"average Dublin house prices should fall to ‘the €300,000 mark" according to Many Lou McD.

You're right, what a sell out. She really should have said houses should fall to 27,595,800.00 Indian Rupees or 427,956,000.00 South Korean Won.

You've taken me up wrong.

I'm not complaining about tradesmen gouging.

It's mostly the middlemen who are causing the problems from what I can see.

I think tradesmen's rates should be better and they should have better job security.

Don't know about that. I finished a new build last year (Tipp area) with direct labour, and the cost was €3100 per square m before site works, landscaping, design costs and levies. That was after pushing hard on quotes for every job. You don't need middlemen to drive costs up.

Putting all overheads in came to another €300 sq m , good job the site came cheap at €400 per square m equivalent.

That's €3800 per square m as a conservative cost to finish. Land costs in Dublin will obviously be double or more so you might still be talking 475 for a Dublin 3 bed semi minimum.

It's a long way back to 300k unless people give up the semi-D idea and go 100% apartments

From what I've heard, mechanics are one of the worst paid, if not the worst, trades. Open to correction on that.

Not that you'd know from the invoices that come in. You are probably getting invoiced 4x per hour for labour what the mechanic is getting per hour.

Have two friends that are mechanics, one on lorries and one on tractors and bought are very well paid and a van from the job, they will tell you new stuff is very easy to work on with the diagnostic systems available today and most are serviced under warranty. Both work at home at nighttime in their own garage and always have awaiting list to fix,

I was direct build, not self-build. There is a difference.

For a good quality finish you are looking at 2800 to 3000per sq m, including kitchen, flooring, paint finish, stairs, bathrooms and fixed furnishings. That is the reality.We won some and lost some e.g. kitchen was way over budget but floors and tiling came in well.

You'd think, as many people do that the builders finish was near the end of the cost. But can easily go 600 per sq m from that point on a new build which would be 65k on a new standard semi.

It would be worth doing a BoQ for the craic. Talk to some people who.have built their own house recently by DL or contract. Cost overruns v original budgets are the norm.

The point of this thread is that there are lots of things SF “want” to do, but they don’t have the first clue how to do it, nor any understanding of the implications

No, this is my own calculation just for a rebuild of the existing. Does not take into account demolition.

It’s not a full calculation down to the fine detail but it’s pretty accurate i think.

I'm saying self-build because often people talk about direct build when they go to one builder who subcontracts the work. Either term can be misleading.

Yours was a straightforward build? Simple structure? All off the shelf components?

Often when I hear people talking about high self or direct build costs it turns out they've all sorts of luxury features. Bespoke architecture, alu-clad, smart homes etc.

Did you work out how much your tradesmen were earning per day?

I am looking at the SCSI data on building costs in the GDA, and the proposal from Eoin O'Broin of SF.

The total costs in 2023 in the GDA are 461k, which includes:

land costs = 69,962

finance costs = 22,874

profit margin = 53,864

sales and marketing = 9,000

The SF plan seems to eliminate the four costs listed above.

The SF plan proposes to build house on State lands, but keep the lands in State ownership, so the buyer buys the house, but not the land underneath

(will a bank give a mortgage if selling the house is restricted?)

Under the SF plan, the cost in the GDA falls to 257,259 plus VAT, or 292k in total.

I am not a fan of SF, but I welcome any efforts or proposals to reduce the costs of building houses.

I think I can see one problem with the SF calculations.

They eliminate the profit margin of 53,864 per house, as they intend to remove the property developer, and build houses on already-owned State lands.

Okay, but what about the profit for the building contractor that they intend to hire?

Maybe that is included in the 179,022 house build cost?

If not, then it will have to be added in.