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

What has social housing benefits got to do with property rights? Nothing

Berlin has had a rent freeze for years now

German renter protections are far stricter than Ireland. And the ability to evict to sell is much harder done in Germany than here.

…which was ruled unconstitutional. Just proving my point.

social tenants can’t go years without paying rent in Germany too….

As always, article on housing accompanied by picture of 2 up 2 down (from 30s) or alluding to Crumlin which was built in 40s/50s, but these houses are not what acceptable to either the young employed workers, the gig economy workers with fragile contracts, the welfare classes or our recently arrived protection applicants.

Everyone wants a garden, space for 2 cars in the driveway, 3 or 4 enquires as every kid deserves their privacy - this issue must also be addressed in these articles.

https://www.irishexaminer.com/news/arid-41112766.html

https://www.breakingnews.ie/ireland/state-spending-e1-88m-a-day-on-accommodation-for-international-protection-applicants-1562886.html

Our government is apparently on track to spend in excess of €2.25bn this year on housing (and thats just housing, not even all the other associated costs) non Irish citizens. Thats an absolutely astronomical number to be spending yearly.

You'd wonder how much impact on the housing crisis that money could have if spent on things like building houses instead of renting out entire hotels at extortionate rents.

I've been making that point on here for the year or two I've put any pass on, and posted in, this forum. Do away with HAP (and similar) in the morning and there would be no need for rent caps.

The likes of HAP are merely a subsidy towards those in society are already relatively wealthy. It increases the rental levels above where a free market would be. Which increases income for landlords, which increases the price of houses, which also increases the price of land, which feeds back into even more increase in the price of houses.Which the State then outbids private individuals for in order to house those that are priced out of the market.

Those who don't work will be looked after. Those that do work will have to be subsidised. Those that work in jobs such as construction won't be able to afford the houses they build - if you want to buy a house then you better be chasing the 100k+ jobs. It doesn't have to be that way, but that is the way it has been set up.

HAP was a response to public protests against homelessness.

Just like every government policy, they started with something half baked and just made it worse over time.

Its literally available at the very top result for "rental subsidies Ireland government spending" on Google: https://www.irishexaminer.com/news/arid-40888892.html

The HAP budget needs capped at some stage, or the scheme wound down with a cutoff put in place - anybody no new households added to HAP beyond X date.

After that it's just about ramping up social building and also state owned emergency accommodation. The HAP budget will spiral out of control if allowed to continue as is - increasing payments cause rent inflation cause increasing HAP payments. It's a vicious feedback loop.

I'd be surprised if that isn't snapped up by one of those crowds making hay hand over fist from accommodating Ukrainians or asylum seekers.

Theres absolutely no validity in writing off past bad decisions as "if this if that", people, and political parties, need to own the consequences of thier actions. Which in this case is FG owning their god awful HAP creation.

I never suggested "pulling the plug on 60k households", thats obviously not going to happen, HAP isn't going to be ended overnight by any party. But the only way to reduce the numbers on it is to actually build substantial numbers of social housing. Which based on the evidence of the last decade FG seem to be largely against.

The incentives that are there drive up the price making the issue harder to resolve.

All the white collar costs are quoted as a percentage of the final sale price so if there is a spike in in one input or new charges the white collar cut increases in parrallel.

Take for example the extortionate water connection fee quoted at 5500, that's added to the final cost with

15% developer margin

13.5% VAT

7% cost of finance

1% cost of marketing and associated costs

Im sure there's other charges I've missed

This bring the total effect of the connection fee to in the region of 7,500. Pay for that through your mortgage for 30 years @ 4% and the total cost to the buyer is easily 15000

State needs a build to rent model on own land to ease the ever increasing subsidies that are dished out to the private market in rents and purchase price.