Irish Property Market chat II - *read mod note post #1 before posting*

You think things were better in the 80’s when your two couples bought their homes? there was mass unemployment, emigration, social unrest, Charlie Haughey going on TV telling us we were living beyond our means? They could buy houses because they were lucky enough to have jobs, at that time bank jobs were “jobs for life” so they had a much better chance to getting a mortgage/buying a home.

You seem to understand why people couldn’t buy when prices were rock bottom during a recession when there was unemployment, lower wages, lack of credit, but unable to understand why people can’t buy when there is full employment, a good percentage have high wages/savings and access to credit. Why is that?

And do you bear any responsibility for helping yourself out of it?

There are a multitude of reasons why we have arrived at this point, ignorance is thinking they are all attributable to bad policies by a Government. It is to ignore the part played by the success of our economy in providing jobs, attracting inward migration, having savings that allow for purchases etc.

The irony may be lost on you, but one of the reasons there are so many bidders with higher financial resources pushing up the price of property, is because for some sectors there are fantastic job opportunities here which have drastically reduced the need to emigrate. Work from home now means that those highly paid people can move out of Dublin, pushing up the prices in rural areas. Is that bad policy making, to have a thriving tech/pharma sector and allow people to wfh? Of course not. Can you build houses at the rate jobs are created? Also, of course not.

Again, a very simplistic way of looking at the current problem. Successive Governments have done well to lift Ireland out of recession and provide conditions for full employment and inward investment leading to good, high paying jobs. There were many reasons for the "last bust", some not under the control of our Government, unless you want to blame them for a global economic collapse. One of the largest contributing factors domestically, and something the Government did have to take responsibility for, was the lack of regulation in the building sector and financial markets which meant people borrowed far beyond their means to invest in rapidly built, shiite properties. When the recession came, too much debt, to many houses. That has now been corrected making it more difficult to over borrow, and building regs have been improved. The fact that there are so many people who have well paying jobs which allows them to borrow more as a result of having a higher wage for the mortgage multiplier cap, and houses are more expensive to build because of the regs, is hardly an indication of poor policy decisions, unless of course you think people should be able to borrow without a ceiling. That of course would risk repeating the mistakes of the Celtic tiger years.

The fact is that some sectors of society, particularly those who went into the tech/financial/pharma/trades fields are doing very well at the moment, high wages, high capacity to borrow are competing with people in average paying jobs, they no longer need to emigrate, so they are competing with you for the limited stock of properties available. Will SF change that? No, and if they try to, they risk killing the golden goose which has driven our economy forward and helped us out of recession. And if you think that is a price worth paying, then consider that the MNC's alone put over €16bn into our economy in direct payroll, the benefit of that is most assuredly felt by those shops, mechanics, pubs, restaurants, etc, jobs that lower paid workers rely on, not to mention the tax take from their wages which pay to run the PS/CS services.

I’m not sure what you are asking here, is it for yourself or someone else?

What point are you making about mentally disabled people, and what has it got to do with this thread on the property market? Are you saying they cannot afford to buy, or that the State should be providing it?

If you want an answer, at least ask a question.

I think that would be their viewpoint, let SF in there, show everyone that all these promises they are making are hopelessly undeliverable, and regroup in opposition.

Like you I think, none of the parties will be able to solve the housing crisis as many of the contributing factors are outside their control.