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

Can someone just explain something to me from the nadir of the recession? I was abroad at the time and I'm genuinely interested in how mortgages worked back then.

So it's 2013. In order to get a mortgage you need 10% deposit, you can borrow 3.5 times your income.

Residential Property Price Register

Most of the homes in the areas on this here list I pulled out would today go from about 240k (ex council) to 305k to as high as 390k today.

Now, unemployment was at 15%, but was it as simple as "I've been in the same job for 10 years, it's going nowhere it's a solid industry neither construction nor MNC, throw us a mortgage there" or am I missing something? Was there next to nobody they would actually give a mortgage to, citing unpredictability of the job market?

Like, there's certain industries that in my mind are redundancy proof- nursing, teaching, Gardai.

I mean, you see houses there going for 73k. Assuming it wasn't a derelict, would absolutely anybody who had 7300 on them and even a very basic salary have qualified?

Obviously houses were going so cheap in part because banks were presumably slow to give mortgages, but they were giving some out, and only 15% of workers were unemployed so, how did it work?

But it's still like that.

Even in the darkest days of the recession 85% of adults had a job of some description.

The only industry almost entirely wiped out was construction (even at that, self employed domestic electricians always have call outs to do, glaziers always have broken windows to fix, locksmiths, roofs will always leak, etc etc. There was mass layoffs but a few self employed lads always kept head above water)

But aside from all that- the schools needed teachers, the buses needed drivers, and so on.

85% were working, it strikes me that the banks must have dragged serious feet to prevent most of them taking out a mortgage.

Sod all buyers= houses going for less than a high end EV would today.

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Help to buy just inflates house prices by 30k or whatever the amount is.

If the government wanted, they could have made Help to Buy an annual tax refund payable over 5- 10 years. But sure the developers wouldn't get money off that.

I'm alright Jack so. Lovely people.

If houses were to return to an affordable level in my area, I'm saying about 220 to 260 for a standard 70s/80s 3 bed, about 180 to 220k for an ex council house, then the only people who would be in negative equity are a cohort who bought between circa 2005 to 2008 and 2021 to the present. Everyone else bought either at firesale prices or at a time when they were somewhat affordable.

6 years. For homes that have been around as many as 50 years.

What do we owe panic buyers in protecting their investments? If you were stupid enough to spend big money on a new build you

a- didn't need help to buy as you could easily have afforded a second hand place and,

b- want sectioning to buy an architectural monstrosity in a management fee estate with no front garden, allocated parking, management rules, being mugged off by 15% of your neighbours from the housing list, etc etc.

I own a house.

I support large falls in rents, and 20-25% falls in house prices.

My own wealth would fall, yes, but the rise in my wealth since the purchase of the house was unearned.

I put the competitiveness of the nation, and the well-being of other people ahead of my own wealth.

Higher prices= buyers having less children= less taxpayers, nurses and bus drivers when Im Alright Jack there gets old

In most of West Dublin from Tallaght to Blanch it was the standard price prior to the end of 2020, 220 to 260k for your average 3 bed semi. The prices then exploded through 2021 before somewhat stabilising by summer 2022 to a rate of slower growth.

Do you think it is right and fair that the market is now locked into where it is after years of relative stability by one massive 18 month jolt that has seen the price pushed to unrealistic levels?

You wouldn't. You rarely see above 5% of local residents, at absolute most, object to new developments. Have a look at the objections for any development and you'll see only a handful of objections.

For example:

"As an experiment, The Journal decided to examine a housing project in seven of Ireland’s main urban centres.

These were the four Dublin local authorities, Cork City, Galway City and Limerick City and County.

When developers apply for permission to build new housing, local residents may submit observations.

The purpose of this exercise was to look at the submissions and see how many were in favour of the project and how many were against.

Across all seven housing projects there were a total of 138 submissions from local residents, not including businesses."

138 odd objections out of tens of thousands of locals surrounding the developments.

https://www.thejournal.ie/impact-of-nimbys-on-irish-planning-permission-6152016-Aug2023/

I don't know about those prices. I was buying in Dublin 15 in 2019, 3 bed semis in Clonsilla were 350 plus.

Residential Property Price Register

Some of the CT era ones that appeal to lunatics who care about nonsense like BER ratings were struggling to touch that.

The 70s to 90s builds were firmly in the mid 200s.

So what? It doesn't matter a jot what people think or want. As someone above said, the market, with all that that entails, determines the price at which the market will clear. Lots of money chasing a limited supply? The price goes up. The reverse? The prices goes down.

The price in 2012 or 2008 is meaningless. If a house that today sells for 500K was 120K in 2012 then that was the market price at that time. Simple as that.

The idea that houses would be more affordable if the price fell by 30-40% is pure nonsense. All that would mean is that the demand has shrunk. Why? Probably because there is significantly less money/credit available to purchase the house.

Manipulating asset prices for the benefit of the population is a pipe dream.