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

Absolute nonsense - population has increased by 11% (4.5m to 5m) since records on FTBers began in 2014. Number of first time buyers over the same period are up 120%. (16k to 34k)

Population has crept up. FTBer numbers have exploded.

I should have more accurately stated that more people are getting on with it than at any point in last 15 years/records. Of course a higher percentage were buying in Celtic tiger period and prior.

Things are bad but they’re the best they’ve been in a long long time.

The 100% mortgages from 05 to 08 had a huge part to play as executable demand of the future was brought forward

Today, we have shared ownership where upto 40% of the price is underwritten or paid by the state. What is this doing to executable demand, land and housing values and how sustainable is it?

Rigorous enforcement are not something I expected to see in the same sentence about the Irish Planning System

I posted and cited the relevant statistic. Home ownership rates for young people have worse than halved - from 60% in 2004 to 27% in 2019. And continued falling since.

"Things are the best they've been in a long long time" is just completely false. The rate of home ownership amongst young people is the worst its been in the history of the Irish state, and this is going to have an absolutely huge impact on the state long term.

The 18-34 home ownership rate statistic is also key because of how it becomes significantly more difficult to get a mortgage as you age past 35. A 40, or 45 year old, isn't getting a 'full' 35 year mortgage - they'll only get shorter mortgages, of lower amounts. So their options are ever more limited as they age, even if their salary is ticking up.

2024 house prices poll open

You're wrong on literally everything there.

The statistic I quoted is 18-34 years old.

Ireland in 2019 had the 10th lowest home ownership rate in Europe.

Home ownership rates in 2004 were below home ownership rates in 1991, Celtic Tiger rates absolutely weren't the peak (or an "exception") in Ireland.

I think the issue is that people are settling down and buying much later than they used to anyway. All of the parts add up to it being hard for FTBs like myself. If I could go back and reason out whether I should prioritize buying a house, or staying in uni til 25 and then going traveling and not getting into the workforce til the back half of my 20s, what would I do. Not sure. But I know that what I did in my 20s was not what the people who are buying houses younger than me were doing. Its my own fault im starting late, and i cant really blame anyone else for it.

If you’re Going back to 1991 then you need remember that it was common to enter the workforce at 16 years or just after leaving cert. What age would those same people be entering the workforce now ? Also back then there was forced high emigration which also would impact stats.

The number of people aged 18-34 who live in a property they own has gone from 60% in 2004 to 27% in 2019. Thats a catastrophic decline, with a verifiably greatly reduced quality of life for hundreds of thousands of people. And one with dire implications for the Irish state in 20-30 years time.

A small increase in outright FTB purchases year to year that you're clinging to, in a country with a population increasing by 100k a year, doesn't compensate for this massive decline.

You can try and spin that any way you want, but those are verifiable, hard, statistics. The statement that "Things are the best they've been in a long long time" as you've made is just laughable. This is verifiably, in late 2023, the worst housing crisis in the modern history of the Irish state.

Thats why im kicking myself for not entering the workforce until the wrong end of my 20's. I had a good time, but its going to work out expensive in the end. All my friends who got jobs and settled down in their early 20s all have somewhere to live now for their old age. I'll be in my 60s before my mortgage is paid off. No more work breaks for me :)

and the chickens will come home to roost when many of the 40/50s generation with no pension and no hope of buying can nolonger afford their rent

How much of a loss did you actually realise?

While I agree with you, that's a very weird statistic.

18-35 is an incredibly broad age range. Chances are that few aged 18-25 owned property in 2004. It was the case between 2011 and 2022.

So if you said people aged 26-34 who live in a property they own has gone from 60% in 2004 to 27% in 2019, the statistic would probably hold true.

But then it paints a less dramatic picture.

Check out fig 3.2

What we're seeing is the average age of homeowners getting older by maybe 5 years or so.

Those who owned property by 25 pre-2011 are probably 30 before they're on the ladder now, and so on.

Buut... by 40-45 it's pretty much the same. Now, maybe those who bought at 25 had paid off a mortage in 15 years (unlikely)

I would say if your statistic was 18-40, instead of 18-35 then it would be a lot less shocking.

Sold the house for 80k less than I paid for it, 13 years after buying it and having put a fair bit into renovating and extending it, so total loss probably the guts of 150k.

That “should” have been a sizeable chunk of equity for my next house but it didn’t turn out that way, so I’ll be paying a larger mortgage for longer, retiring later and being less comfortable when I do retire. Lots of people in my age bracket will tell you a similar story. It is what it is.

The repeated assertion that the current crop of young people are being shafted by their greedy predecessors is a load of bollocks. We have all gone through huge challenges and thinking otherwise is exactly why the word “snowflake” gets thrown around so much.

The problems with housing are so complex and have been building for so long - and are in no way unique to Ireland - that there simply isn’t a quick fix, it will take years to resolve.

? did you read my original post on the last page? I quote from it directly:

"Research by the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI) found that the share of 25-34 year olds who own their own home more than halved between 2004 and 2019, falling from 60 per cent to just 27 per cent."

That aside, the average age of FTBs is increasing (with lots of negative consequences) yes, but "by 40-45 it's pretty much the same" is absolutely not true.

These are the figures for the overall home ownership rate in Ireland over the last 20 years:

2002 = 77.4%

2006 = 74.7%

2011 = 69.7%

2016 = 67.6%

2022 = 66%

Theres a continual drop, driven by older home owners dying off and younger people being unable to become home owners. Fewer and fewer people as a percentage of the population are able to buy their own home.

Once that figure hits below 50% things are going to get interesting - a democratic country where the majority of people are renters will likely start to radically/heavily tax home owners.