The great myths of housing

Ace2007 wrote: »

Would you prefer to be in an area that wasn't your dream and be struggling a littler or being in your dream area but up to your neck in debt in a recession?

The difference could be 100+ additional debt.

As a couple I wouldn't necessarily need to live in the dream area, but with kids I would. We bought our first house 20 years ago. The SIL had just bought in a lovely new estate in blanchardstown (warrenstown) and the in laws were heavily suggesting we go there too. We ended up in Seabury in Malahide. My reasoning was that if there was a crash I would rather be stuck in the right area than the wrong one, especially since we planned to have kids and the local primary was Corduff national school. We planned 5-7 years for our starter home and because we were right about a crash we were there for 10. And had 2 kids there. Even the in laws admitted that we made the right decision.

Flinty997 wrote: »

That could be up to 250k in the difference for a similar house. It's hardly a choice for most people. I'm not entirely sure how relevent that is most people.

At the time the malahide house was €200k so not as big a difference in price. But the point is that many people would rather the worst house in the best area, even if it means higher debt, because they're afraid of getting stuck somewhere they wouldn't want to raise their kids.

tscul32 wrote: »

At the time the malahide house was €200k so not as big a difference in price. But the point is that many people would rather the worst house in the best area, even if it means higher debt, because they're afraid of getting stuck somewhere they wouldn't want to raise their kids.

They are an extreme example, coastal areas of Dublin always have a premium and the premium will get more extreme. Over 40 % of adults in Ireland have a third-level education and in an urban area, it could be greater, it is a delusion to think that children in middle-class areas are protected somehow.

Bit of an eccentric view but I think we are getting like California we are developing a very wealthy urban and coastal elite who work in legal, finance, IT with property prices to match.

Murph85 wrote: »

I propose reducing apartment construction costs

how?

Murph85 wrote: »

I'd allow two bed + apartments only or studios.

no, ideally we'd have families in apartments but (rightly or wrongly) we seem to be completely adverse to that in this country

Murph85 wrote: »

Get rid of dual aspect requirement, get rid of parking requirement too in central areas perhaps...

so your solution......is to decrease the quality of apartment buildings?

Murph85 wrote: »

The masses cant afford property on what their salaries pay... they wont increase lpt to raise revenue and incentivise downsizing... which would free up family homes...

The cost of apartment development is mental. I propose reducing apartment construction costs, I'd allow two bed + apartments only or studios. You can double bed capacity with a 15% increase in floor space, by allowing a second size small double bedroom...

Get rid of dual aspect requirement, reduce lift costs if practical... this situation is only going to get far worse.... get rid of parking requirement too in central areas perhaps...

Sound insulation needs to be massively improved. No pumps in apartments either. Sound proof windows when area faces busy road etc... perhaps storage space at ground level, along with parking, but behind ground level retail in city centre

LPT should never have been brought in. Only pushes up the total cost of a house which of course has been the government's game all along

Murph85 wrote: »

you think they have these " standards" in other EU countries? They wont, because either the government stumps up massively or the renters, aspirational buyers do... or do you propose the solution is to just tell several hundred thousand in Dublin, to go out and get A six figure salary ?

well, they do? have you any idea of the quality and affordability of apartment units in places like germany and holland? even france has decent quality in alot of cities but they tend to be less subsidised. you do realise that not having basic requirements for buildings means the overall quality will lower significantly and the cost of 'basic' (to use a poor phrase) buildings will increase?

Murph85 wrote: »

The government could reduce taxes on building. It wont bloody happen. What I propose is the only solution I can see them adopting here... I didnt say it was the best, but its Ireland, the country of worst practice, not the best...

this is a prime example of why we are in such a bad situation in terms of our building stock in this country - 'ah sure we might as well just feck an auld thing up cause itd be awkward to do it properly'

Murph85 wrote: »

I explained how. I dont even see how you can have a family in a typical irish apartment, say you have a 3 bed,you need another room away from the kitchen, living area, to escape or lock yourself up in your bedroom all the time.. a office / chillput, tv room, occasional guest room

again, other countries can do it very easily so why cant we? our problem is because of the stigma of blocks like ballymun etc, giving the general population a bad view on high-rise accommodation (combined with a past of a predominately rural population) and so we dont see it as a viable option for families

C14N wrote: »

I don't think these requirements necessarily lower the "quality" of buildings. If I'm buying an apartment, things like it being built safely, having good energy rating, having a certain level of lift access, sound protection in the walls etc. are things that I would hope would be taken care of by regulation, as I'm not really in a position as a buyer or renter to know if they're good enough or not, and basically nobody is ever going to want to forgoe these things.

you do realise you are basically agreeing with my point that regulations are a good thing (in general)?

C14N wrote: »

Many people living in cities don't own or need a car though. Anecdotally, a previous apartment in a large block that I lived in had way more parking spaces than were actually required. I did have a car, but the vast majority of underground spaces in the building were unused at any time of day. My current apartment is smaller and has fewer spaces, but I still see many spaces that are always vacant, including the one right next to my own car. So why should they all have to pay for the extra costs to build all those parking spaces?

im not necessarily disagreeing with you and private car ownership is likely to decrease over the next while, but proper parking facilities still have to provided

Murph85 wrote: »

Things like whether you get a parking space or have windows on two aspects are really down to personal preference or personal requirements. If I don't care about my windows having a dual-aspect, I still have to pay for it. It's like mandating that all houses need to have south-facing gardens. It's a nice feature, and I'm sure it adds a lot of value for people who do want it, but that doesn't mean it needs to be a requirement for everyone.

apples and oranges here. while not always practicable, its generally possible to provide windows on all facades of a building, not the case with gardens. and as pointed out earlier to a different poster, if such features are required by regulations then they become standard and thus not a feature that costs extra. take cars for example - saab and volvo (i think anyway, not my area of expertise) advertised in the 1960s that their cars were fitted with seatbelts as standard and a premium was charged. this became an industry requirement subsequently and is no longer something that warrants an extra charge

schmittel wrote: »

what is the problem that so few people want to buy apartments in Ireland?
I get that in an ideal world a house is better than an apartment but clearly we're not living in an ideal world, and if people in other countries are happy to make do with apartments why not the Irish?

basically because of the poor quality early examples in ballymun etc, soured the opinions of the general population

Ubbquittious wrote: »

Why are they so keen to shove us all into apartments? Do they have some fantasy about running a big factory farm of humans with everyone neatly tucked into tiny spaces? People don't fecking want them, they should just get the message and try something different

it works well in a majority of developed countries so why are we any different?

C14N wrote: »

I think it's a bit of a chicken and egg thing. There are very few apartments built in Ireland that can compete with houses in terms of space. Look at any application for building an apartment block and you're looking at maybe 10% of units even being 3-bed sized, and virtually nothing is built bigger than that. So if you're in the market to get even a starter home with plans to start a family or even to just live as a couple but with some extra space, you really just do not have many options when it comes to apartments.
I'm sure at the same time, developers will say they don't build them because people won't buy them, but it's hard to know that when the theory isn't ever really being tested. I'm sure there are still some people with hangups about buying any apartments but I have to believe just form personal experience that it's a lot less with people who are younger than it is with older people.
So it's a case of people won't buy them because nobody will build them, and nobody will build them because they think people won't buy them.

definitely have a point here. some of the most successful family-sized complexes in places like germany or holland were at least in part government funded

sprucemoose wrote: »

you do realise you are basically agreeing with my point that regulations are a good thing (in general)?

I wasn't disagreeing broadly with things like that, although I'd hesitate to say "good in general". I think some regulations are good and others are not. I'm far from a lasseiz-faire objectivist who opposes regulations on principle, but I do think they can sometimes be unhelpful and unnecessary.

sprucemoose wrote: »

im not necessarily disagreeing with you and private car ownership is likely to decrease over the next while, but proper parking facilities still have to provided

Why though? If people are aware moving in what the parking situation is like in a building, then that decision should be theirs. Personally, I do own a car, so I'm not going to move into somewhere that will not give me a parking space, but at the same time plenty of people don't, so if they want to live somewhere without them then that should be their choice. I would expect that most developers making apartment buildings would want to have some level of dedicated parking, but I think it should be up to them to decide how many spaces they think they need to build, not regulation that will be much slower to respond to changing demands.

sprucemoose wrote: »

apples and oranges here. while not always practicable, its generally possible to provide windows on all facades of a building

It is possible, but it will make building more difficult and expensive. Afaik, the dual-aspect requirement is not that all sides of the building need windows, it's that a certain percentage of individual apartments in a development need to have windows facing more than one side, which pushes up costs of building them.

sprucemoose wrote: »

if its up to developers then they simply wont build any, which is why we need a regulation for minimum provision. im not opposed to it being slightly lower, but something needs to be there

I don't agree at all. Developers in general know that it will be harder to sell a block of apartments with zero parking in it. Some portion of people will always want parking. It's usually not going to be in their own self-interest to do otherwise, at least in a country like Ireland. Even if they do build no spaces and there is a big shortage of parking that people want, that just spurs demand for other developers to build multi-story parking to cater to that. My own parents lived in an apartment in the Netherlands for a while and had this exact situation where the apartment was in the city center and had no parking, but there were nearby car-parks they could use as a result for people who wanted them.

sprucemoose wrote: »

you are correct in that not all facades need windows, my point was that its generally possible to provide windows on all facades while its not necessarily always possible to have a south facing garden. you are incorrect as to the idea that more windows equal higher cost. even on a one-off house this is debatable (although theres some truth), but a building of the scale we are talking about will almost inevitably be constructed with a curtain wall-type system which means the amount of glazing is largely irrelevant when it comes to cost

It's possible to require all new houses to have south-facing gardens too. It woud be highly inconvenient, but still possible.

The glazing isn't the issue with the dual-aspect. Basically all apartment buildings are going to have windows on multiple aspects regardless of any regulation, but, aside from corner units, designing every unit inside one of these buildings to have dual-aspect windows increases complexity and increases costs. From an Irish Times article on the subject a few years back:

A dual-aspect apartment is one with windows on two walls. The cost associated with more windows is not really to do with the extra glass, but far more to do with the “lift-core ratio”. The greater the number of dual-aspect apartments, the fewer the number of apartments reached by each lift. This is because a dual-aspect apartment, unless it is on the corner of the building will typically run from the front to the back of a block, cutting off internal corridors and so limiting the number of apartments that can be serviced by each “core” – the part of the building where lifts and stairs are located.

And it's just unnecessary. Dual aspectsis nice, but it doesn't make tenants safer or healthier or anything like that. I would not personally be bothered about whether my apartment had it or not, there are other things I would much rather have my money spent on than windows that point in two different directions.

C14N wrote: »

I don't agree at all. Developers in general know that it will be harder to sell a block of apartments with zero parking in it. Some portion of people will always want parking. It's usually not going to be in their own self-interest to do otherwise, at least in a country like Ireland. Even if they do build no spaces and there is a big shortage of parking that people want, that just spurs demand for other developers to build multi-story parking to cater to that. My own parents lived in an apartment in the Netherlands for a while and had this exact situation where the apartment was in the city center and had no parking, but there were nearby car-parks they could use as a result for people who wanted them.

i have to say i disagree. maybe ive only dealt with bad developers but ive worked with enough of them to safely say that the majority will cost any cost that they can get away with if it isnt guaranteed to make them money. if public car parks were provided free to local residents then maybe that could be an option, however i do not ever see something like that being an option

C14N wrote: »

It's possible to require all new houses to have south-facing gardens too. It woud be highly inconvenient, but still possible.

again, i was saying that one was easier relative to the other

C14N wrote: »

The glazing isn't the issue with the dual-aspect. Basically all apartment buildings are going to have windows on multiple aspects regardless of any regulation, but, aside from corner units, designing every unit inside one of these buildings to have dual-aspect windows increases complexity and increases costs.

i have alot of experience with this and trust me, it doesnt increase cost. in fact, the fact it is a requirement can be used to push an improved design to a developer who wants to cut costs

C14N wrote: »

an Irish Times article on the subject a few years back:

this was largely a puff piece quoting the CIF. i dont want to get too into it, but the CIF should in no way be determining how we design our buildings, if it were up to them we'd all be living in single storey one off houses that are completely remote and have no windows.

C14N wrote: »

And it's just unnecessary. Dual aspectsis nice, but it doesn't make tenants safer or healthier or anything like that.

not true, its largely accepted that any increase in exposure to natural light provides health benefits. increased amounts of windows can also help with safety (at times, this varies massively due to location etc,.) due to increased overlooking

fvp4 wrote: »

Dual Aspect massively reduces what you can do, every apartment would have to be on a corner. Instead just do light.

no, but smaller units would generally be corner units.

i dont know what 'just do light' means?

timmyntc wrote: »

Can you explain how you'd manage to make loads of dual-aspect units in a building with square or rectangular shape?

The most you can do is 4 units per lift/stairwell, if you try to add units you end up cutting off hallways and have to add more lifts/stairwells to the building.

i dont understand why youre saying 'loads'? the current regulation is for 33% of units to be dual-aspect (technically 50% but in general its the lower limit that is used) and if we're taking the individual units to be single-storey then the most you can have (in general) on an individual floor with one circulation core would be four anyway, any more would need alternate circulation for fire etc,. If we're talking about multi-storey units then its very possible to design a layout that allows for a maximising of DA units