'I pay €700 for a bed in a room with four people'

Grayson

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120151951#Comment_120151951

Will do :)

the rent is weird here. There's loads of cities nearby. Cologne, Dortmund, Bonn, Essen are all 30 minutes by train. So a lot of people live in one and work in the other. Dusseldorf has the most expensive property of the lot. People here complain about the price in Dusseldorf. And I could have gotten a smaller apt but I decided my budget in advance and ended up with this place. So when I explain what Ireland is like and show them examples they're amazed.

Grayson

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120151553#Comment_120151553

Lovely actually. There's cultural differences of course. It's like the replaced all the pubs with bakeries. Germans love their baked goods but at the same time you can't find a decent sliced pan in the whole country.

Every weekend there's protests. Loads of people walk down a street near my apt. There could be 2 or 3 protests every Saturday. Loads of chanting, no fighting. Each protest for a different thing.

They love their beer. Every city has it's own style of beer with multiple breweries. It's Alt beer in Dusseldorf. It's Kolsch in Cologne etc.

And everyone complains about the trains. The subway/trams/busses run on time. But the trains are horrible. I haven't made a journey in months where there hasn't been multiple delays/cancellations.

Germans themselves are very polite. They're generally friendly. Most have english. All the professionals like doctors and solicitors speak fluently. They love paperwork. Everything needs a form. They fecking love forms.

If you decide to check germany out, let me know. Some of the paperwork etc can be confusing.

ancapailldorcha

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120154313#Comment_120154313

Really? Great! Thanks for the response.

I live in the UK and occasionally think about and apply for the odd gig on the continent, usually when the government decide to remove another right or two.

Germany does look a little friendlier than France on the face of it. I think I'd prefer coffee shops and bakeries over pubs to be honest. Particularly if there are sweet treats on offer.

Protests are generally something I associate with the French. I thought Germany had excellent trade union representation. Odd. Same with the trains.

I don't know how accurate this is but it is interesting:

Padre_Pio

I remember looking for student accommodation in Dublin in 2008. You had to buy the evening herald every day and look at the notices, then call immediately.

15 years later and nothing has changed.

Grayson

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120154533#Comment_120154533

Over the last few months most of the protests are pro ukraine or anti Iran. There used to be anti vax ones but they've died out. I saw a pro-Russia/Anti-Ukraine one once. I counted 17 people in it. I don't think I've ever seen a protest about working conditions.

The most annoying thing was finding somewhere to live. There's loads available online but most are unfurnished and only about 30% come with a fitted kitchen. When germans move apartments, they bring the kitchen with them. I certainly wasn't buying a kitchen so I was restricted to the 30% that came with a kitchen. There's loads of temp apartments and airBNB type things so you'll end up living in one for a couple of months. And if you go the unfurnished route then there's a huge market in second hand furniture and of course Ikea. This is the first time in my life I've been able to furnish an apartment they way I wanted it.

Edit: I wanted to add in a link to a german property site.

https://www.immobilienscout24.de/Suche/radius/wohnung-mieten?centerofsearchaddress=D%C3%BCsseldorf;40479;;;;&numberofrooms=2.5-&price=-1000.0&pricetype=rentpermonth&geocoordinates=51.23411;6.78436;3.0&enteredFrom=result_list That's filtered to within 3km of the centre of Dusseldorf. And yes, Deutsche Bahn are terrible, but the local transport is amazing. You can get just about anywhere in the city in 10 minutes.

tinytobe

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/2058281064/i-pay-700-for-a-bed-in-a-room-with-four-people

I think it's better for the young people of Ireland to start considering emigrating. I wouldn't even bother in getting a university degree if it means sharing a place with 4 others and pay 700 euros in rent.

Back in 2010 I rented in Clontarf and paid 700 euros for a one bedroom, not sharing with anybody.

Renting in a city like London is easier than in Dublin, - and also cheaper depending on where one is in. At least those long queues for a viewing don't exist.

Germany is pretty good value for renting. Rents are rather affordable compared to salaries and there is a strong sense of legal security as to what contracts are concerned.

The Netherlands are also a good choice, property is tight there as well, but nowhere near what Dublin or Ireland could be like.

Grayson

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120154921#Comment_120154921

In 1993 I went to college for the first time. I paid 22 pounds a week for a single room. I remember my landlord selling in 95 because the house had increased from something like 40k to 45k. He couldn't believe that the price increases could keep increasing like that.

in 2008-2009 I rented a 3 bed duplex in blanch with a friend. The place cost 800 a month.

My last apartment in Ireland I started renting about 7 years ago. The rent was 650 for a one bed in Maynooth. 3-4 years later the landlord upped the rent to 950. They said if I didn't agree then they'd sell. The place was falling apart. They refused to do basic maintenance. It was damp, cost a fortune to heat. I saw it on daft after I left and it has a BER of G. If I move back to Ireland I'd have to give up my beautiful large apt here in dusseldorf and rent a room in an apt for the same price. I couldn't rent even a 1 bed apt anywhere near dublin for the price I'm paying here. It's depressing how bad it is in Ireland.

My advice to anyone in Ireland who's newly graduated, or even single and doesn't own their own place, is to move. I'm in my 40's and I don't regret it. Ireland's not going to get better anytime soon. It'll probably get worse. Leave for a few years. It doesn't have to be permanant. Get some experience abroad. Save some money. Have a decent standard of living. Flights home from europe are regular enough. And if you live outside dublin there's still flights to regional airports. For example I get flights from Cologne - Knock during the summer to visit family in Mayo.

HBC08

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120150976#Comment_120150976

All the main parties and opposition currently want mass immigration so maybe edit your rant there.

Podge_irl

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120153646#Comment_120153646

You could probably just boil it down to "Not building enough housing" as the one causal factor (though there are indeed many contributing factors as you say).

Building housing is, however, conceptually popular and realistically deeply unpopular. Not much point laying all the blame at the door of the political parties.

ancapailldorcha

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120154678#Comment_120154678

I always knew German places were almost exclusively unfurnished but ripping out the kitchen seems insane to me. The protest thing makes sense. Vaccines and Ukraine just attract oddballs. It is what it is.

I was wondering about the living situation. I know renting is very common and highly regulated. I'd also heard horror stories about long waiting lists.

German trains being terrible. I find that amusing. How was it learning the language?

tinytobe

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120155021#Comment_120155021

The only solution to Ireland's housing crisis is to build more, but that would most likely mean some government programme. And we all know what that means, ugly looking, poor planning and small, nothing to ever be proud about.

I think this is still the aftershock of the financial crisis of 2008 where the government believed, by not building anything prices would recover once the economy and demand picks up. But what do they have now? Lack of supply everywhere to the point that there is absolutely no choice in even considering employment in Ireland anymore.

If one is young or one is a newcomer to Ireland the situation is abysmal. I neither understand why one would work for Google/Meta/Microsoft if there is no housing, same as Ukrainian refugees coming to Ireland? I'd pick some other EU country as a refugee.

Germany or any other EU country would do as an alternative in your case. Dusseldorf seems to have a quarter which is similar to Temple bar, I recall. I think it'll be a good 10 years for Ireland to solve the housing crisis and even if they do, it's going to be an inferior choice to what one would have in mainland Europe and even in the UK.

Also, one doesn't need to go far away from Ireland. Just look at cities like Manchester in the UK? Brexit? Recession? Shortage of workers? but no complaints there, they are building high rise after high rise putting lot's of stock out to the market where renters and buyers have a choice of options.

ancapailldorcha

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120154921#Comment_120154921

I don't know. I've gotten a lot warmer about the idea of returning to Ireland but I just can't when I look at Dublin's property market. I live in Zone 4 London and Galway's almost as expensive. Galway, like. Plenty of good cities in the north of the UK like Glasgow and Manchester which would be fine but I'd hesitate to advise any young emigrant to move to London unless their field is based here. Accommodation is easier and handier to get but it's still hideously overpriced.

d15ude

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120151634#Comment_120151634

Many Irish Business depend upon the language school students (as most Irish dolers are to lazy to take those jobs).

You are contradicting yourself. Either they are welfare tourists or they are working 20h or more/week. Make up your mind.

tinytobe

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120155103#Comment_120155103

I would also consider living in Ireland again as well, but the housing situation makes that impossible. I've tried it back in 2018 and had no luck on the rental market.

The UK has it's problems at the moment, strikes and Brexit, etc... However the strikes won't be forever.

Yes, Manchester can be a choice, Glasgow, I don't know that much, but Edinburgh sure is nice. Compared to what is going on in terms of housing the UK is a breeze.

Zone 4 London may be as expensive as Galway, but you sure get better value, all the cultural things London has to offer, plus the fact that in the UK you still tend to get a single viewing by the letting agency, in Ireland there are queues for one viewing.

Grayson

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120155089#Comment_120155089

A big part was the governments decision to hand off social housing to the private sector. We need government owned (and potentially built) houses. By offloading that to the private market it removed a lot of potential rental stock.

A second thing was allowing REITs to buy up so much potential rental stock.

Thirdly, with the price of buying increasing a lot of landlords are getting out whilst they can make a tidy profit. I'd imagine a lot would be people who bought during the last boom. Their houses are nearly paid off and they can make a tidy profit. people sell assets when the market is high. And landlords didn't get into the market to provide a social service and make the country better. they did it to make money.

ancapailldorcha

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120155271#Comment_120155271

The strike thing is mostly fine. I work in a lab so I have to commute and I've had very little disturbance. I'd be genuinely terrified of having to rely on the NHS in its current state but it is what it is. Don't know what healthcare is like on the continent.

Yeah, I'd take London over Galway as well, especially given Galway prices. I only mentioned it as a friend works there and there are jobs going I could look at but then I'd be in Galway paying London prices.

tinytobe

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120155342#Comment_120155342

I honestly wouldn't blame landlords exiting. I think that rental income is taxed excessively high in Ireland, and there may be other bureaucracy to deal with. If it comes to investing it's probably better to consider the stock market than to a buy to let property.

I would agree with the rest of your statements. Those REITs can be a problem. Also suppose they would offload everything at some point? What kind of impact would that have on values as well?

Those REITs are a bit of an unknown quantity as well.

Also, I don't know how much truth is in this article below: Apparently there is enough stock, but it's not on the market?

https://www.irishexaminer.com/news/arid-40936727.html

Glaceon

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120155363#Comment_120155363

It wouldn't surprise me. What better way to get your voters out of negative equity than re-inflating the bubble?

Grayson

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120155363#Comment_120155363

Have there been massive hikes in the tax on rentals in the last 5 years? landlords weren't exiting 5-10 years ago they way they are now. the one thing that is massively different is the price in houses. Normally a landlord buys a house and expects to have the mortgage paid in 20-30 years. At which point they have extra rental income to supplement their pension or they sell the house. Landlords have just made the decision that they want the short term profit rather than hanging around.

And yeah, there's loads of vacant properties now. Some are derelict. Some need a bit of work and some are fine and just empty. And a lot of the stuff that's in a good condition is owned by REITs. Remember that they aren't just calculating the rental income but the overall value of their property portfolio. So even when apts are empty, they increase in price. So on the books they have increased the value of their holding that year. renting them at a lower price might actually decrease the value of the property.

For the rest it's all stuff that people are holding onto. There's a vacant property tax at the moment. But it's next to useless since there's so many exemptions.

tinytobe

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120155464#Comment_120155464

I think that's what happened.

1) Build less after the financial crisis, in order for prices to go up again, if the economy recovers and re-inflate the bubble. This wasn't only to get homeowners out of negative equity, but also the banks who were sitting on these negative equity mortgages, after being bailed out with tax payer money....

2) Bring those REITs in and them having an impact and a control on the market, out of reach of any government's actions.

I think the property market in Ireland, no matter if your renting or owning, is a market with considerable structural issues. You may consider yourself as lucky if you're owning, but I don't think the values are stable by any means.

It's a property market littered with anything from greedy landlords to bad government decisions to few builders dictating prices and few lenders and them all controlling the market, blaming each other.

Kyokushin Grappler

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120151000#Comment_120151000

It was like they were preparing us for what was to come.

Padre_Pio

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120155050#Comment_120155050

Population in cities has increased, but density is still the same. We have hectares of identikit semi-ds and next to no apartments in cities. There's absolute refusal to build high density, high spec in Ireland.

There's plenty of examples of nice concrete 15 story buildings with 100sqm apartments with no sound/insulation issues. You'd wonder why we don't do the same here. Apartment living is great when done correctly, the only thing you lose is a private garden.

The few apartments I've seen in Ireland are no better than student flats. Tiny bedrooms, tiny bathrooms, kitchen/dining/living rooms.

palette

This isn't going to stand.

Nevermind the ripoff prices today, what about the next 10 years?

With so many extra people crammed into every outhouse it's going to take years upon years to just house them. What about the irish people already here, yoing and old, are they supposed to just write off huge chunks of their lives just because? And in exchange for what?

There's just no way, no how, this scam show is going to continue. It was always going to be found out in the end, and here we are. Let's see how this manifests itself.

ancapailldorcha

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120156308#Comment_120156308

It hasn't been found out at all. It's fine because nobody's going to do anything about it. Nobody will do anything about it because the incentives to maintain the status quo are simply too strong.

I don't know how big a phenomenon NIMBYism is in Ireland but here in the UK, it's truly absurd. It's practically an industry here.

I think ultimately, it'll be a political explosion at the very least. What happens in a few decades when people drawing their state pensions are living in grubby houseshares having grown up in single income households? Something has to give.

Padre_Pio

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120156308#Comment_120156308

I'm fairly sure you could have written that post in 2007 and 2018.

We don't have a property crisis in Ireland. This is the normal situation here. Except for a blip from 2008 -2014, Ireland has been like this for the past 20 years.

Beta Ray Bill

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120156368#Comment_120156368

NIMBYism is a big thing here.

But that being said there are elements of NIMBYism that are good and bad

A developer trying to build apartments in a certain park on the north side of the city springs to mind.

NIMBYism in my eye is a resultant reaction of what happens with Businesses (Not just developers) try to see what they can get away with.

The reality is that Ireland is far to friendly for businesses, very little in the way of enforced controls or regulation across the board (not just in the property market), you can basically do what you want.

Now I'm not suggesting communism or anything like that we need stronger controls on what is acceptable and what's not.

IE for a Single person:

They need to have X amount M² of private apartment, or if sharing, the need Y amount M² Private are and Z amount of M² communal or shared area.

Similar set of rules would apply for couples.

Empty properties are taxed at 5% of the property value P/A (Similar rule for empty rooms)

Breaking the rules results in something hefty like a €50,000 fine.

Joe Public isn't "that" thick, we all know now at this stage that paddy is not suited at all to high density apartment living, these places (a lot of, but not all of) the time turn in ghettos, particularly far out in the suburbs, where that type of HDH is just not required.

And on top of that we have all the celtic tiger era rubbish that was built to well below the absolute minimum standards. All the developers got a pass on this, and didn't pay a penny to fix any of it.

Regulation, Controls and Extreme penalties are the answer here.

palette

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120156369#Comment_120156369

https://app.powerbi.com/view?r=eyJrIjoiMTRjNDVlZjYtMmM0Mi00YjgyLTg1ZDYtZTQ4MjBiZTRiMWUzIiwidCI6IjdmOTJhNGU1LWNiMjAtNGU0Mi1hY2EwLTlkMDhkYzM3OWVhYSJ9

havea play around with those interactive figures. From 2002 until now, 2 million pps numbers were given to "irish", while 3 million were given to "foreign".

That isn't the whole story. Change the years to what you like and see who's getting the guts of pps numbers as time changes.

That is to say, there is precisely zero normality with the housing situation in this country. Nadda, zippo.

Every year of this housing crisis the same governments have been crying in front of cameras about how they'll fix it, while out of their back pockets , offscreen, they're handing out invite cards to hundreds of thousands of extra people to jump on in to the housing crisis. Literally printing invitations in multiple foreign languages, they even got a spot on Al jazeera news to inform people to get here. A house for free within 4 months?

No. This is the end of the line with this crock of crap. The cat is out of the bag. This is a housing disaster created through pure and utter manipulation.

People don't want to hear the threadbare excuses anymore, "the economy", "the healthcare", "just build more". The proof is in the pudding, the veil is lifting, and people aren't going to stand it anymore.

tinytobe

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120156482#Comment_120156482

Sounds like a good idea, especially bringing the size of the property into the equation.

However I would never tax private owners on their home if they aren't renting it out. It could be empty for a number of reasons, like a temporary job abroad etc....

I would strongly tax the REITs, if they are just sitting on properties, leaving them empty, not renting them out.

Ireland is far to friendly to big organizations but not to the employees working, paying taxes and trying to find a place to live.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120154533#Comment_120154533

Just looking at tiny Slovenia there in the English speaking map. I found every single person I met to be fluent in English, including bus drivers.

Beta Ray Bill

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120156627#Comment_120156627

Agreed

There would a limit on empty properties an individual/married couple could have, the limit being one as long as only one is owned.

Maybe some exemption for a holiday home that's more than 15km from a heavily populated area