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

You never know

House prices rose by 8% last year, even faster than 2023. '25 could be even boomer! Tallaght will be full of million pound houses before long

https://www.thejournal.ie/house-prices-up-8-percent-last-year-central-statistics-office-6627181-Feb2025/

Pascal is one of the few competent, capable, adults among our high level politicians. Hes got a good track record of being seemingly the only person in the room concerned with getting value for taxpayer euros - in housing policy here, but also elsewhere. Going against FF but also even against his own party.

Hopefully hes not out-manouevered on it.

Arguing against Pascal's measures by saying they weren't value for money for the tax payer, while also saying "we might as well waste money" two paragraphs later seems rather contradictory.

The evidence would suggest that without him having been in place we would have seen far more demand side wastes of taxpayer money being implemented. He has had a good track record of reigning in the worst splurging efforts.

Darragh O'Brien, and FF, had control of the Department of Housing for almost five full years from 2020 to 2025 and haven't increased completions appropriately. Their 'track record' of success at building housing is now 20 years ago in the distant past, their current performance certainly doesn't reflect success.

The argument for years against developing large scale social housing has been "the private sector will build the houses more cheaply, large scale public works are a waste of tax payers money with inefficiency". So seeing multiple posters now saying "just throw as much money at the problem as possible, who cares what it costs" would surely point towards us needing a massive public works building programme.

If the private sector isn't delivering (as is the case), let the state step up and do it. That way the state can stop leasing and buying private sector housing (600k apartments in Limerick!) at hugely inflated prices, bidding against tax payers with their own tax euros. And stop with all the ineffective, but still expensive, demand side measures.

What would be the solution if it is not to build more homes?

Have thr govt shared the numbers in terms of predicted annual spend, if they were to introduce the tax breaks and incentivise building?

It would be good to see how much we are spending today and the likely output; private and social, vs a spend estimate with tax breals to get us to 60k homes pa; private and social.

Vacant units more likely

Indeed, they should be taxed into oblivion, same for commercial property sitting idle for years.

How long should people get before the 10% kicks in? You buy a derelict building and have to get plans and survey then a builder etc… . Does it stop while you are waiting on planning permission? Appeal of planning?

What defines vacant? I only go to the house for a week over the year but I store my collection of glasses there so it isn't vacant?

I am just curious how effective it really can be and what way it could be decided. People couldn't travel during covid so may have left a property vacant.

They also make more money with Airbnb vs renting property out, particularly in Dublin.

If the govt are going to take up hotels with asylum seekers, we need to have a place for Airbnb; especially in rural towns who might rely on 2 or 3 hotels for tourism/business stays.

I mean they're all very easily solved issues with even a minimum of effort.

Give people 2 years of vacancy before the tax rate kicks in if you want to be generous, to allow for probate or the purchase and renovation of a derelict home or similar.

A home with no registered resident is vacant. And a human can only be registered resident in one home. You'd drag some unregistered rental tenancies into the tax system this way too, as a nice bonus.

According to the Census of 2022, there were 163,433 (excluding holiday homes) vacant properties on Census night 2022. Thats an absolutely unacceptable number during a time of the worst housing crisis in the history of the state. Over half a decade's worth of housing construction, just sitting there.

And thats not even taking into account the vacant sites that are all around the country in prime locations.

Empty habitable housing and rampant dereliction. Huge amounts of land. won't build high rise... won't introduce meaningful property taxes... if only there were easyvways to solve the " crisis " ... lol !

Its messy… Should second home tax be substantial, if the government simply refuses to do its job, of providing housing? Rhetorical question…