly going to appear.

hometruths

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119951714#Comment_119951714

According to the CSO the total housing stock is 2,124,590 and the average household size is 2.75 in Ireland.

Total housing stock 2,124,590 x Average household size 2.75 = 5,842,622 total housing person capacity.

And the population is 5,123,536.

So on the face of it based on average household size we have "spare" capacity for 719,086 people. Or to put it another way - 719,086 / avg household size 2.75 = 261,485 spare housing units.

Obviously it is not that simple because in order to facilitate a healthy turnover of stock in a functioning market you need some vacant spare capacity at all times - this is in the region of 6% of housing stock equating to 127,475 units.

261,485 spare housing stock - 127,475 base rate vacancies = 134,010 oversupply

If this is just some "ole trope", are the CSO wrong?

And if so, what have they got wrong? The population, the housing stock count, or the average household size?

https://www.cso.ie/en/releasesandpublications/ep/p-cpr/censusofpopulation2022-preliminaryresults/

maninasia

I have seem the same info repeated, a large part of that is just houses in between rentals or purchasing.

Some are very small holiday homes and would not be occcupied full time,and family second homes in holiday areas.

Some were simply houses that nobody returned a census doc. Ilegals dont fill in forms. I would prefer to see ESB figures for electricity use or monthly water usage. That will be better data.

Some are owned by those on nursing homes.

But the overall number of spare houses is low, just go to any town or city in ireland thy are bursting to capacity. Rentals almost impossible to find.

Maybe some airbnbs can be converted to long term stock, that could be temporarily significant. What, 12k houses according to the green? But they would probably be sold off anyway as those folks might not want long term renters.

We need to build 50k houses a year to keep up with demand actually.

With the refugee crisis what can be converted and occupied IS being cpnverted and occupied as lots of money to be made.

So the empty housing thing is a distraction that can't really help much. You would need to enforce more draconian legislation to force houses on the market andany are just going to sell their properties then.

But with draconian legislation and taxes who will want to build and buy houses for renting to others?

Strumms

look, the problem is, too many people whom are not liking their life in xx country, want to move here as in Europe.

majority of Europe has decent healthcare, excellent public transport, housing, safety / security and quality of life and the ability to succeed and other things these people can’t attain back home.

Europe / EU is a massive success story.

but it’s fast becoming a ‘regress story’ as more and more people arriving, wanting an ‘IN’ on what we have.

Property included.

hometruths

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119957824#Comment_119957824

I have seem the same info repeated, a large part of that is just houses in between rentals or purchasing.

A large part indeed. So large in fact it suggests we have an abundance of properties available for rent or purchase.

According to the CSO there were 35,380 vacant rental properties on census night. Vacant because they were between tenancies. At the same time there were about 1000 advertised on daft. Maybe if some of these 35k were advertised on daft they'd find tenants quicker.

Similiarly there were 17,826 properties vacant because they were for sale. Significantly more than the number advertised for sale on myhome.ie, which oddly enough are mostly occupied.

Sure the headlines and anecdotes support the theory that we have a chronic shortage of housing, but the data does not.

bb1234567

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119605475#Comment_119605475

Yeh, I mean maybe. But , like so what? Are you trying to make out everything was going well when most properties were being privately rented by landlords? The situation was bad when they made up a majority of the landlords. And it will still be overpriced afterward when they are mostly institutional landlords. Renters are not really getting good value for money in Ireland either way. So tbh I don't really get the 'conspiracy' angle you are going with.

shoegirl

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119605475#Comment_119605475

I was about to say that there's a conspiracy theory suggesting its state policy to strip property ownership out of the hands of ordinary people, but this is itself a more comprehensive "explanation", and yes, that's very much a conspiracy theory.

The real reason is that Ireland (and some other European countries) have seen enormous population growth. We've gone from having 3.5m people in the mid 90s to almost 5m now. Because a lot of this growth is well heeled returning emigrants and their families, and high skilled international labour, there is heavy competition for both rental and purchased homes. At the same time we've also become a destination for seeking asylum, & for a variety of reasons a large percentage of applicants were for a long time prevented from working and thus dependent on state aid, or some were unable to find sufficiently well paid work to house themselves. Because our population is ageing, we are also seeing large falls in household sizes as elderly people live longer in their own homes and there is no culture of "downsizing" here. This means we also need more homes even if the population stopped growing.

Part V of the Planning Act 2000 shifted construction of social homes from planned social developments at LEA level to enforced 10% cuts of private development. This worked very well until construction collapsed, as LEAs had lost the skills to develop in their own right (& indeed had not evolved alongside the sector). Finance also dried up for central government funded housing and a narrative developed that we had "too much housing" here, which disincentivised the build of more.

Finance for both development disappeared as previously it had largely come from international banks, which started withdrawing their business from Ireland, a process that will be completed when KBC and Ulster close their businesses here, marking the end of foreign banking investment in the domestic banking sector here. A process of mergers and acquisitions during the boom shrunk the number of domestic traditional "building society" & banking financiers to an all time low, before Irish Nationwide and Anglo Irish disappeared with the bust. The unwinding of finance services here has left both developers and borrowers with a paucity of options for borrowing. To top it off, the few lenders left have aggressively cherry picked borrowers at both construction and residential buyers mercilessly. Some of those who entered the market as lenders since 2011 have already left.

Central Bank policy then doubled down on the incineration of residential lending by demanding a 20% deposit for all buyers until forced otherwise in the mid 2010s, thus shutting large numbers of potential buyers out of the market. Developers increasingly have had to depend on international finance, often with unfavourable t & cs.

The collapse in house prices caused an artificial glut of rental properties to evolve between 2008 and 2012, masking many long term issues in the private rented sector that had been slowly festering for years. Long awaiting increases in regulation were introduced but poorly enforced, leading to large hikes in rents before introduction of RPZs, which made rents inelastic. At the same time weak enforcement ensured tenants were not fully protected.

2008 saw the introduction of a "bedsit ban", removing 11,000 low end but cheap rental properties from the rental market permanently. It also saw the introduction of greatly increased minimum apartment sizes so changed that until 2016 the minimum size of a 1 bed apartment was actually 11m2 larger than the minimum sized for a 1 bed house. The consequence was a collapse in apartment building so severe that in Cork, for example, not a single new apartment was built in the city after the completion of the Elysian in 2008 to last year. Changes to building standards removing notorious "self certification" and scandals involving substandard building defects from pyrite and mica in houses to fire safety/structural issues in thousands of apartments created new pressures to increase standards at a time when construction was still recovering.

As building standards increased the trend has moved to the point where it is no longer feasible to build a home not ecologically friendly, adding a cost of at least 40k to every build.

Meanwhile, the number of apprenticeships fell by more than half in the late 00s, never fully recovering, while many skilled contractors left to work in higher paid regions. We still remain stubbornly wedded to the semi-d sprawl model, making it harder than ever to make good use of development land. Meanwhile the consequence of decades of land hoarding, developer collapse and "bad bank" management being wedded to the state's fiscal futures, has made existing development land a political hot potato, resulting in highly charged legal battles over the right to develop.

This isn't even a complete list, but many of these factors are either a consequence of the construction policies in place prior to 2004, or directly connected to the 2008 bust. Political will indeed has been lacking, but it would take spectacular talent to find adequate ways to politically solve even a subset of the problems above. The solutions of the past, such as "first time buyers grants", the local loan fund and building social housing at scale, would have only minimal effect on the scale of the problems we have now. Politically it would take spectacular talent to even start solving these issues without alienating the interests of the 70% or so who already own homes.

sydthebeat

^

Thats an incredibly comprehensive and astute post.

Thank you for taking the time to put it together

Esho

Thank you.