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

 The Lyons approach on supply need I believe comes from a position that if all else is equal this is what we need - i.e. we can't force people to move out of underoccupied houses so this is what we need given that.

Not many people know that!

Yes, this is a better understanding than most have about what underpins Lyons figures and assumptions. He is saying what would need if we wanted to live an ideal world, or in his words a "functioning society", no young adults would have to live with their parents, nobody would have to houseshare if they didn't want to, etc etc.

But the "ideal world" context is hidden in the small print and LYons makes no attempt to explain it. His figures and assumptions are interpreted not as the ideal but as what we need as a basic minimum, and we'll be forever f*cked if we don't get, and the situation is getting worse every day, and that's why have scaremongering headlines about deficits of 250k and Ireland having the most dramatic rise in young adults living in the box room etc.

The box room narrative is a good example. Lyons relies on the EU-SILC data for these claims, but fails to highlight this data for Ireland does not only include adults living with their parents it also includes, adults who receive some financial from their parents - eg help with rent, mortgage, college, travel, medical or whatever. It is also skewed by data from COVID lockdowns.

It's not surprising that Ireland has had the most dramatic jump in that context. The idea that Lyons is not aware of this in the data is nuts, but he never mentions it.

The CSO gamely tried to highlight it, but I don't think they got much traction. The papers still push it.

The CSO notes media reports of approximately two in three people aged between 18 and 34 living at home with their parents. This figure is taken from the Eurostat database and is derived from a longitudinal survey (Survey on Income and Living Conditions – SILC). This figure differs from data from Census 2022 which estimates that the proportion of young adults aged 18 to 34 years living with their parents to be 41%.

There are a number of reasons for the differences in these estimates, including:

The SILC survey categorises some younger adults - such as third-level students who are financially supported by their parents - as living with their parents even though they may have moved out of the family home while the Census categorises them as living at their term address.

As SILC is a longitudinal survey, a proportion of the 2022 sample were interviewed in 2020 and/or 2021. The movement of some young adults (students and non-students) back to their family homes during the COVID-19 period is believed to have impacted the replies to this survey and therefore the estimates of the number of young adults who live with their parents.

SILC is a sample survey whereas the total population is enumerated for Census.

Census 2022 figures showed 41% of people aged between 18 and 34 and 33% of people aged between 25 and 29 were enumerated at their parents’ house on Census night 2022. Due to the issues highlighted above relating to the definition of household membership in the SILC survey, Census figures give a better estimate of the number of young adults actually living with their parents while EU-SILC shows the number of young adults financially dependent on their parents.

https://www.cso.ie/en/releasesandpublications/in/silc/informationnote-youngadultsaged18to34yearslivingathomewiththeirparents/