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

Commercial and hotels have seen huge investment in last 6 years, commercial is dying a death now though with big oversupply. This is where most of trades are coming from.

Sparks are diversifying into solar panels as commercial work has dried up, but most will happily work on residential when it arises as the pipeline of solar installs isn't continuous

What exact percentage of funding did the religious orders provide for our schools and hospitals? "Sigificant funds" is a very dubious claim.

The state was massively poorer in the 1920s→1980s compared to now, I don't think thats really up for debate. There was no yearly surplus of billions of euros like we have now. We ran budget deficits, and had massive unemployment and emmigration for the vast majority of the first 70 years of independence. We were the poorest country per capita in Western Europe for large parts of that. We were an economic basket case. Yet still built thousands of social housing units regularly.

The idea that the state now cannot afford to build social housing, because religious orders are paying less towards our schools and hospitals, is just nowhere near factual. Especially given the fact we currently have a yearly surplus of money, a lack of money is empirically not the problem here.

"The state cannot no longer directly manage building projects." - there is no inherent genetic problem with Irish people in the year 2024 that means our country can't manage building projects. We did it in the past, when corruption and inefficiency ran rife, so theres absoutely no logical reason why we can't do so now. The reason we don't is ideological - because FG have done their best to gut state spending on construction over the last 13 years.

Just because our current government has proven utterly inable to directly manage building projects does not mean every Irish government ever will be.

I'll also ask you the same question I asked Dav010, which rather tellingly seems to have prompted him to disappear. If you don't believe the state should be building large numbers of social housing then what exactly is your proposed alternative solution? Do you think the state should continue the FG policy of the last decade, and continue/increase its spending on HAP and leasing social housing instead, from the billions of euros its already spending? Do you think thats working well currently, and providing value for money to the Irish tax payer?

Funny how you didn't respond to the post for days, despite being online and posting in-between, but respond to being called out on your ducking the question within 9 minutes though eh?

How does doing any of that take the circa 65,000 households currently on HAP, at a cost of over €1bn per year to tax payers, off of HAP? Or let the state stop spending billions of euros leasing thousands of private sector housing units for social housing in addition?

We have tens of thousands of households unable to afford to rent in the private sector market, and unable to rent in it even if prices crashed by 50%. Which "offer incentives to the experts in large scale building, private developers, make finance easier to access, and overhaul the planning system" is highly unlikely to achieve I'm sure you'll readily admit.

What exactly do you propose is done with these people if not building of social housing?

Your posts dont make any sense tbh. They are not based in reality at all. Ive stopped reading them myself, never mind responding to them. And now you have gone even further off the reservation and seem to be stalking people who are posting elsewhere but not responding to your precious posts.

Brilliant!!

Sent from my iPhone

My posts have a rather simple argument - the state needs to give up the largely non-interventionist supply side policies pursued in the housing market of the last 13 years, and instead return to building large scale social housing as it did for most of our history. It should be a simple enough concept to grasp.

You're the one posting that its absolutely not possible to do this, but failing to give any logical justification as to why given we've achieved it many times in the past, or any alternative solution to explain what we should do instead.

Your citing factors like a lack of construction workers when the CSO statistics on that have been posted multiple times in this thread, and they disprove you completely, would heavily suggest you're arguing out of blind ideology rather than factual knowledge.

Ramping up private sector development won't remove the 65,000 households currently on HAP, costing tax payers billions, and removing large numbers of houses from the private sector market, from reality. Thats the real world issue that you're apparently unable to provide a solution for.

My posts are purely evidential based on 1) what our state achieved for many decades (large scale building of social housing) and 2) the very obvious failure of the current housing market, something heavily influenced by the last 13 years of the state not building social housing. They're both very much based in reality.

I've yet to see a single poster who disagrees with the idea of the building of large scale social housing so vehemently provide an actual, real world alternative. Because what we're doing currently as a country very obviously isn't working.

I simply suggested that I find it interesting that someone whos highly active on boards.ie, who online enough to post literally thousands of times a year, suddenly disappears without trace when asked a factual question. But reappears within 9 minutes when called out on his disappearance (to still not answer the question). Its a rather interesting debate style, no?

What a load.

Most streets in the state are council built. Look near the centre of any town, city or village and there is council housing from 60/70s, many of these areas are very desirable and still have a significant proportion of council tenants.

The idea that all council only schemes are like ballymun is a lot of emotive nonsense not backed up by any statistics

He said he was “sceptical” that these figures would translate to more than 50,000 housing completions, however, with the firm pointing out that there was “little downside” for builders to issue commencement notices, but it was uncertain what proportion would actually be finished.

Under the terms of the waiver and rebate, the housing units must be completed by the end of 2026, so Goodbody said the lag between commencements and completions may be elongated.

O’Leary said the spike in commencements was likely not a “true reflection” of activity in the sector, however.

“To sustainably get to above 50K units per annum requires further improvements in funding, industry scale and land availability,” he said.

Seems like developers are prioritising commencements only - all resources into commencements for now to build a pipeline of levy free work up until 2026. But the total capacity remains the same. Now there will be lower than average completions for a while

https://www.businesspost.ie/news/housing-starts-surge-to-new-post-crash-record-as-developers-respond-to-waiver-extension/

There is massive diversity of outcomes in council estates across the country. Those that got little to no maintenance or facilities (and in recent times the cohort of people who's only profession is having children and claiming benefits - although these are in the minority), these estates saw worst results. Many streets and estates are fine, safe and majority council owned. You'd barely know other than the distinctive build styles.

The idea that any council housing turns into ballymun is a fallacy. Its the same hysteria that makes people think any high rise will turn into ballymun flats also.

So the states housing needs was projected based on low migration scenario, even though we have been tracking high migration for the past decade almost, with no signs of it slowing down. So expect official housing need estimates to be ramped up very soon.

minister O'Brien no doubt hoping to see an election before the housing commission targets are published, because it will not doubt show a massive failing so far. https://www.businesspost.ie/news/ireland-likely-to-need-between-56000-and-74000-new-homes-annually-up-to-2050/