New Irish Housing Starts - Way Below Target *Read OP for Mod Warning*

You say you don't trust them to improve it and that they're all liars. By giving them your vote you've approved them as a government. If you wanted change you don't vote for the same parties.

We've discussed this previously, it was known since the middle of last year that completions weren't going to be achieved regardless of what they said. It was easy to see what the end of year projections were going to be.

It's hard to say until we get accurate q1 completions and commencement figures but I'd say that 33k isn't a bad estimate.

It's what you voted for, so you can't really complain too much. If you wanted a change you should have voted for change.

Then why get involved in the voting process if you hate them all? What you did was give the previous government your approval. As I said if you want change, you vote for change, you voted for the status quo.

do they no longer have to hold higher levels of capital in reserve? I thought that was why Ulsterbank left the Irish market.

Mainly, because I want to see them commit to and start, the major infrastructure projects, that the country so badly needs. After that, once they are started, of course I am happy to vote them out. I also thought, ok, the opposition are also appalling, one last shot… Lets see where the stats go… My question was answered, barely after the election. A total disgrace. Like an irish times article I read last week that i agree with. Many people may have given them the benefit of the doubt, one last time. Immediately we find out, completions are and will be horrendous. Affordability is getting far worse. Run that election again now, after that farce, the farce with Lowry and the independents etc and FFG would be in a worse place, that is for sure… Any way, lets see what happens next election, we now know, without a shadow of a doubt, that the housing crisis is going to get far worse. That alone, without even going into the gangsters propping them up and god knows what scandal. Ill be shocked if they last the full term… Come the next election, be it in five weeks or five years, people who were on the fence, are out of patience…

But we had already known for the last couple of years as the housing crisis was deteriorating.
As I keep having to say it was evident after the end of Q2 last year the level of completions wouldn’t be what was promised. It was in the public domain for anyone to see.
Announcing figures for the year end which we knew we’d be hitting and now suddenly you want the Government out that you helped to re-elect? If you didn’t see it or worse ignored it and voted them back in only to want another GE immediately, tonight it’s not happening because you and many others like you gave this consistently failing government a mandate for another 5 years.

You’re coming across as a spoiled child. You voted for them but now you’ve changed your mind a few months later. Maybe next election, put a bit more thought into your vote.

The problem is that simply building more houses will merely result in stimulating population growth. There have been many articles where employers have said that lack of affordable housing is slowing down their ability to recruit from abroad. Enterprise Ireland have said this too. Therefore just building more houses will not result in greater affordability or availability.

That is not saying we don't need to build more houses but rather it must be balanced with a reduction in population growth if things are to improve for the average buyer.

the answer unfortunately is not straightforward. Disfunctional planning; labour shortages (youngsters these days often don’t want hard physical work and tough working conditions attached to construction); building methods have not sufficiently evolved to help meet demand; relatively small size of construction firms here; building standards have gone rapidly from ‘shoebox’ to top of the class (this costs money, time, and more construction inputs); financing for development has become harder to get (remember lessons from the crash). Throw in high input costs; meddling from the state; uncertainty from the political system; massive expectations in terms of fit out and finish vs EU norms…..

Take your pick … these issues are well documented. What we do have a system that seems incapable of addressing these issues despite public money literally being thrown at the problem. IMHO talk of social housing in the 1930s ignores the fact that many of these issues were not on the radar back then, in fact progress has in some ways has negatively exacerbated the environment in which home construction operates … This is not unique to Ireland, most advanced economies suffer similar problems to varying degrees.

They more than make up for that by offering very low interest on deposits. The capital reserve requirements were only a problem when ECB rates were 0.

Now it inadvertently works in their favour - they are full of cash and making record profit

People voted not to change because the opposition parties weren't offering any of those policies so people defaulted to the centre.

No point calling for an election if the choices on offer are exactly the same. The US is finding out what happens when you vote change for changes sake.

There simply is too much demand for housing mainly due to one elephant in the room reason, but there is a way to get out of this mess. And that's build more units, but that must go hand in hand with infrastructure but then, the government are failing majorly on this too.

People say they voted for FFG because they promised to build more houses, but why would you trust them when they've created the mess in the first place.

I have absolutely no faith in them fixing the housing crisis in the lifetime of the government, if anything it will be worse and society will be worse off for it. Gridlock and lack of services seems to be accepted in Ireland.

There is a large cohort that is happy with their lot in life. You tend to find they will be those in their 40s upwards, who managed to buy a house at a relatively affordable price and are now sitting on a pretty nest egg.

A lot of people now in their 40s would have bought in the boom at a hyper inflated price the majority of which if not all was financed by borrowing. A lot of this financing had to be renegotiated, either through just interest payments or other means with the net effect being a longer term more expensive loan.

What the stats tell us these days is first time buyers are more cash rich exceeding the requited deposit by in some cases by multiples therefore reducing the amount required to borrow and time it takes to pay back.

The cohort you seem to be refencing are those who were in a position to purchase when prices contracted after the boom, who picked up relative bargains and aggressively attacked their mortgage. That was timing and luck in most instances.

But if you want to characterise owning a house as "a pretty nest egg", that applies to every home really because apart from 1 or 2 blips in the past 50 years, house prices really only go one way.

So in reality house prices will never come down unless there is a highly traumatic event in the market. So when people bleat on about bringing the cost of houses down, what can only really be achieved is to slow the rate of growth.

To me, the logical solution is an investment in public transport beyond bus lanes.
Commuting into Dublin shouldn’t be by car, there should be a fast rail option and decent metro/subway solution that makes getting into a car the non obvious option.

What evidence have you the government would be able to build and delivers 10s of 1000s of housing units that would be cost effective and timely?

In reality what would that even look like? The start up and staffing costs alone would be multiples of billions before one sod was turned.

If you want to go down that road you would be far better of heavily subsidising the equipment and technology for private builders to increase their output.

The private sector are not a consortium of evil people conspiring to keep housing prices artificially inflated to increase profits.

There is numerous factors to why output is dulled.

The main one is credit. Where a builder before the crash would get the credit facility to develop 120 houses, now they will only get enough to build 60.

So do you dilute the lending rules which are badly needed as we all found out, or do you heavily subsides that builder so they can increase output.

The most recent example of why we should not trust our governance to build a jigsaw, is the rapidly promised cheap modular homes that were proposed 3 years, which still have not been finished and have exploded in costs by double and treble.

The private sector can build homes if the conditions are there, remember it's not long ago we were bulldozing housing estates.

Even if they decided tomorrow to setup one of the largest construction organisations in Europe, State Builders Inc, it would take years if not decades to produce anything of the volume required.

That's before we even entertain the folly of where we are going to get the staff. You could have state sponsored training programs, but again would take years.

10s of billions which would effectively be social housing or at least heavily subsidised.

You would be looking at a hefty increase in taxes to pay for it all.