Leo Varadkar warns against increasing housing supply ‘too quickly’

WhiteMemento9

Leo Varadkar has said he doesn’t want to repeat the Celtic Tiger era mistakes by ramping up housing supply “too quickly”.

Varadkar warns against increasing housing supply ‘too quickly’ | Business Post

This sounds like something Biden would say when they let him speak for too long. I don't care if the context is in relation to adhering to proper building regulation. You have to be completely tone deaf to be saying anything like this right now.

JupiterKid

Mod:-

Moving this over to Current Affairs/IMHO.

zell12

Also more housing means existing stock depreciates in value.. and no voter wants that!

Augme

There's many obvious reason the party of landlords and property developers doesn't want housing supply to increase too quickly.

_Knight

The estates being built now are of **** quality anyways.

dalyboy

So is Leo admitting that the housing market is being controlled? What happened to a so called free market that FG are always bleating about.

_Kaiser_

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121806797#Comment_121806797

Unless you're a renter or stuck at home because there's nowhere to rent or buy that is! (and yes, they vote too!)

Grand if you're already a home owner who's pulled the ladder up after you, a landlord or investment firm, a builder, or entity renting property back to the State.

Ah Leo Varadkar.. Truly the gift that keeps on giving! Not really a surprise though.. He was in Government when Noonan and Enda signed off on the sell off of huge amounts of Irish property and owed debt for a song to wealthy investment funds who then won again by renting the same property back to the State and those who can likewise afford the exorbitant rents!

Can't be upsetting those groups. Feck the people who need a home!

Geuze

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121806797#Comment_121806797

I do.

I would not mind a 20% fall in house prices.

Ray Palmer

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121807337#Comment_121807337

Then less properties would be built making the problem worse.

Leo has a point unless you want more compensation being paid out by the government for badly designed and/or built property.

The real issue is they did away with the building bylaw inspections and put the decision to a person paid by the builder to confirm it was built correctly. Back in the day if a wall was built without inspection it could and would be ordered to come down and built with inspection. Now the surveyor can't make their client take down the wall and if they don't sign off they are fired

Geuze

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121807442#Comment_121807442

it's the other way around.

Rising supply causes price growth to slow down

We all want more supply, or we all should want more supply.

New supply was 33k last year. That needs to be 45-50k or more.

SuperBowserWorld

Leo thinks the world revolves around him. He can't or won't fix the problems in THIS country. He doesn't have any dependents. It's just a big game for him, where he is the star in his own head. He has no idea what people and their families are going through.

Goldengirl

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121807309#Comment_121807309

Why do you say

"Grand if you're already a home owner who's pulled the ladder up after you,"

I have seen you say this before elsewhere and it ruins posts that otherwise are good.

Its such a bitter if not untrue thing to say.

People may not be campaigning vociferously but the majority of people are not in favour of this current housing or rental crisis. Most people are just getting on with the nitty gritty if paying their mortgages and bringing up children.. Not rubbing their hands together gleefully thst others are finding it hard to get a house.

Except for landlords and vulture funds, it is no benefit to society.

Mist people I know it is top of their list in the next election as an issue that MUST be addressed.

Murt2024

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121807729#Comment_121807729

He knows clearly what’s going on and to think different or that he doesn’t give a crap is nonsense.

It’s common knowledge that Leo and the government wants house prices to remain high to avoid people going into negative equity and to build wealth in the country.

If house prices drop to quick it could be an another disaster for this country.

There building 20k short of what is actually needed to try and keep people happy but everyone knows why there doing it.

The help to buy scheme and first home scheme is too keep the pricing of housing at large.

Their job is to develop wealth in the country not land people in negative equity and they know well their sarcrificing a generation of people to do this, mainly 25-45 year olds

_Kaiser_

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121807809#Comment_121807809

OK, let's review...

• Homeowners will not be in favour of measures that reduce the value of their property, in part because we've made an essential item into an investment commodity and status symbol.
• Homeowners regularly object to proposals for new apartments or other homes/developments in their area for spurious reasons (the NIMBY effect).
• Many Homeowners (though not as many as there used to be), are also landlords who also have a vested interest in keeping supply controlled as it increases demand and thus return for their rental property.
• Many Homeowners are only such because of the lax controls and "free money" of the Tiger years that allowed them to get on the "property ladder" and when it all went wrong, those same Homeowners were protected from rightful reposession because it was their "family home". Now that the requirements for entry are all that much harder it's very easy to pontificate about the problems.

Now this doesn't apply to ALL Homeowners, but certainly a lot would find some or several truths in there if they are honest about it. It's not entirely their fault. The Government itself has actively supported this state of affairs for the last few decades as a means to enrich their supporters and hangers-on as well - not forgetting that many TDs (past and present) are landlords themselves as well.

Strumms

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121807729#Comment_121807729

Big on sound bites and grandstanding and paying lip service to problems….

politicians are judged on what they DO… Leo has done very little to help or improve the lives of ordinary Irish citizens…. The majority of us were no better off in any way from his time as Taoiseach….

he has great luck that great masses of his constituency all be not all..but a lot of it would be outside what would be know as traditional working class areas…. Castleknock, Ongar, Carpenterstown etc…. And the decisions being made or enabled won’t bite upper middle class Ireland as hard as it will and are for the rest of us….

you can’t facilitate hundreds of thousands of people coming here and still provide adequate housing to irish people…

” a challenge “ in Leo’s disingenuous lexicon…

“ a disaster “ in our own more truthful upfront explanation.

sameoldname

Yeah, let's go back to a massive construction sector, what could go wrong? 100% mortgages too. Also, why not throw a few cars and some furniture on to the mortgage? Sure, 15 years ago never happened and if it does happen again, we'll just blame the government for giving us exactly what we asked for.

SuperBowserWorld

We will have very valuable houses, but no money to wipe our arses. 😁

NIMAN

SF will be loving these comments.

foxsake

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121806829#Comment_121806829

they are shitholes , forcing more units into less space and poor quality.

zell12

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121807921#Comment_121807921

and that 66% of voters are homeowners which is their primary wealth asset. Hence the Govt plays to their tune.

Goldengirl

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121807921#Comment_121807921

Again this is not " many" as you say, but " some".

I have a few Manies for you..

Many homeowners view their houses not as investments but as " Homes" controversially, where they live and rear their families.

Many have young adults living with them who are unable in this market to move out and even rent their own places despite working in well paying jobs

Many have family members moving back with young families again because of the housing supply issue.

Many cannot trade down /downsize to give cash to their trapped children for deposits or fund their retirement because newer homes cost so much more.

Funny how you don't mention any of the reasons above when "pontificating" yourself, unless it suits your agenda.

There is no sense in this housing market but blaming the wrong people as usual, does not improve your argument.

Esho

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121807231#Comment_121807231

Never subscribed to conspiracy theories, but thinking of taking a course in tinfoil origami for amateur milliners now

It's taken arson and showers of semi criminal sobghites to get the government to admit the immigration rules are broken. And people who are sick of seeing their services eroded too, but they are not considered by our decision makers.

And now this, where house prices are never so high, a whole young generation are living with their folks, and it's not possible to rent unless you work for Google.

Red Silurian

His party stood over one of the worst housing, rent and homeless (as well as health) crises in our states history. In 2020 the electorate put his party and the party that started it all into power together

I think he can say whatever he likes in the knowledge that he will stay in power after the 2024/5 election so meh

taratee

Have Leo and MLM been spending time together lately? Both of them have come out with some very strange comments on the topic of housing.

Ray Palmer

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121807479#Comment_121807479

You find somebody willing to invest money in property development when prices drop by 20% like you want. It happened before and that is how we got where we are. No investment will go into building if it seen as a risk.

What everyone needs is stable prices so investment and construction continue to increase supply to reduce prices long term.

Do you thing it is a good idea to let bad construction come into the market? That is the danger if construction happens too quickly and there is plenty of evidence

Wanderer78

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/2058337567/leo-varadkar-warns-against-increasing-housing-supply-too-quickly

...again, thankfully another credit fueled bubble is simply not possible, as we ve implemented more robust regulations into all our financial sector entities including shadow banking, pension and investment funds etc, thankfully none of these entities are now over leveraged, and of course with new personal lending rules, another 08 situation simply cannot occur!

L.Ball

He's right for the wrong reasons. Given the absolutely appalling quality of new builds towards the end of the Celtic Tiger, rushing houses to market will only result in shoddy builds up and down the country.

Boggles

Article is paywalled.

But the essence of what he is saying is true.

People are back hyperventilating again about our housing market.

It wasn't long ago when we were bulldozing estates.

We need to stop the fúcking nonsense and feeding frenzies that come with it.

A lot of people came out of Covid cash rich in a position to buy, certain members of the "property porn press" started stoking again which led to a charge and inflated prices.

Incidental landlords from the Celtic Tiger dumped their properties which were snapped up by this ready to go buyer at pace.

We are now at record amount of housing starts and well on the way to flooding the market again.

Geuze

We built 33k new last year.

The peak was 93k.

We are still miles below the previous peak.