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

The flip side of that is you cannot improve public transport beyond a certain point unless you de-prioritise cars. Too many cars and congestion negatively impacts on bus times, unless you build bus lanes the whole way which people also are up in arms about because they also claim it's all stick no carrot.

Yep. Councils being pragmatic is irrelevant.

If the national planning guidelines are to reduce parking spaces in new apartments, then local councils shouldnt be able to reject the schemes for lack of parking spaces, especially in areas with good (by irish standards) PT.

If you cant build apartments with a low ratio of parking spaces in the capital city and next to a QBC, where can you build them?

I agree that car use is only going upwards, that isnt going to change, but the govt need to either scrap the minimal car parking policy on new builds or scrap the ability of councils to object to same.

The roads will never be fully prioritised for buses. We need to accept that.

As long as the population continues to grow and there is no proper PT network across the city that does not rely on buses, car drivership will continue to increase.

It's a multi-line metro or bust for Dublin.

Despite all the grants and subsidies, it would appear that less than 5k new homes were sold to private buyers last year

“Today, out of 30,000 units, if we take out the ‘one-off’ houses, if we take out social and affordable housing, take out cost rental and all of these things, there are less than 10,000 houses being built in the country.

“And, as we are all aware today, the amount of new Irish buying houses now, price rental, is keeping us all in a job, so that the actual real numbers of Irish citizens buying houses at the moment is less than 5,000 houses in the whole country. It’s very frustrating for young buyers

"New Irish" is a weasel word (well, two words really). I would not move to France and begin calling myself "new French".

I've long believed that buying property within the state of Ireland should be the purview of Irish citizens. Indeed, China (the source of many property investors here) have strict restrictions on foreign purchase of property within their state. They also do not recognise dual-citizenship. Ireland, on the other hand, is a globalist investment fund with a flag and crappy football team.

I didn't say to ban foreigners from owning property. I said that I would like to see it restricted to Irish citizens. Someone can be a citizen of the Irish State without being ethnically Irish. In the absence of dual citizenship, this would mean that someone would be invested in this country and assimilated. But I digress…

Well if there were restrictions on who could buy property, it would reduce the buying pool. Ergo, demand would fall. In that sense, it would aid affordability by taking many potential buyers out of the market.

Anyways, none of this will happen one way or the other…

Its pretty easy to dramatically reduce the number of foreign buyers without banning it. Lots of states have punitive rates of stamp duty for non-residents, which does the job nicely. It reduces foreign buyers, lowers demand / prices overall somewhat, and generates some revenue for the state on top while we're at it. We should really do similar.

ie these are the rates for Singapore:

Commercial premises aren't counted in the 160k vacant property figure.

Even generously allowing for your three issues (probate, sales and nursing homes) thats still approx 100k vacant properties remaining.

48k of which are vacant for 6 or more years which is completely ridiculous - both for the housing crisis, but also for the owners own finances. And for the structural health of the properties themselves, if they're actually fully vacant.

Those are huge figures given we only built 30k homes in 2024. If we could pull 10k a year vacant properties back into use (which would seem very doable given the above) we'd effective increase home completions by 33% a year. But even 5k, or 3k, would have a measureable impact. And theres no way 3k a year isn't achievable.

That would make a huge difference to the housing crisis - at absolutely no cost to Irish tax payers. It would actually raise revenue too, if done via a significant vacant property tax. And it could be brought in almost overnight, its not something that requires years like most other supply side measures (apprenticeships, planning reform etc).

And only 122k people in Ireland even own two properties or more, nevermind the even smaller number who own vacant properties. So theres essentially no political cost.

Its a really easy win, as far as measures to help the housing crisis go - near instant, revenue raising rather than costly to tax payers, politically popular, and will have a noticeable impact.

any thoughts on this article from the independent….it might be good advice for investors but by the sounds of it renters and the tax payer are going to get creamed.

Buyers could cash in if they snap up properties near new National Children’s Hospital, agents urge..

https://archive.ph/xmdTp

As if rents and prices needed help to go up!

Yes, we haven't hurt sick children enough, we need do double down and go after there parents and carers, because that is what taxpayers money is collected for, battering our children and those who care for them

More please