Who are buying all the new houses?

straight · 15-10-2025 07:16PM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123908176#Comment_123908176

I never said it did. It was pretty hard to pay for houses when the whole lot went to sh1t in 2008. Swings and roundabouts, win some lose some, etc. Time in the market vs timing the market.

Bass Reeves · 15-10-2025 08:37PM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123908203#Comment_123908203

If you had read my post I highlighted thw faxt that they could not have afforded to buy a site. However both as single people had enough savings(from fairly ordinary wages) and were able to access enouigh of a mortgage to buy a property and they would have.

Rocket_GD · 15-10-2025 09:29PM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123908799#Comment_123908799

I read it multiple times as it was so ridiculous.

You gave them sites worth 60/70k and say apart from that they had no help.
How many people have residential sites available to just give away to 2 of their children?

You said he saved for 7-8 months, no normal person can save a house deposit in that time unless on exorbitant wages. Saving for that short amount of time and he had more savings than his yearly wage?
How much rent and bills were they paying while saving?

Myself and my partner on wages that you mentioned had to save for 2 years solidly without 70k “no help” from either of our parents.

Using your children’s situation is actually laughable to make the point that people having Netflix or some coffee is why they can’t buy a house.

Edited: To add you mention you’ve started on your daughter’s house so are you building them too?
If this is the case you’re really giving them no help at all.

straight · 15-10-2025 09:42PM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123908940#Comment_123908940

Sure God love ye having to save for 2 years. My heart bleeds. I don't know what all the one upmanship is about here. I'm saving since my communion. Bought plenty property with no help. Even had to buy a site from my father. It's all irrelevant.

Plenty Young people knuckling down, getting qualified, working hard, making sacrifices and buying houses, starting families and getting on with their lives. More people just whinge online and blame the government, immigrants, old people, rich people, poor people, landlords. Basically, blame everyone else for their own shortcomings.

Rocket_GD · 15-10-2025 11:10PM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123908973#Comment_123908973

Where did I mention shortcomings or blame anyone for anything?

You’re the one having a go at young people for not being able to afford houses.

I’m just calling out the nonsense from another poster saying that their kids just saved for 7 months had 65k savings and got no help apart from a site worth 60/70k.

Bass Reeves · 15-10-2025 11:39PM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123909171#Comment_123909171

I said they saved for 7 months hard to get the mortgage as in full fill the conditions. To get a mortgage you have to save what ever the repayments are for six months, then apply for the loan, however you can not stop the saving rate while the application is in progress. This takes 4-10 weeks to process. That means when you are single, stop tge take away coffees, reduce your eating out and nights out and basically arrange your lifestyle around the terms if the loan.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123908940#Comment_123908940

I reiterate again my point that even without the sites they would still have bought there own house/apartment with the same saving. The site gave them a different lifestyle option

Basically you have to make the right decisions and have a plan. No point turning around at 30 years of age without a pot to p!ss in and expect to buy a house.

I am managing the build for her, I gave my son a hand as well. Collected a set of taps he was short today and dropped them to the plumber.

You can blame the system, the Government, the big bad world, but many couples and single people are managing away themselves.

Stephen_Maturin · 15-10-2025 11:52PM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123908973#Comment_123908973

https://www.irishtimes.com/business/2025/05/23/irelands-enduring-failure-housing/

There aren’t plenty of young people buying houses actually, that’s not true

From the linked article

“ The home ownership rate among those aged 25-39, once considered a prime homeowning age, has dwindled to just 7%”

The same figure was above 20% as recently as 2011

And you’re trying to say this is all down to people’s “shortcomings”? You don’t think there’s anything else at play here?

You are beyond out of touch.

Bass Reeves · 16-10-2025 12:10AM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123909254#Comment_123909254

IIt's not about short comings it's about decision making. It always easy to poo poo any point as avocado toast or as old foggies.

Houses were always expensive and hard to purchase. Admittedly extra regulation and energy ratings have added to the costs. Abd yes the lost construction years of 2010-2016/17 left a void of a couple 100k units. Planning and utilities are becoming an issue as well. However lifestyle choices impact significantly in your ability to buy or not buy. These can be factors varying from spending habits to where you want to own a house/apartment to what your expectations are of the type of house you want

Peregrinus · 16-10-2025 02:37AM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123908092#Comment_123908092

I don't know exactly when your parents housed themselves, but almost certainly house prices, relative to earnings, were massively lower then than they are now.

Equally relevant, given the point made by rogber in their post, is that phone service, television, travel and eating out are massively cheaper relative to earnings than they were in the past.

The result of this is that, say, 40 years ago a deposit on a typical starter home was about the same amount of money as you might spend in two years of regular consumption of phones, travel, entertainment, dining out, etc. Now, that figure is more like 25 years.

So the claim that young people these days can't buy houses because they are spending all their money on phones, streaming services, avocado toast and city breaks is absolute bollocks on stilts. They could spend absolutely nothing on any of these things, and they still wouldn't be materially closer to having the deposit on a house.

16-10-2025 07:36AM

There’s a lot of nonsense being spouted around this stuff.

200k immigrants arrived in three years but that’s not the issue, because it’s theoretically possible to build enough houses for them.

House prices aren’t high by historical standards, young people just have to learn to sacrifice.

These are two of the more farcical arguments.
They are so ideologically motivated as to be impossible to defeat with mere logic.

16-10-2025 07:41AM

Tbf it was always challenging to buy a house, but it was nothing like it is now a generation ago.
Its not that long ago that public sector unions were complaining that entry level workers couldn’t afford a mortgage. It sounds frivolous, but not that long ago it was doable very quickly once you were working full time.
I think Ireland kinda lost the run of itself, has pursued economic growth almost too much, or at least the wrong type of growth. it’s like filling up on fast food repeatedly.
It’s hard to say things are going well when you have people in middle age who are working and have worked for years living in their parents homes.

Rocket_GD · 16-10-2025 08:42AM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123909228#Comment_123909228

You're talking to someone who recently got a mortgage, I know how it works.

Again I'll ask how much rent and bills were they paying? You said "no help" apart from the 60/70k sites. If they weren't paying market rent and bills that's a massive amount of more help that a lot of people don't have the option to do.

You're managing the build, that's another chuck off the construction costs so more help again that most people don't have available to them.

You can blame the system, the Government, the big bad world, but many couples and single people are managing away themselves.

Point out where I blamed anyone for anything? We saved hard (without any actual help from parents) and bought a house.

Rocket_GD · 16-10-2025 08:48AM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123909351#Comment_123909351

This is the point that people ignore, when my parents bought in the 1988 they paid 18k for their house, this was 4.5 times my Dad's salary, now the average house price is 8.5 times the average salary.

They paid £300 for flights to go to Edinburgh the next year, now you can get return flights for €50.

Stephen_Maturin · 16-10-2025 09:01AM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123909282#Comment_123909282

No sorry but you’re just wrong

Of course lifestyle choices impact ability to buy - the fact remains that you could take the same person with the same habits like for like and they would find it significantly more difficult to buy today than they would 30 years ago

You’re disregarding all of the evidence that has been presented above.

Prices rising far more quickly than wages for years. Supply not at all keeping pace with population growth for years. Far far stricter lending practices than pre ‘08. Far more people in the country to compete with for the small supply of available houses. Two good full time salaries in a household more or less a necessity now when previously a single salary was sufficient. Home ownership in 25-39 cohort dropping from 22% in 2011 to just 7% now.

You look at all of that and still you disregard the most severe housing crisis in the history of the state as being due to younger people effectively being too stupid to know how to budget and save. You can’t fathom the possibility that the current generation have it tougher than you did. Complete self serving bias. You do come off like an old foggy that’s lost touch saying things like that I’m afraid.

ted1 · 16-10-2025 09:11AM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123730274#Comment_123730274

many are tech workers, and their parents have no connections what soever there, others are accountants and solicitors, who are also paid well.

Boggles · 16-10-2025 09:19AM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123909540#Comment_123909540

Your Dad would have had a spent a lot more of his income servicing that mortgage. The interest rate on that mortgage would have been between 12-20%. Depending on where he got it. The quality of that home would have been no where near todays standard, something that seems to be forgotten about when comparing prices from different eras.

The income to mortgage ratio is pretty much similar now to what it was during the Celtic Tiger when we were building more homes than we could sell. Prices kept reaching record highs.

Increasing output and loosening lending rules will not see house prices come down, they invariably never do, apart from the crash and a brief period in the 80s.

Just like the 80s and every decade since, a large cohort of people will never own their own home unless the government step in to give them one.

That said we have had record amounts of FTB in the last quarters.

So not all doom and gloom.

Rocket_GD · 16-10-2025 09:32AM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123909605#Comment_123909605

I know that he would have but the fact is that they could still purchase a house with one salary and manage to more than able to survive with multiple children on one salary. Not a hope people are doing that in this day and age unless they were on an extortionate salary.

So not all doom and gloom.

Oh I know that it isn't, sure didn't I just buy a house and we consider ourselves lucky that we were able to in this market.

It's just irritating listening to posters above using the usual "Netflix, avocado on toast" tropes as to why youung people are struggling to purchase homes.

Boggles · 16-10-2025 09:44AM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123909639#Comment_123909639

I know that he would have but the fact is that they could still purchase a house with one salary and manage to more than able to survive with multiple children on one salary. Not a hope people are doing that in this day and age unless they were on an extortionate salary.

That was a reflection on the market and society amongst many other things.

Probably had 16-18% unemployment, record levels of emigration.

Also with all due respect to your Dad he didn't do that his own, he had a free source of labour in your mother. Lets not forgot about her thankless role and many like her.

straight · 16-10-2025 09:46AM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123909254#Comment_123909254

I don't read those click bait, group think articles. I'm not much older than 39 myself. Where was a 39 year old 10 years ago when houses were being sold for less than the cost of construction.

I clicked in here because I thought it might be an interesting discussion but now I see it has been hijacked by the usual carry on.

Ya, buy a house is hard, it always was. There are huge opportunities out there for people now compared to previous generations. It's like comparing apples and oranges. Ye can talk sh1t about it all day or just get on with it. It's up to each person themselves.

I bought at the height of the last boom. I bitched and moaned about the price of houses like the rest of ye. The house fell down to half It's value and I managed to hold on to it. The biggest mistake I made was not buying sooner. I was 27 when I finally bought. I remember looking at a house for half the price 5 years earlier but I thought I was too young.

I'm Building agricultural sheds myself at the moment. The price of materials is gone crazy. I think if the government insists on everyone building a highly rated airtight house then we need different building methods.

16-10-2025 09:50AM

What is kind of missed when people talk about the high interest rates my own generation paid is that inflation including wage inflation were very high also. All of that does make it a little difficult to have accurate comparisons, but it is way harder buy a house nowadays, there's no question about it. Another factor nowadays is the very high rental prices.

In the 70s and 80s it'd have been hard to believe you'd have a situation where you'd have a shortage of rental properties in rural parts of the west of Ireland. I think a young person without a lot of family help (and posters need to realise that getting a free site is a huge help) is going to find things very hard. There's no real hope of getting a mortgage within a couple of years of starting work, so that means renting for most. And with rents so high it's very difficult to save, and as you're trying to save prices are rising.

In my own young days it was a bit simpler, basically if you were able to work full time you'd buy a house while you were still young if that was what you wanted to do.

I know I'm missing the opportunity to give the young a good kicking, a privilege of my age, but to be fair to them they are getting screwed over in a lot of ways. I have people working for me always running to get kids to school or from there to childcare, the idea that one parent might not work is just gone nowadays, which has made life way harder and more stressful. Families have had to become smaller.

Now there are a lot of positive things for young people, they don't drink as much, have entertainment at home, there's better medicines, the church isn't as strong, etc. But life has also become harder in lots of ways for working people. I think there has been too much focus on getting people into the workplace at all costs, and not enough on making life comfortable for working families.

Varadkar talked about there being people who get everything for free and people who pay for everything. But there's still nowhere near enough being done for people who pay for everything. Housing is the best example, approved housing bodies, social housing, all this stuff, basically free housing for many people, some of them deserving, but many of them who just aren't motivated enough to work. On the other hand you have young parents killing themselves in the hopes of paying a huge rental price and maybe one day getting a mortgage. It's not right.

An ideological shift is needed, but it is obvious what it should be. Seek to reduce immigration dramatically and do not provide any social housing for immigrants for a number of years. Wind the State's neck in, stopping building free houses for some and let the stock of houses on the open market increase to ease the price pressure on working people.

These might seem like right wing ideas but they are to benefit the working and middle classes, not property owners/developers/speculators/people who opt out of work. It's for the people the left are supposed to care about.

Rocket_GD · 16-10-2025 10:03AM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123909669#Comment_123909669

It doesn't negate the fact that he could still purchase a 3 bed semi d on a single, not large salary. That is not possible these days.

They had no children when they purchased the house but I certainly wasn't down playing her role in it at all, although good luck calling her a "free source of labour" to her face.

Stephen_Maturin · 16-10-2025 10:04AM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123909677#Comment_123909677

Haha “group think articles”. You can’t just dismiss data and facts as “group think” when you’re proven wrong

Really easy to maintain your bullheaded opinions when you just dismiss actual facts out of hand

Well done on buying in the boom when no doubt you had easy access to large amounts of credit. You wouldn’t have been able to do that if you were in the same position today. Because it is harder today.

Stephen_Maturin · 16-10-2025 10:10AM

This thread is both funny and sad

People always like to pretend to themselves that they had it the hardest

You can show them actual evidence that home ownership has steadily declined into the single digits within the space of a generation and they’ll ignore it as proof that things are more difficult now.

It amounts to flat out denial of the housing crisis altogether.
I’m Alright Jack homeowners sitting pretty on their grossly overvalued assets they got for a song pontificating on how hard they had it and how lazy the youth are. Embarrassing myopia.

It’s no wonder the issue is only getting worse.

runawaybishop · 16-10-2025 10:10AM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123909639#Comment_123909639

Back in the 80s it was a lot more common to have a single income in a household. Its hard to find good data but i think around 25k was considered a good household income - that's about 75k in todays money? Nowadays the average household income is knocking up on 100k as we have a lot more 2 income households but it is still no where near keeping up with the rise in house prices.

Anecdotally i do know single people that have bought a house, but there is no arguing that it is not incredibly difficult to do so on your own these days.

Boggles · 16-10-2025 10:10AM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123909722#Comment_123909722

free source of labour

That literally was what she was. Not calling what she did actual work, would be down playing her role.

Like I said society has changed and with it the economy has. The majority of women now want a career and don't want to be financially dependent on a man and everything else that comes with that.

Your father was one of the lucky ones, there was far more people getting the boat in the 80s than being able to afford houses.

The idea the 80s was a golden age where homeownership was easy, is simply not true.

It was beyond grim.

Stephen_Maturin · 16-10-2025 10:19AM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123909743#Comment_123909743

And yet home ownership was still higher in that 25-39 bracket then than it is now 🤷‍♂️

It’s almost like home ownership is harder to achieve now

Rocket_GD · 16-10-2025 10:25AM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123909743#Comment_123909743

Ye and I was just making a light hearted joke of "good luck calling her that to her face", she'd be disgusted with that description as I can imagine all stay at home mother's would be.

I know society has changed, and with 2 salaries it should be far easier to get a house than it was previously but that isn't the case.

Who called it a golden age? When have I ever said it wasn't hard to get a house? It's just factually a lot cheaper comapred to average income than it is now.

Your feelings of it being beyond grim seem to come from personal experience and I appreciate you feel it was that way, but that wasn't the case for everyone.

Peregrinus · 16-10-2025 10:26AM

Reducing immigration, getting the state out of the housing market, and increasing the stock of houses on the market appear to be inconsistent objectives. If you want to increase the housing stock you want more labour available, not less, and you want more aggregate spend on residential construction, not less.

I don't know that there's any easy fix for the housing market. I do know that any fix must be painful, because it has to involve the real value of houses falling, and that's going to be hard for people who have bought at current or near-current prices, are paying corresponding mortgages, and have to watch their asset deplete in value.

Mention has been made of the high interest rates that borrowers faced a generation ago. Yes, but they only faced those rates for a relatively small number of years; over the lifetime of their mortgages they benefitted from signficant falls in interest rates, which is not something that buyers today can hope for, since rates are much lower to begin with and the scope for further falls is much less.

Buyers a generation ago also benefitted from being in a climate of much higher inflation than today. The real value of their mortgages, and the real cost of their mortgage service payments, would be significantly eroded by the inflation rates that prevailed in the 1980s. That happens much, much more slowly today.

For both these reasons, the guy who had to borrow X at 12% in the 1980s was in a much, much happier position, financially speaking, than the guy who has to borrow 3X at 4% is in today.

In fact, I think the downward trend in interest rates and the rising cost of houses are not independent events. Lower interest rates mean that a borrower can service a larger mortgage, so he will take a larger mortgage in order to purchase the best house he can. Similarly, the increasing participation of women in the workforce from the 1990s onwards meant that more and more buyers could get a mortage on the basis of two incomes, not one — so they could get a larger mortgage and, again, because they could, they did. The result is that we have more and more money available to buy houses, and competition among buyers drives the price of houses (and construction, and development land, etc) up. Developers will always charge as much as they think they can get because, really, why wouldn't they? And so we are where we are.

If that's the case, then in theory the price of houses could be driven down by reversing the process — jack up interest rates, regulate the mortgage market so that only one salary can be taken into account, etc, to recreate the conditions that gave us the earnings-to-house-price ratio that we enjoyed the 1980s. But that's clearly not a runner, politically or economically. The alternative is to intervene in the market to increase supply dramatically. So, far from the state getting out of the market, they would get more heavily into it — buy land and make it available for residential development; build houses and rent or sell them on affordable terms to working people; etc.

headtheball14 · 16-10-2025 10:34AM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123909540#Comment_123909540

you can roughly track the growth to lending limits, it's now 8 times average salary and that's 4 times by a couple average salary.

every time people push for this to be changed it pushes up the property prices. back in the early 2000 you weren't lent money on 2 salaries at same limit, I remember it was 2 or 3 times first salary and the second was 1.5 . that was when they even started counting wives salaries.

in the boom it went to up to 10 times the salary and that was using loads of ad hoc income to inflate it as there were no effective limits

16-10-2025 10:45AM

Getting the State out of the market and reducing immigration are in no way inconsistent with increasing the stock of housing for private purchasers, but you'd have to know a bit about building and what is actually happening in the sector to understand that.

And this is more of the nonsense from people in ivory towers. I didn't suggest cutting immigration to zero, no sensible person would do that. These ideological zealots are always trying to put words in your mouth and make you explain yourself. I guess I've fallen into the trap this time lol.

Who are buying all the new houses?

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