Softening house market?

Myself and my ex sold our house in south county Dublin at the start of November at significantly over asking. Since then I have been looking to buy “mortgage free” somewhere in the South East. Every house that I look at (that doesn’t require work) sells at asking or a bit above. The only price drops I’ve seen are on places that need work which I suspect people are nervous about taking on at the moment.

wage increases follow inflation and when wages catch up it means houses have got cheaper.

The facts are its going to take at least a decade for vast majority of peoples wages to catch up to the inflation rates increases seen over the last 2 years. So prices will have to come down or there will be houses not sold. Its not just houses it every aspect of life that has sky rocketed and I truly believe we will see a different existence in this country come the new year. A lot of people are going to lose their jobs in the next 12/24 months and I can see a lot of emigration outwards happening again in Ireland over the next 12/24 months its then that IMO prices will drop. If the war in the Ukraine ends and China finally open up the current supply chain issues will be gone. We could have another 2% increase in interest rates over the next 12 months as well. A lot of people will have to wake up to a new reality. I don't know about anyone else but I have been out in Dublin 3 times this month and all at the weekend and the usual wall to wall claustrophobic overcrowding in the pub I had gotten used to over the decade preceding the pandemic simply was not there. Are we turning a corner with regards to peoples spending habits? Its anecdotal but if people are no longer willing to shell out the ridiculously high prices for goods and services that they got cheaper 2/3/4 years ago and their wages will come no where near the new costs. What happens?

Who would of thought a global pandemic where economies shut down for months would of sent house prices spiralling up. I literally pulled out of sale at the start because I said to myself Im overpaying.

People talking about high interest rates appear to be only considering it in relation to homeowners.

Investors with cash earning 0% were a large source of money being pumped into the market over the past few years. You can read back on plenty of threads over that time where people reason that "You might as well invest it rather than leave it sitting there". Some of those people may well decide to extract their money back out, and people who would have taken that option might instead opt for cash for the time being.

That's all property. Not just residential. But there will be correlations between the different types

Look at what the state has done in the interim however.

We have decided that instead of having a department with responsibility for the actual delivery of housing and ramping up employees to do it we instead put money into the pockets of private developers who have proven time and time again that corners will be cut if possible, prices will change almost at will and who ultimately haven't and don't solve the problem..this coupled with the fact that HAP goes straight into the pockets of an ever increasing number of culture funds, foreign pension funds etc instead of being put towards building actual houses says a lot for the privatisation of accomodation provision if you ask me. Even the move away from local authority mortgage provision until relatively recently was a retrograde step. Couple all that with the state bidding against people to buy up housing and you genuinely have a basket case.

It would be far more efficient to directly hire the skill sets to deliver housing and CPO land (if for some reason the hectares of nama owned land didn't suit) to deliver social housing and in doing so reduce the social housing lists (this stopping the state bidding against citizens for housing) reduce the spend on HAP(again which should lead to reduced overall rents) and finally lead to a reduction in all of the NGOs that are tied up in housing.

I know that things weren't perfect with housing 'back in my day' and that the state aren't always good at delivering certain services but HAP and the backlog in social housing as well as the state's policies in dealing with them have led to major problems.