Who are buying all the new houses?

Talking about cash buyers, an estate agent agent down the country was saying recently a lot of cash buyers of apartments and holiday homes are retiring public servants, investing their tax free lump sum on retirement. Seems they get 18 months salary tax free on retirement, so say you were a professor or medical professional on 150,000 a year you have 225k to invest. That will still buy a decent property in some parts of the country.

and loads of tech workers , finance and legal are getting bonuses or shares that are are also lump sums ?

I don't see any reasons for waves of retirement in public sector workers with nothing else to do but buy second homes . and majority of them are not consultants or professors on 100k plus with 40 years service . it may be an issue in some small areas but it's not a driving factor in homes being bought

Who's buying all the houses on my estate? South Asians and Chinese. Now some of these may be naturalised Irish citizens, but for the purposes of this post Irish means born and raised here.

There are 20 houses along our short road. When we moved in eight years ago, there was two Chinese families, one Spanish and one Portugese family. The rest were Irish. There is still the Spanish and Portugese. Eight houses have since been sold by the Irish families and each and every one of them was bought by either a Chinese or South Asian family. I have been told that there is a local Chinese property agent, who puts up Chinese families in nearby apartments, and they just wait for a house to come up for sale. They are cash buyers so can generally outbid anyone else. The South Asians have mortgages like everyone else, but generally have high income jobs (we have a lot of medical and tech professionals here).

I don't mind at all. They make good neighbours. The South Asians are chatty and the Chinese keep to themselves. Their kids are well behaved and polite. All good.

Like most things economic, it's a supply-demand issue. If you can't sort out the supply (and it seems like we can't, at least in the short-medium run) then your only option is to look at the demand-side.

Would it be all that bad if we reined in the growth in the economy? Wouldn't people be better off, if not financially then in terms of quality of life? We are at effective full employment, we have a large current account surplus (at least we would have if the money wasn't been thrown around like snuff at a wake), so who is really benefiting?

We're at a point where you can't get a tradesman for love nor money, access to healthcare is severely curtailed, housing is a mess and still the attitude is drive on; more growth, more demand, where does it end? The next crash?

It's not that the situation isn't being improved, it's that it's getting worse with no end in sight.

If the government really cared about all this, then it would take steps, however small, to improve things by damping down demand whilst improving the supply-side, however long it takes.

Politicians love 'growth' It makes getting elected easier. They have more money to spend, buying votes. The can say what they like about housing being the No 1 priority but they won't make any hard decisions to improve things, so how serious are they?

What about:

Reducing building standards to where they were 20 years ago to reduce the cost of new builds?

Incentivise BP, local authorities, IW, ESB et al to improve and accelerate the planning and commencement process.

Closing down bogus 'foreign language' schools

Reducing places for foreign students on medical and dental courses.

Severely restricting visas for 'knowledge' workers. Medical staff excepted, of course

They wont do any of this because a) it looks racist b) it costs money and c) it might interfere with growth.

Well, are you serious about solving the problems or not?

At least we have the circus of the presidential election to keep us amused…..

They could change the taxation rules around shares and ETFs, so investing in things other than property becomes profitable, and increase the tax burden on property investment.

That would change housing investment strategies overnight and would not be racist, likely make money, and won't interfere with growth.

How do we solve the problem of our ageing population and the fact that "home grown" Irish are having children older and less of them? If we don't have immigration - and a good chunk of immigration, there will not be enough people working between the ages of 18 and 65 to subsidise pensions and welfare for the 65+ population.

If there isn't immigration we will need to a) raise the age of retirement to 75 and b) put in place widespread free childcare, free medical care for under 16s, and proper free schooling, to encourage more births. Cost is a major reason why people stop at one or two children. But this will involve an increase in taxes for all. We can't rely on the windfall taxes because they're not going to last forever. And raising the retirement age will be hugely resisted.

The fact is, no government is going to do either of the above things. What they can do is invest the windfall taxes in amenities that are required to support an increasing population. More schools, more GPs, more dentists, more emergency rooms, and above all else, more houses etc. But we'd need to vote in a left wing government. But most people can't get over their Sinn Fein veto, and the rest of the left parties are just damp squibs. So that's not going to happen either.

The seemingly easy solution is "restrict people coming in", but actually that's just inflating an already massive problem. Immigration is a solution, not a problem. Appropriate support and amenities is the problem.

If your metaphor is presenting a false dichotomy do you double down on it anyway?

Your taxes are paying for houses for welfare recipients so you can't buy a house for yourself.

World is upside down.

My main point is that we can't or won't sort out the supply issue so the only alternative is to look at the demand side. If we had the infrastructure to cope with a large, immigrant-led increase in population, I would be all in favour of it as I believe that it would bring huge advantages. Of course there will be a lag between immigration and infrastructure improvements but I don't see any credible plan to manage this.

The 'tangible concern' they have is that they are being replaced. They don't share this with you because of social pressure.