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

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.

A combination of those things is required imo. A more focused approach to immigration away towards what is needed by Ireland as a country rather than merely the needs of employers. Employers' requirements should be considered but should not be the sole basis of immigration.

Accross Europe 4LTI is common, it 5LTI by some banks in the UK

The silence on immigration is indeed strange. It's obvious that the housing crisis is a direct result of immigration, but this only began to be discussed openly in recent years, when it became too large to ignore. The question of why this happened is one to consider alright.

I think it's a combination of social pressure, apathy and greed. Humans are a very consensus-driven species, so when something is considered outside the realm of discussion, few will talk about it for fear of social consequences. This is not unfounded, for labeled as a "racist" in this day and age can have severe repercussions.

Regarding apathy, if someone is comfortable in the life, they probably won't look far beyond it. If one has a mortgage-free house in a nice part of the country and plenty of money, life is quite good here, and there are PLENTY of distractions. This allows a person to indulge in what I would call "luxury beliefs", and given that being against immigration is seen as being low-class, these people are very unlikely to ask too many questions.

Lastly, we have greed. How many people are making a fortune off the immigration crisis? I have an uncle who is letting a house too god knows how many foreigners, and that's just the lower end of the scale. How many business owners are using cheap immigrant labour? How many landlords are renting property to the state to house "refugees"?

Unfortunately, a problem cannot be ignored in order to make it go away. Until recently, the enormous costs of mass immigration were paid mostly by lower-class people, which is why they were the first to complain. However, it's now spreading. My mom's family are very much upper middle class (Dublin 4), but my cousins are nearly all unable to buy a home anywhere near their parents. I myself had to move to Wexford to get a decent house, and I'm aware that being able to buy anything at all makes me a lucky one.

Anyways…bit of a rant, but it's coffee break, and what better way to pass it than to ponder the death of Western civilization.

Indeed. I can barely keep the orcs out of the garden….

More seriously that is not what I said. Please don't use strawmans.

Lots of people keep mentioning help to buy for second hand homes being introduced. I can't find anything about this. Has this been confirmed or are people making stuff up?

was mentioned in the elections….Just idea at this stage and hopefully will stay that way

Hopefully, but one way or the other, they'll be firing up the funny-money press and flooding it into the market. This is inflationary in nature, and the people making the decisions know that.

is that an increase in no of registered properties with RTB……if so it might just be a case of landlords being put under pressure to register so tax credit can be claimed by renter and not be an actual increase….very hard to know

Building report from Davy.

most of ireland would be affordable (except Dublin) to couples.

Non-Dublin Irish property is extremely cheap by international standards.