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

I think everyone expected this. Interest rates and the price ceiling have cooled increases, but prices can't fall as there's a huge cohort waiting for houses.

I predicted ithis time last year that prices would rise by 5-10% in 2023. Daft says it was 3.4%

My 2024 prediction is not more than a 5% drop in prices nationally.

Interesting development. One to watch

Why assume it's incompetence? The state has done everything to fuel price rises and rent increases whilst doing absolutely nothing arrest either. The only "solution" ever offered is more funny money. No one can be that incompetent. This is either sheer indifference or outright malice. I can't comment on the latter as it's opening a rabbit hole, but regarding the former, this is what happens when we have decades of "zero consequences" for acting the maggot.

Interesting that, contrary to popular conjecture on here, the upper end of the market is powering forward the most with 5 bed detached houses seeing 10-20% yearly growth in the majority of locations.

1 bed apartments have fallen 10%+ in almost all locations. 2 bed terraces flat and 3 bed semis low to mid single digit growth.

Assuming activity of funds and people on tighter budgets, both of whom would be very sensitive to interest rates, mean drops at lower end while cash buyers dominate the higher end.

The K shaped recovery returns

The fact that they've governed over a continual drop in our home ownership rate since they came into office in 2011 would suggest they're either not acutely aware of it, or are utterly incompetent in their efforts to stem the decline, though. Neither is good.

Driving up prices to increase supply has been the stated FG plan since as far back as 2013, and to date it has proven consistently ineffective. As well as it having the rather unfortunate side effect of pricing increasingly large numbers of people out of the market.

Theres not much point in having a housing market where only a minority of earners, or else foreign investors, can afford to buy. And thats what we're heading towards with a median price of €440k now in Dublin, against a median household income of approx €55k.

FG (and FF) need the majority of the population to be able to become homeowners to protect their support base long term. Which is very much no longer the case. The current ESRI projections are for only 35% of those currently aged 35-44 to be homeowners in their life time (and worse for younger cohorts) - which is going to have an absolutely disastrous effects on our home ownership rate.

And the thing is this won't just effect people who've been unable to buy - if circa 65% of the population are renters in 30 years time the taxes on landlords, and homeowners, are going to be something else. The tyranny of the majority can get extreme.

The solution is for the state to stop wasting billions of tax payer euros on ineffective demand side measures like HAP and leasing large numbers of high end apartments for social housing, and instead re-engage in large scale building of housing (both social and affordable) to supplement the private sector. As was practised for most of our post-independence existence, and is currently successfully in action in numerous other polities around the world.

The problem is that neither of our otherwise generally fairly reasonable/centrist main political parties have shown any willingness to engage in this (based on the evidence from 2011-2024) under their current generation of policymakers.

Which is a huge problem for everyone. For the Irish economy and country in general, but also on an individual level both for those locked out of the housing market, and long term for homeowners as they become a smaller and smaller slice of the electoral pie. And also for said political parties, as even their core demographic of ABC1 voters drifts to more extremist options like SF purely as a result of the housing market.

Based on Dublin open days for new build launches (was at Cherrywood and woodbrook) it’s at least 50% foreigners.

these people seem to have a lot more flexibility with regards to property type too. Happy to buy new build estates in less desirable areas (many Indians buying in clongriffin) or apartments (all the privately sold big blocks in SD along the luas seems to be 80% foreign owner occupiers) if that’s the only thing fitting the budget. Irish buyer seem to be waiting till houses in Blackrock drop in price. Typical SF voting idiot strategy.

Who is holding off in the hope of buying a semi-D in BlackRock?

That's the biggest strawman yet.

Home ownership will not decline that much, but it will decline. The real thing to be worried about is the shrinking rental supply coupled with an increase in population. The rental market is going to get so much worse in the next decade. The government will try price controls to appease voters, we all know the effect of price fixing attempts. Then we see homelessness rocket.

Unless rental investments are made attractive the supply is going to dwindle away to nothing. Even REITs and foreign funds no longer see it as attractive to invest in rental schemes here.

I suspect there is a lot of truth to this also, I'm working in a large tech firm and the Indian guys will often look to buy immediately once allowed.

from the roughly 25 colleagues / ex-colleagues I know the areas of choice are

D13 (Clongriffin and Baldoyle)

D18(Clay farm, Glencairn Gate developments)

Kildare (kill mostly) - Even heard from one of the guys "this will be like Sandyford in 10 years"

with some others thrown in, as another poster said there's a preference for new build and decent transport links.

It makes sense many of these guys are on good salaries and have seen their rents continuing to rise, its also not completely uncommon for two or three families to band together and split the cost of a new build.

Thats...wildly factually incorrect. Home ownership rates have been dropping since 1991, they didn't increase in the 1990s/2000s.

"People are continuing to buy" is always going to be true, a certain number of people will always be buying a house. The issue is the per capita rate of buying is dropping consistently every year, and so is our home ownership rate. The data doesn't lie. The 35% future home ownership rate estimation is from the ESRI, not me. I'd imagine they know far more about this than either of us.

Any immigrant background of renters won't matter when it comes to the ballot box. They'll vote for measures in favour of renters, and to the cost of home owners/landlords, just as readily as native born Irish renters.

SF, and the other opposition parties, have all stated they'll expand state building of housing massively - which is more than either FF or FG have achieved since 2011. They've laid out how in detail in their policy documents, have you read them?

Its not just the majority of young people, its now 30%+ of ABC1s - the highest earning people in the country - across all age ranges. Those people are going to vote for SF almost purely because of the current housing market disaster, 30%+ of the highest earning people in the country are not natural Republican Socialists. Thats how badly FG and FG have handled the property market over the last decade.

Not to get too personal but, I could have done what a lot of my friends (strangely the ones who now have their own houses and apartments) did back then and went straight into the workforce and started saving for a house deposit. But instead I went on for my masters (total waste of time). I worked for a couple of years saved for a deposit and was about to buy then with my then gf, but then we decided top go traveling for a year, which turned into 3 years (i wouldnt say that was a mistake but it cost a lot of money both in spends and earnings forgone). When I got home I ended up eventually in a good job, but i had the travel bug and probably went somewhere at least every month.

I added up all the money I "wasted" (my own definition of wasted) and I could easily afford a nice big house now if i hadnt spent it all on experiences and cars. I spent some serious amount of money of coffee over the years added up too (if people want a shock tot coffee money up). Im a bit late learning that spending money instead saving it and getting your major financial needs out of the way young are very important as there was only one time in history that the market came to people instead of running away from them.

Its kind of like not funding your pension until your 50s and wondering why its not going to be enough when you retire. Time is everything and time at the beginning matters most. Thats one thing ive learned from my job in finance. I learned it too late though. But at least ive learned it and am taking on the responsibility to fix my situation, which hopefully will be sorted in the next few months.

Or I could keep going as I was and just moan about it and blame others and see if that helps. But my proof to myself is looking at who has and has not bough their houses among my friends. ITs so obvious to me looking at that.