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

That is exactly what we should be doing.

Everything within canals in Dublin should be 4-6 storey blocks, yes.

I walk along Cork street / Meath / Thomas streets, loads of vacant and derelict sites.

I have a radical suggestion. Replace all low-density 1 and 2 storey houses within canals in Dublin.......

.....with Hausmann-style apt blocks like in Paris.

We must reject the Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil approach - and their reliance on the private sector - and get back to building houses.

I read this as increasing LA new-builds and AHB new-builds.

I read this as follows: if the 31 LA and te AHB sector build more new houses, then we can reduce reliance on buying units from private sector developers.

Have SF actually stated that they would establish a semi-state building contractor?

per EOB it would be done through approved housing bodies (Cluid and the like) and the local authorities.

This is an even worse idea. Why?

1. Because the LAs do not have any experience in delivering large scale housing. That means 30 LAs need to be staffed with experienced and competent construction managers, rather than just one central body. That’s a multi year project even to be able to start work on the first site, and will create huge duplication and redundancy.
2. if the LAs are given quotas to hit, they’ll end up competing with each other for labour and materials. Thus, the cost goes up and up.
3. When (inevitably) some councils do better than others, we’ll end up in a situation where your access to affordable housing depends on your postcode, and you’ll have every local politician screaming about unfairness and preferential treatment.

I’m sorry to be so negative but this is important. Peddling easy answers is great for winning votes but this is going to be an unholy mess when it comes to execution.

If the fix was so easy, I’m pretty sure the current government would be rolling it out right now.

The discussion was on the margin of 5m+ which would be due to the developer on top of all the regular profits/costings for those 100 houses. All the other inputs have already been compensated for at that point before the final 5m is tacked on.

If you think that that is an appropriate margin on top of everything else, then I simply ask whether you think that his magnificent input could be replicated by hiring a team of people as in the purely hypothetical example I gave. That team of people only replace what the developer personally adds. All other inputs remain the same - professional fees and subcontracting out the work etc.

The increase of the money available in grants for derelict properties etc. was immediately reflected in the asking prices for many such properties which were put up for sale as a result. One could always argue that maybe they wouldn't have been put up for sale otherwise, but there would be other alternative methods to bring such properties to market.

How many people would be put in to negative equity on SF's idea of a 300k average Dublin house price?

They'd have to crash the country to get remotely near what they say. They'd be putting a lot of construction workers out of jobs as housing becomes even more unviable to fund as well.

Then they would have to address the banks because their balance sheets would be smashed.

Lots of job losses, people in trouble with their mortgages, their assets devalued...

I don't think they think they have thought it through.

Because he knows there is a very high probability that there will be even more money in it for him if he hangs on until next year, and so on

If there is no margin by definition in the construction of EOBs proposed project housing, how will the government incentivize construction companies to get involved? Is the idea to employ people as direct labour by the new authority? Taking on permanent employees will bring a 30-40% salary overhead by definition in the public sector.

Also, public tendering processes will not deliver savings on material costs, the opposite is more likely.

Would anyone want to spend 300k on a house that they don't fully own or can't sell on the open market.

Credit to Eoin OBroin committing the idea to paper but the proposal needs to be examined in detail.

It seems at first glance that the 300k figure was decided and then everything worked back to that. Deleting site costs and developer margin seems like a backward admission that the 300k claim is not deliverable.

Because the land is being hoarded. The recent taxation measure was brought in to try to combat this, but it is a bit too low to have had any impact yet

BTW, I wasn't suggesting the developers just hire 5 lads. That was in relation to the ability of the public sector to substitute for the developers. I focused the response on the developer margin aspect

I think Gerry must feed her a script every now and again.