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

Anecdotally, housing market crazy again after some lull around late last year.

open days with a dozen parties with already existing offer 10% above ask. This is South Dublin. 700-1.1m range. Grim for any wannabe homeowners or anyone who sold to upgrade.

OK.. perhaps that's true...lets say SFs core vote is young people that can't see any other way to owning their own home than voting for SF

I'd suggest their education wasn't up to much if they think SF will solve the housing crisis but I'll eat humble pie if I'm wrong.

I'd say it would be more likely they'd make an even bigger balls of things than the current pack of sleeveens.

They are not the least bad option.

They are a different option.

But realistically, SF will tax anyone on mid and upper incomes more heavily than they are being taxed now.

If you are looking to buy a house, you would need to be in those 2 groups.

Therefore, SF arent helping you buy a house.

SF will support the low and no earners, they will not make it easier for people on average or above incomes to buy houses.

Young professionals voting SF will be sorely dissapointed.

SF will not help these people. They are not the people SF represent.

Im not agreeing or disagreeing with the merits of voting SF however it's easy to see why after decades of power and apparantly the decadence of all of the MNC money/tax income from similar party governments, we are worse off in housing accessibility and health than we have ever been.

What do they say - the definition of crazy is doing the same thing over and over again (voting in the same parties) and expecting different results.

The reason younger people are going with SF is fairly straightforward, the current government have had a number of years to sort the issues out and simply haven't.

How can we fix it so that young people will be able to buy a house? Simple. Just increase property taxes for houses that were build prior to 2023 and exempt houses that get built from this point forward. Also, exempt first time buyers of pre 2023 houses from the property tax for at least 20 years, (provided they did not make the purchase before 2023).

If the tax on pre 2023 houses was high enough, it would have these effects:

1) It would create a real economic demand for new builds (over existing housing stock). Anyone who can afford a new house will buy one and sell their existing house which will be costing them too much to keep. This will make building new houses far more economically viable as they will fetch a higher price.

2) This increase in sales of existing houses will put serious downward pressure on the price of pre 2023 houses., making them more affordable.

3) It would correct the mistake the governments made in enriching and protecting property owners by re-inflating property prices which were trying to correct themselves in 2009. Re-inflating property prices has cost us all 200 billion euro in borrowed money since the crash of 2008. Natural justice dictates that 200 billion should be repaid by the people who benefitted from it and not by young people who were school children back in 2008. And by raising 200 billion (by taxing pre 2023 properties), the government could bring the national debt back to where it was in 2008, before they did their bank bailouts and market manipulations.

Maybe but it will increase the supply which seems to be an ongoing issue. Also, the big institutions would have stiff competion because a lot of mature property owners (not first time buyers) would be buying the new builds to extricate themselves from the pre 2023 property taxes on their existing properties. I absolutely agree tax exemptions for institutional investors should never have been given and need to stop (I mean the properties they bought before 2023).

The problen with new builds is that, such is the state of the housing crisis, the councils are buying up, or worse, renting, whatever new build and empty properties they can get their grubby hands on.

Ergo, the liklehood of paying top dollar for a new build, only to find your neighbours are mr and mrs freeloader, would mean that buying a second hand home in a nice settled area is a much more attractive propsect for many.

And, a better investment for your children.

Nightmare.

At least your friends managed to sell up.

Terrible really that new builds are so risky in this respect.

The councils ability to buy new houses would be severely curtailed if they were up against a million baby boomers trying to off load highly taxed pre 2023 houses for tax free new houses. Under such circumstances, a lot of new houses would be built and would sell for prices higher than they are now. The pre 2023 houses would fall in price to become affordable to first time buyers.

It would depend greatly on the numbers and the trust you held in both the current government and more importantly future governments.......

Are you a FF / FG party member by any chance?

That would never happen in reality.

Sounds like some kind of socialist wet dream to me.

Just because someone owns property, it doesnt mean they owe the rest of the country a house.

So increase the demand for new houses?

How fast do you think new houses can be built?

What is going to happen to the price of new houses when you increase the demand for them without making enough supply?

Say you did somehow get the construction industry into overdrive like it was in the past. What are you going to do then when new houses are being built too fast. Apply the brakes suddenly? Whole other set of problems then.

Taxing things into the way you think you want them to end up rarely ends the way you think it will.

Its a poor tool and usually ends up having unintended consequences.

Bold move though. But an experiment to carry out on the whole population of Ireland? Lots of lives destroyed when it inevitibly throws up something you didnt think of in a couple of paragraphs :)