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

I don't think it'd make a huge difference either to be fair. But I also just don't see any downside to it - its all positives, if small. Theres no real reason not to do it.

A good point.

How much are you suggesting this introduction would cost? You are claiming it can be done virtually instantly and at no cost.

When I teased this out it turned out there is a lot of legislation that would need to be changed starting with a new definition of vacant and a completely new way to track such property that at best would be self reporting. If the tax was so punitive there would be many ways around it making it pretty useless.

Just because a tax would only directly affect certain people does not mean that the public would agree with the idea.

Then there is the biggest issue would be the councils would be most affected meaning less services for people in the community who would find it bizarre that the government would be give a punitive tax to councils without thinking about it. They wanted to bring in a tax on parking provided by employers but scrapped that as public servants would be affected the most.

You are absolutely dreaming if you think it would be cheap, instant and workable. It would take about a year just to rewrite the legislation before even being reviewed and proposed. How much would that cost to do? What do you think the normal rate is of vacant property?

You really don't sound like you know what you are talking about and just think because you think it can be done quickly and for free that makes it so. I have worked on legislation before around taxes and entitlements and it is not quick and very expensive.

If you're so certain, and experienced in the matter, that introducing such legislation would be prohibitively expensive do tell us an approximate costing to do so?

Because the cost of writing, and introducing, similar legislation is absolute peanuts as far as I'm aware when it comes to measures that we've introduced to impact the housing crisis. The state spent an estimated €8bn on measures related to solving the housing crisis only last year in total, lots of which had very marginal effects (if any) at significant cost.

Unless writing and introducing the leglisation would cost in the high hundreds of millions of euros (which is rather doubtful) per year its likely to have a very positive rate of return for its cost. The proven very large number of vacant properties in the state would give the measure the capability to boost yearly housing numbers considerably.

Councils wouldn't be negatively impacted in the slightest. How exactly do you think increased localised government revenue, and increased utilization of local housing, would negatively impact councils?

The recent myhome study would suggest 88% of people at least are in favour of measures to force vacant properties back to the market. So, that combined with the fact that only 122,000 people in the state own two homes or more (and and even smaller number own vacant properties), would mean all our current evidence would suggest a majority of the public very much would agree with the idea. Unless you have any actual data points to contradict this, instead of your own speculation.

You're the one claiming you've worked in the explicit area, and are an expert, so know what it costs.

But seeing as you've given your estimate of "a couple of million", thats absolutely nothing - the Irish government spent €8bn in the housing market last year. And huge amounts of that went on very ineffective measures.

The study showed a huge majority of those polled were in favour of measures being brought in to incentivize vacant properties back to market. A vacant property tax is the measure that will be used for this.

County councils don't own the majority of vacant properties in this country according to any statistic I've seen. But do provide an actual source for that claim so.

Thats also not remotely a problematic issue - simply exempt county councils from paying the vacant property tax. Or redirect vacant property taxes paid directly back to local councils.

Theres a reason vacant property taxes are now being pushed in the media as of late - and thats because the government is going to bring them in. Vacant property taxes are a measure that will impact only a tiny tiny number of voters in this country (only a subset of the 122,000 indivduals who own two or more properties), will raise tax revenue, will have a very quick impact as far as housing policy changes go, and will positively impact the housing crisis.

Presumably given your vitriol against the idea you're an owner of a vacant property. In which case you should probably get planning to remedy that - or else accept you'll be getting taxed quite significantly for continuing with that financial malpractice.

No, you made the claim it was quick and free. Now you want to change the goal posts. Changing it to being cheap in comparison to other spending is not free.

The government via the council certainly are the largest owners of vacant residential property in the country if you need proof of that go find it as I am not going to spoon feed you well established facts.

As for a punitive vacant property tax being an incentive you are fundamentally wrong because it is by design to force people to do as you want. You cannot fine the council and then return the money to them due to our legal system. You could make them exempt but that is not going to fly and get through the legislation and pretty much defeats the purpose.

There really isn't that much talk about vacant property tax in the media. Derelict sites are talked about a fair bit. How do you know what the government are about to bring in?

The reason I talk about this absurd idea is because it is absurd. You and others want to change a ton of legislation just to get to the point where you can charge people a ton of money to force them to sell their property like a dictatorship. Ideas like increasing property tax on people that have holiday homes that become RPZ. The new definition of vacant that you can't agree on. What exactly is your definition of vacant you want to push as I have heard others silly idea?

If you think the government telling somebody what to do with property they own is the same as somebody that owes money to a private bank not paying it back you have a twisted sense of reality.

You don't even realise the number of vacant properties is less than it normally is and vastly less than before as a percentage. They don't even have accurate figures with no way to get that data at present