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

I think there is a lot in what he says, some data does indicate we are nowhere near as crisis levels of supply as the headlines would have you believe.

It's important to distinguish between whether somebody means supply as in houses actually on the market versus supply as in volume of existing housing stock.

Sure the data shows that supply of houses on the market is at record lows.

But the data of supply of housing stock suggests the picture is nowhere as bleak as most claim.

And I think Skehan's point if we ramp up a housing program that builds 60/70/80k houses a year for next decade, we are likely to have turn quickly into a position of oversupply.

And that then causes the same problems of 07/08 all over again.

Skehan is not a particularly likeable fellow, but he's no idiot.

2022 census for one.

According to the CSO the total housing stock is 2,124,590 and the average household size is 2.75 in Ireland.

Total housing stock of 2,124,590 x Average household size 2.75 = 5,842,622 total housing person capacity

And the population is 5,123,536.

So on the face of it based on average household size we have "spare" capacity for 719,086 people. Or to put it another way - 719,086 / avg household size 2.75 = 261,485 spare housing units.

Obviously it is not that simple because in order to facilitate a healthy turnover of stock in a functioning market you need some spare capacity at all times - this is in the region of 6% of housing stock equating to 127,475 units.

261,485 spare housing stock - 127,475 turnover stock = 134,010 oversupply

That potential oversupply we have will have dropped a bit because of significant net immigration since April 2022, but the raw numbers are still nowhere near as alarming as the headlines.

Or to put it another way, if you had never read a newspaper article on Irish property, or tried to rent/buy a house recently, and were coming to the situation with no preconceived idea of the situation and you looked at the number of houses in Ireland compared to the number of people you would conclude there is no shortage of houses.

If you have a few years of building 60/70/80k into to those housing stock numbers you will run into oversupply sooner or later. The longer it takes, the bigger the impact.

Just listened to both interviews, and feel a bit bad about my comment on Skehan not being likeable. I thought he came across well, nervous as he knew he'd get it in the neck.

Re Ahernes point about people buying investment properties, we didn't really have a investment landlord class back then.

I daresay if we still didn't have the institutional landlords, and all the units that have been delivered in last 7 or so years that have not made it to market because of build to rent, REITs bulk buying, PArt V delivery etc, had been on the open market it would feel like every Tom, Dick and Harry had been buying second properties as an investment.

I agree with Aherne's thinking re the government should putting all the public money eggs in one basket to supplying the social housing demand and leave the private market to look after itself by and large.

I just did same housing stock / average household size / population calculations using the numbers from the 2006 census.

And the result was an oversupply of 159,187, only 25,000 units more than 134,010 figure from the 2022 census.

And in the year or so following the 2006 census another 100k new units were built, which led to a huge crash due to oversupply. Skehan is just warning to be careful we don't repeat the same mistake again.