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

The figures have gotten even worse since I made my last post, so - then it was 68% at home up to the age of 29. Up to 34 is even worse, two thirds of adults in Ireland living in their parents homes in their 30s... Thats an utter failure of the state. Both for the 500k+ adults living at home, and for their close to 1million parents. Together approximately 40% of our adult population in the country.

And, just to point it out on a new page, the comparable number for the EU as a whole up to age 29 is 42% - and that includes lots of countries that are much poorer than Ireland, and countries with much higher youth employment rates. And that percentage would be even lower if it stretched to 34 years old. We're an extreme outlier.

The comparable number for our closest peer in most national characteristics (wealth, size, economy, education levels, population spread etc), Denmark, is only 4.4% of adults living with their parents. And again thats for adults living at home only up to age 29. It would be lower to 34.

Perhaps other countries don't give people free 4-bed council homes and let them stay in them for life even when the kids are all grown up. There are probably plenty of 60 or 70 year olds close to you in 4 bed council houses. Perhaps downsizing of private accommodation is also more common in other countries for older people when they don't need their bigger houses any more. A state would have tools like property tax available to it too. That is not really utilised in Ireland as a policy tool.

And perhaps other countries don't run schemes were elderly people can go into nursing homes heavily subsidised, while leaving their own houses unoccupied and vacant.

And perhaps other markets are not dysfunctional to the stage where a person can get a relatively low interest loan, outbid others to buy a derelict house, and rather than renovate it, can just sit on it and let it deteriorate and be fairly confident that they will get a sizeable return.

"Overcrowded" should not be something the state is striving for. So I'm not sure of the relevance to anything.

Census 2016 indicated if I remember right, that only about 30% of apartments are owner occupied. Read an old newspaper report from the late 90s about the various Bacon reports which mentioned that 90% of apartment sales at that time were to investors - they got considerable tax breaks for certain areas at that time.

I've noticed that apartments, esp 1 beds, in my area do take longer to sell (& are sometimes even taken off the market) than houses so I think it is fair to infer from that there is considerably less demand from owner occupiers for apartments. But its also true that most lenders won't lend to an apartment buyer unless they have a 20% deposit, which might make buying a 2 bed easier to save for than a 1 bed.

Census does have good info on this overall but if you go back even to 2016 or so when there was very low levels of institutional investment in the market here, I think its fair to assume that there is low demand from owner occupiers for apartments - unfortunately they are a highly stigmatised form of living because of the association with private rentals.

I would imagine most newly built 3 and 4 bed semis would only have 2 adults living there, and 1 or 2 children. Not overcrowded by any measure.

Makes sense that most of the country was able to get by working from home during lockdown

Actually that's partially because part V disproportionately takes apartments more than homes in mixed house/apartment developments because 2/3 of social housing waiting lists are single person households. They desperately need 1 bed apartments in particular so often these are almost entirely sucked up by part V allocation. In my area the council is even buying up 1 beds second hand on the private market to try to plug the gap. You might say "why don't they build 1 bed apartments themselves?" - if they even tried, there would be pitchforks outside the council at dawn, such is the hostility to apartment building.

and they will vote accordingly

So.. Tell me, how did you end up living in a skip?

A quote that could capture the 2020's when reeling in the years gets to cover the decade

Tempted to post the Monty Python four yorkshiremen sketch

Is it an absolute fact that no social tenant ever gets evicted for rent arrears in a local authority property no matter how long they refuse to pay? If so, no wonder there's no incentive to pay such rent....