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

But nobody is talking about if there was a deficit or not in early 2022 years ago, the point is theres a huge, and growing, deficit now in late 2025.

Really? When you're talking about the 200k odd deficit of homes - where did you get that figure from?

Using figures from when the population was hundreds of thousands of humans smaller, to claim there is enough housing for every human in the country now, is entirely irrelevant.

I didn't claim there is enough housing for every human in the country now, I claimed there was enough in April 2022. I think you missed the point, which may have been entirely my fault for explaining it badly.

The CSO undercounting vacancies means there were, and are, far more vacant properties in Ireland than its report says. Which means there were less houses for humans to live in. Which means more of a deficit.

The more vacant properties we have in the existing housing stock is evidence of a higher deficit? Which in turn means we need to build even more new stock to reduce the deficit in the existing stock? That strikes me as a little counterintuitive to say the least.

I think we're looking at this very differently, just like the necessary/likely average household size for single male immigrants.

The Commission on Housing in mid 2024 estimated the deficit as between 210k and 250k homes

They published their findings in 2024. Presumably you hadn't read it before citing it, hence the misunderstanding about the significance of April 2022. Page 30:

"Taken together, the above implies that, as of April 2022, the best estimate of Ireland’s housing deficit was between 212,500 and 256,000 homes."

But as shown above the census data doesn't indicate a deficit at all never mind one as high as 256k. Hence the question I asked.

But nobody in this thread ever asked about April 2022. The point under discussion is the state of the Irish housing market in late 2025.

I asked about April 2022 precisely because (a) that was the census date and thus is the most recent count of both the population and the housing stock that is not wholly reliant on guesstimates and assumptions and (b) that was the date on which the Housing Commission claimed there was a deficit of up to 256k houses.

April 2022 is a hugely relevant date in any discussion or calculation about overall housing need right now.

Yes, rather obviously I would think. The more houses that are vacant in reality, but that aren't listed as vacant in CSO stats, the fewer houses there are actually available for humans to live in - far fewer than the CSO total housing statistic would suggest. And so the bigger deficit of available houses for humans to live in.

I think this is a pretty mad way of looking at things TBH, is that your own understanding of the vacancy problem? presumably you don't think that on this point "every expert analysis comes to a similar conclusion" as well?

The Commission on Housing published their findings, and gave analysis for the situation in 2024.

You're wrong about the Housing Commission report, read it you don't believe me.

The reason I appear to be obsessed with April 2022 figures is not only because that was both the date at which HC deficit applied - "as of April 2022, the best estimate of Ireland’s housing deficit was between 212,500 and 256,000 homes" - and the date of the census, which is the most comprehensive count of both the population and the housing stock at a given point in time.

You're correct I am not citing an expert analysis, but I am citing CSO census data of the population count and housing stock count, and basic mathematics which cannot be refuted.

I'm doing this because it is my belief that if you're trying to calculate the surplus or deficit in the stock of anything, the most intuitive way to do it is to do an actual count of what you already have, and use that as your starting point. It should be the basis for all calculations.

I cannot cite an expert analysis, because not a single expert has ever (since 2011 census) actually given an opinion of the country's housing need that is based on the starting point of counting the existing housing stock and the existing population. This used to be the goto method for the calculation, which is not surprising if you think about it for even a nano second.

Any home thats deliberately kept vacant is one thats not actively housing humans in the Irish housing market. It may as well not exist as housing stock.

It may as well not exist? There is an obvious flaw in that logic, but if it is not immediately obvious just look to relatively recent history. This sort of thinking is one of the reasons that led to overbuilding and oversupply in 07/08.

Investors only interested in capital gains were buying up properties and deliberately leaving them vacant, couldn't be bothered with the hassle of renting as long as paper value was shooting up.

The levels of vacant property were so high that economists in their expert analysis started factoring in the investment demand for vacant property into housing demand forecasts - i.e we needed to build more houses than the population growth estimates required because people wanted to buy houses that nobody would live in. They "might as well not exist as housing stock" if the buyers didn't want to make them available to anybody to live in.

The flaw in the thinking suddenly became a lot more obvious when the capital gains slowed down and the owners of vacant property became sellers of vacant property.