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

Mortgage broker wants more state aid to increase customers at business apparently 100k is not enough

Money printer go brrrrrrrr

That's fantastic, well done him. I was looking at doing an ICF extension because I don't want that hassle of laying blocks.

Of course he's happy. He's fueling inflation in house prices, which is precisely what he and his cohort have been doing for nearly a decade.

Whatever about ‘developers’. But I do think a lot of problems we have today in terms of a lack of labour is due to the lack of respect we as a society give to people in the construction industry.

People (not saying you!) talking down on builders, electricians, plumbers etc and accusing them of ‘gouging’.

They are much much more valuable to a functioning society than the fabled nurses we all love to put out as the gold standard for admirable jobs. All without much job security, pensions and in generally tough working environments.

I think if we as a society placed the same level of respect on all people who are linked to building (this includes financing, cause that matters too) of infrastructure, perhaps we might not be in such a mess.

They should absolutely be respected more, and pushed more by guidance councillors. But the even faster way to change things is financially.

The wage for a first year apprentice in 2024 is 286euro a week, for a second year 430euro a week. Significantly less than a generic minimum wage job that requires far less effort, nevermind any sort of even entry level clerical job.

Its no wonder its hard to get young people into the trades when they start off paying so poorly. They should be a decent margin above minimum wage (which is 508e p/w now) at the very least from year one.

Go to Bonkers.ie and put in your details. 5% seems very high. Most lenders are doing under 4% fixed rates for 4 or 5 years.

In my opinion, rates are going to come down in the next few months, but likely they will not reach the extremely low levels of the pre-lockdown era.

Who pays for these increased wages? This is the general problem we have in Ireland we end up pricing ourselves out of everything. Increase wages to help people survive so increase prices and the wage price spiral continues.

Then as prices and wages rise welfare rates have to rise and taxes are then needed to fund these rises and then wage demands increase and we go around in the same circle.

Especially seeing as most of the labour building in Dublin is imported from the regions, and NI, where cost of living is much lower.

A slight premium in labour, but not near 350k worth on a house.

If you look at this from a business perspective leave emotions out of the analysis. A developer runs the risk of holding land and does not develop it, so interest rates increase, or we have a downturn in the economy and money and confidence drops. So a developer has an asset that is not earning him any money at all.

Logic would suggest that a developer build and to do that he has to charge the price he has to charge to get a return. I know on a personal level trying to get a trades person is very difficult to even do simple job simply because we don't have enough of them. So if you want to build you have to pay to get the trades people and to get them they will charge what they can basic economics (if demand is greater than supply supernormal profits are earned).

These costs have to be recouped hence they are included in the cost of the property. The banks wont lend the way they did as they don't want to take a risk.

We all agree to bring down prices you need supply of everything, labour, materials etc however labour has to be paid, material prices have increased significantly and there is not a huge amount we can do about this as we import alot of them. Lack of building of social housing and our generous welfare system when it comes to housing (and other elements eg reduction in welfare payments for Ukranians as the Govt acknowledge our welfare system is attracting asylum seekers and refugees).

I agree with everything you have said, but it does not explain your comment that there is "not huge money to be made" when houses in Dublin are twice the cost of similar houses in rural areas.