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

Who is worse, the incompetents running the country or the people who vote them back in?

Heh I'll be back here in 2026 to hold you to that ;)

2026 completions will bring it back on track, government are doing a great job. Record numbers of commencements don't you forget (nothing to do with developers rushing to front load developments solely to get fees waived)

Please enlighten us as to who is a better option.

If a private sector organisation missed its committed to plans by 13% it would lose contracts and potentially face legal action. And senior management heads would roll.

This not withstanding that the 34k goal was already woefully low given every analysis is suggesting 50k p.a. is the minimum required.

The same standards should apply here.

Letting yearly housing completions decrease, while also letting yearly immigration numbers increase at the same time, is a horrendous combination that is well within government power to control.

Well let's wait and see.

"there were apparently a large number of objections because it would have contained a large amount of rental units. Or put it another way locals in the area were objecting to increasing the supply of rental accommodation despite about a decade of chronic supply issues in the rental market. That alone sums up the problem for whoever is in government, a substantial and vocal portion of people in Ireland actively oppose solutions to the housing crisis."

Presumably, the objectors would rather have seen the new properties available for sale and have owner occupiers contributing to their area, rather than nosebleed rents for the profiteering of whatever investment fund…

All good points.

Most people are not directly impacted by the housing crisis and indeed, their property prices are increasing.

I also believe the electorate dont see any credible opposition.

People pick the best horse in the race; not because it's the perfect horse, but because it is better than the opposition.

Drove out by Celbridge today and loads of new houses that were built maybe 2 to 3 years ago had roof tiles blown off.

Whereas the houses further down the road that were built in the 1970s or 80s were fine.

Why do new houses look and clearly are less sturdy? (It's not as if they are cheap to buy. Are companies deliberate using cheap materials?).

I get that wind was extreme yesterday but surely that should have more of an adverse effect on a house built 50 yrs ago vs 2 yrs ago?

There were many objections put in place for that development that it would ruin their skyline view of the Luas bridge which is a “cultural landmark” for the area, despite it only being built 20 odd years ago.

The NIMBY are the worst of the worst in my opinion.

Well maybe I'm being optimistic in my hope that newer builds are of a higher quality, but I think anything mass produced is going to suffer from problems. There is also the sad reality that we don't really build anything these days to last. I guess we'll see in 20 years.

Older houses, especially corpo ones of a certain vintage all used cement roof tiles instead of slates.

Cement tiles last forever if fitted well

Wait for a home insurance company to call itself

Its for xcorpos pre 80's.ie

A spin off of the car insurance it's for women. Ie

I think the issue here is many just don't understand HTB.

Your first sentence is accurate, unfortunately the rest of the post displays how accurate the first sentence is.

As of November 2024 the first time buyer average mortgage drawdown was €319,161, up 24,000 on the previous year. This shows that the vast majority of ftb are finding homes in the 2nd hand market where there is little/no government interference. The vast majority are locked out of new homes market.

Several research papers on recipients of ftb grants have found that for a large proportion

A. They did not need it to purchase

B. They purchased or built a bigger home than they would have without the grant

Separately self build homes comprise close to 20% of total housing output. Many of these qualify for FTB grant. Should the taxpayer be subsidising land owners with 30k when they already have the site and most likely would build without the grant

From this we can conclude the beneficiaries of HTB are

People who already can afford to buy, landowners building on there own land, those in the top 10% of income earners and all those professions that extract income from housing supply, bare in mind that almost 50% of the cost of housing are soft costs

I was going to include those that purchase in low demand areas but I suspect the Grant is purely inflationary here and may be a trap for the buyer

In terms of affordability and housing supply, the FTB grant is about as useful as an umbrella during last Friday's storm

What could replace HTB?

State act as guarantor of 10 to 15% of the home price where the applicant(s) display savings or rent paying history that display ability to repay mortgage

Reduce up front costs (deposit) to 2 to 3% of the price

This would deliver the same or better impact to the ftb without the overall inflationary impact of the grant

We experienced the worst property crash in the world and research from that period showed that ftb's were by far the least likely to default following an extended period of 110% mortgages.

Those that did, the majority recovered with time

Reducing the deposit requirement to 4-5% for FTBs that meet income requirements would be a very reasonable move I'd think.

At no real cost to the state too, and with very little inflationary impact. But it would make things noticeably easier for young buyers.