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

Far more teacher training days now than there were strikes in the 80's

Covid and the energy crisis have brought the coats back into the classroom

In the 80's mortgage lending was 2.5 times income 1 plus 0.5 times income 2 giving a total of 3 times income, we are now at 8 times (4 + 4) with new homes prices well out of reach of the median income. This is with ftb grant, shared ownership, and tax breaks for developers.

This pretty much underlines how one sector has held the entire economy to ransom in relatively short period of time. Pure dysfunction and cronyism

You mention Advant, but they only take the low hanging fruit by only accepting applications from absolute prime borrowers.

I dont know what Advant's market share is, but Finance Ireland and ICS Mortgages had 15% market share between them in 2022. Their lending has since stalled. FI is now 6.2% variable. If they cant source alternative source of funds to lend at comparable rates there is a risk they will exit the mortgage market, further consolidating the stranglehold AIB & BoI have on the market.

The government policies do nothing to make houses affordable, they only make unaffordable houses affordable.

I was absolutely furious when they announced it but I know people who were waiting at the end of 2022 for that to come in so they could borrow more and have more affordability. It never entered their mind that everyone they were competing against were in the exact same position and the only winner there would be the seller.

The marriage ban ended in 1973, not the 1980s.

The only reason that legislation changed in 73 was because it had to if we were to join the EU. The reality was that it lived on long after that and it was only in the late 80’s and early 90’s that married women entered the workforce in large numbers.

Source: https://www.esri.ie/system/files?file=media/file-uploads/2016-09/QEC2016AUT.pdf.

Come up so many times in this thread, but again, the government have no influence over lending limits. Thankfully it is all controlled by the CBI.

I agree the timing of increasing them was unfortunate, but it has absolutely nothing to do with the government.

The Central Bank did a public consultation on it. The public was overwhelming in favour of increasing the limits.

They wouldn’t just take it 100% at face value and follow it blindly. They would just gather views of lots of people and use it to assist their decision making process. Fairly common thing for them to do on a variety of topics. Should in theory help to avoid narrow thinking by a relatively small number of fairly like minded people.

The reason I mentioned it was just there’s regularly an accusation throw out here along the lines that Leo Varadkar personally increased lending limits to increase house prices despite nobody wanting it to happen. Nope, it was decided by an independent body and widely welcomed by the vast majority of the public (I’d argue that they were misguided but, hey, that’s just my opinion!).

The CBI is made up of a lot of professionals of varying backgrounds jumping in and out of private sector, often stopping in CBI just to boost their CV. I know lots and lots of them, current and former, many towards the very top. I can assure you, they couldn’t care less what Leo Varadkar or any politician thinks of them. He has zero power/influence over them and their professionalism and long term career ambitions way outweigh making reckless decisions purely to gain some political favour.

And if you think Gabriel Malkhouf -

A) Was personally involved in the lending limit change in any material way

B) Made his individual contribution under some Godfather style intimidation by a politician that he’d be fired if he didn’t (which is close to impossible to do)

then lol. Belongs in conspiracy theories forum tbh.

All the above totally aside. If you do insist the government control lending limits in some sort of shadowhand way and do so purely to increase house prices - then why on earth would they preside over some of the most stringent lending limits in a first world country?? Even after the 4x we’re still very conservative relative to peers, so if anything as a proponent of low LTI limits (I am also btw), you should be praising them.

Unfortunately in Ireland it has become the norm to just blame all of life’s woes on ‘the government’. Sometimes it’s justified, but reaching like this just detracts from genuine mistakes they make.

It has been suggested that unused commercial real estate such as office buildings be converted to housing units to tackle the housing shortage. From the governments perspective, I can see why they would not be enthusiastic about such a move and why converting them to migrant accomodation would be preferable. You see, if office space is made available for housing, that would increase the supply of housing units which would put downward pressure on house prices. The government wants house prices to stay high, at any cost because they don`t want people defaulting which would put further downward pressure on house prices.

Hence the government`s preference for migrant accomodation over increased house supply. Besides, as young Irish people emmigrate, I guess they want the migrants to stay and pay the 200 billion they borrowed to inflate house prices beyond their reach.

Correct me if I'm wrong but the mortgage controls were a product of the ECB/IMF bailout to help prevent a recurrence of the 08 crash.

Many here were a little distraught when AJ Chopra left as they knew what government would be doing without the strict oversight of the IMF

Gov have been trying to get around them since there inception

Couple of big office buildings near my office have been totally empty since 2020. They are now starting to fill back up.

We are also gone from 1 day a week in the office to 2 days. We got an email from the company to say going to 3 days in October and 4 days in January.

Dont know if other companies will do the same, but office buildings are starting to get used again.

People wishing a recession are harmless to the economy, those that are putting the economy in the worst possible position when the inevitable recession arrives are the problem.

When the US govener of the central bank stated that households and businesses will experience pain from there actions, do you think they are doing such things out of necessity or for a laugh!

You're being a bit naive. Overt conspiracy involving Godfather-style intimidation or secret meetings is not necessary in order for 'independent' quangos to somehow mysteriously align their actions with government objectives.