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

Then are you saying its the people rather than the area? If so how do you plan to deal with the people issue?

Whilst conceptually these things make sense and many would agree (myself included), how do they actually work in practice?

Leave them homeless, put them into a hotel at an even higher cost, send them to a compound on the Blasket Islands?

Just doesn’t seem possible in a civilised & fairly left leaning society.

They can declare homeless and seek emergency accommodation. And many people already in emergency accommodation would gladly take a social house and pay for the privilege. After having a stint in emergency accommodation I'd say very few would refuse to pay their social rent if they were eventually rehoused by the council.

Yes it's a pain to have to do logistically evicting and turning over stock etc, but it needs to be done else there is literally no reason to pay rent to the council. You need the threat of some repurcussions or the whole system falls down.

I think this is sensible, but it would take all of 5 minutes for the first case of:

‘troubled single mother of 4 young kids sleeping rough after local authority forcibly remove her from her home after she falls on hard times and can’t meet payments.’

Then you’d have Mary Lou waving her picture around in the Dail.

Nice idea. Never happening.

https://www.irishexaminer.com/news/arid-40888892.html

"More than €1.22bn was spent on rent subsidies for those in the private rental market" — bear in mind this is from 2021, the figure is higher now.

I also note that rather long post above this also failed to answer my direct question so I'll repeat it:

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

Talking about your local national school, or about the numbers of children completing their leaving cert, is some serious deflection.

Many council estates are now owned by former tenants if you own your house you tend to be older and have no wish to cause trouble or reduce the value of the property .there has to be more building of social housing and apartments and housing aimed at the first time buyer

Most tenants chose to buy their house of the council if they were working and could afford to do so

One of our failed council house estates of the past, no doubt

First time I recall seeing it spelled out this clearly in print that the Irish system is designed around house prices ever increasing. Will be interesting if this narrative gains momentum among the public - would definitely hurt Govt narrative that more private house building through (demand driven) incentives will somehow cause prices to drop.

https://www.thejournal.ie/ireland-is-not-a-country-where-house-prices-are-meant-to-fall-6383690-May2024/

I dont think its the SF policies are issue. I dont think theyre that radically different. I think SF have been absolutely on the button with govt subsidies driving up demand more than supply. I think there is more a macro fear that SF in govt would spook investors and capital for projects. I think SF policies have come back much more towards centre. Dont see lot of difference in them vs FF tbh. So I think SF in govt wont see any major changes to housing policy. Supply will remain strong. Prob bigger focus on govt owned public housing than private ownership but again no drastic changes

Ireland desperately needs house building acceleration to continue.

All the companies who build these houses in unison -

‘We will build less houses under these policies’

’Sounds like some good policies of substance. We should try those’

In fairness they are never going to be positive about policies that hurt their profit margins. It is in their interest not to see a change in policy because their interest is maximising profit for shareholders, not affordable housing.

Also in this morning's article the main issue with sinn Fein policy is that any change of policy "will take time to adjust to".

“What we don't need here is radical intervention by the new government or a complete overhaul of existing policies because it will take time to adjust to what those new policies are,” he said.

And

If there’s a change in government, whoever that ends up being, and they reinvent the wheel and we have to go through that whole process all over again, that is going to create uncertainty in the sector, which slows us down,” Gallagher said

This is mostly playing the poor mouth and not wanting any change from current situation where government is subsidising apartment builds massively AND subsiding buyers massively. Turkeys won't vote for Christmas, so these articles aren't a surprise.

see housing output when house prices declined

Housing output declined because of a complete financial meltdown seeing many developers and builders going bust as they themselves were significantly overleveraged too.

How about the fact that with lower retail price for new homes in the 2000s, we still built even more than we are today?

There’s a significant cohort of people who’d love to see Cairn, Durkans etc. posting record losses but still racing to increasing their production and competing to sell at the lowest possible price

This is a strawman argument. These people do not exist in significant numbers. Do you have any evidence of the existence of this significant cohort?

At its core, housing stopped being built in any material numbers for about a decade because the price you could sell a house for was not sufficient to cover the input costs and compensate for the risk of doing so.

If there is enough profit to be made from an economic activity. Someone will find a way to do it.

The input costs of delivering new housing in 2024 vs 2000 are not comparable. Neither is the skill set of our population, where young people have been scared off pursuing building trades for the last 15 years because the sector was not stable or profitable.

You can’t seriously argue that there isn’t an overwhelming negative sentiment towards developers and housing financiers in Ireland.