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

Hmm. I think we need to import more foreign builders…

I think it's less that they don't see it and more that they don't WANT to see it.

Maybe if more focus went to citizens (especially those born here) and less to finding new residents, some progress could be made.

It says it right there in the chart, dwellings completed up to Q3 24

The chart says completions up to Q3 2024

It is not a 12 month rolling count, it is a 9 month count. Jan 24 to end Sept 24. The figures are correct, I have checked the 3 quarterly CSO results at your link and they are only out by 30 from the graph, that I would consider broadly accurate.

Next time why don't you take your time reading content instead of trying to get snarky with other posters.

Yes I misread the intent of the chart. Mainly because a chart referencing UP TO Q3 is a meaningless chart crime.

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Its quite clearly sourced on the image - from the CSO, and even the exact CSO documents are named. NDQ01 and PEA15 I.

Trying to complain about the chart missing the last 3 months of 2024 completions is also rather missing the wood for the trees. Unless we somehow built a few hundred thousand housing units in that time to house all the new arrivals over the last decade anyway. But I would presume that would have made the news.

Yet again - new home building is actually in reverse. Haven't even hit 40k per year and already we're going backwards.

Things are going to get a whole lot worse

https://www.businesspost.ie/news/analysis-simon-harris-promised-40000-new-homes-this-year-that-pledge-is-slowly-unravelling/

As we have entered the final month of the year it is interesting to recap on the house price predictions made at the start of the year

At the end of 2022, the consensus was weighted towards a stagnation or a fall in prices. The thread started at the end of last year was quite the opposite. I would imagine that it will be even more weighted towards prices rises for the coming year.

I'd predict another 10% rise by the end of 2025. If I were looking to buy a home, I would not wait.

There is also the prospect of the HTB schemes being extended to second-hand properties. As always, the situation will be too many people, too few houses and way, way, WAAAAAY too much cash.

If anyone thinks that prices are going to fall, they will need a very good theory to back it up.

would make zero difference besides pushing prices higher. The issue is that even if we built 60k houses a year I don’t believe it will resolve the housing problem because the only thing capping immigration at the moment is the difficulty in finding accommodation… increase in housing will more than likely lead to increased immigration swallowing up the increase in supply of housing. And this is where the problem exists imo. We need immigration to fill jobs and keep Country running but the increase in population increases rents and house prices and makes housing crisis worse.

Easy answer would be to stop immigration till we have enough houses but that just moves the problem elsewhere (hospitals, transport etc unable to fill critical roles….. large multinational unable to fill key roles and start looking to relocate etc.). The million dollar question is how do you overcome this?

Obvious answer is build enough houses but that requires the need for more immigration (builders etc) who need somewhere to live. So you either put incentives in place to attract builders (free accommodation, specific tax credits etc) and fast track building or you prioritise critical roles (builders, doctors, nurses etc.) and restrict immigration where possible.

Tongue in cheek - relaxing LTI rules is a terrible idea. When the central bank did it a few years back from 3.5 to 4.5x income all it did was make prices jump, no benefit to supply.

Throwing more money at the demand side of the equation will never fix anything

All immigration is not the same, the idea that the state has to be either letting everyone in or nobody in has been an attack line used by those on the left for years. "If you want to reduce immigration then where will we get our nurses?!?" etc. Not saying that you're saying this mind you - but the media does, repeatedly. When in reality it would be totally possible to restrict some immigration, while letting other immigration continue (or even increase). And thats what most people want to do.

ie increase the numbers of doctors/nurses/qualified construction workers/people filling expert and high tax paying 80k+ p.a. jobs given work permits. But reduce the work permits issued to anyone else significantly. And reduce the number of asylum seekers accepted significantly.

Thats a policy thats easily/practically achievable pretty much over night, would be wildly popular with 90% of the electorate, and would make an immediate impact on the housing market. It would be possible to reduce yearly arrivals by 40-50k. Thats a huge number of people no longer requiring housing.

Maybe if II or the rural INDs are part of our next government we might get some policy moving in this direction, I guess.

I agree with most of what you are saying but the question is what restrictions do you impose and what will be the knock on impacts….e.g.

you could reduce foreign students overnight but then funding needs to be increased to universities.

You could reduce immigration to high skilled paid roles but if that creates shortages of staff then companies will look to different jurisdictions to do the work or we end up with shortages in things like car mechanics, trades people etc. where do you draw the line and how often is updated.

I fully agree it’s not an all or nothing which is the default argument as you say. But I don’t believe housing can be fixed without taking this dynamic into consideration…say for example we double housing output but at the same time immigration doubles then we are no better off than we are today.

What amazes me is that it’s not discussed as much as hap or htb, as even all the housing forecasts have it as a key driver of future housing needs and as a nation we can surely discuss it without defaulting to an extreme left or an extreme right view.