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

Sorry, wrong.

This is the rolling 12 month average from 2019. There is a clear uptick from the 29.5k you claim to Q2 of 2025. When Q3 is added, the trend mark sits on ~33k. In truth things have stalled around that 32/33k, but that is still 10% growth from 2022.

Ironic you claiming cherry picking when that’s exactly what you did. Why didn’t you start your trend in Q1 to Q3 of 2022- where there was a clear acceleration in housing from 22k-29.5k?

Also funny that you’ve decided that 2025 will be 30k - just cos that’s fits in your narrative.

If we could get people who want to have a serious discussion and not misrepresent things, what would be interesting is actually to do a bridge from say 2019 to Q3 2025 by typology (social and cost rental, BTL, BTS) etc. What we’ll find is a ramp up in two categories and a fall in another. For two of them with heavy State subsidies (FTB BTS and social/cost rental), youll see a huge ramp up. For BTL you’ll start to see a stagnation and fall.

Your argument is gibberish. The State spends the second highest in Europe on housing. Our output is near the highest in Europe. Criticisms are not regarding spending, it’s about inane regulations, taxes and laws that made the BTL sector unattractive. If we had paused and not listened to the idiots complaining about Funds, we’d almost certainly have another 3-4k homes built this year. I know where you’re going at the end- another “simple fix” State construction company lark.

Do you believe that building companies are committing fraud?

Because this person is putting our fiscal position forward as justification for more houses and making some claim that it hasn’t.

Firstly it’s bunkum because we ARE spending lots of money on housing and the output relative to the rest of Europe (who are also in a crisis) is far stronger. In terms of public housing, we are adding adding 1.25 per 100 annually. This is substantial, believe it or not.

Secondly, to get more houses, we need less regulation and tax. That’s the issue, that’s why BTL investors fled (along with higher interest rates). We have to be careful with this for sure, but this is a function of MORE state involvement, not less (the poster demanded more “direct” action).

I didn’t even deal with the stupidest point of all on population growth. The State hires the ESRI to model that. They have consistently underestimated our growth levels for 30 years and there needs to be a shift there but they are “experts”. What neither could have forecasted is Russia invading Ukraine. You can criticise the leaders of this country for putting in an open door with generous benefits which attracted far more per head than the rest of Western Europe, but it was an “emergency”. To claim we could plan for 125k additional people from this is gibberish. It’s not a good faith argument to bring up a number like 400k and talk about planning.

On prices, you don’t have a clue. The prices from the Chartered Surveyors are clear. We’ve had study after study. We are a high cost economy with significant regulations. Developers profits are not extraordinary here. Cairn has underperformed the S&P 500 here, for example.

13% up on Q1 to Q3 last year.

If we maintain that growth we will be at 34k this year.

Greater Dublin has more new homes built that the rest of the country combined every quarter this year.

Is this sustainable for promoting population growth outside the capital.

Q4 in fact is the highest of course generally, in 12 of the last 14 years of CSO that is the case. The poster though gets the handy likes for making stuff up.

The poster also threw in another made up number on the 60,000 “required”. What is required varies massively depending on the assumption and who plugs the number is.

What does 1995 have to do with it and what specific point are you debating here?

Q4 is regularly below Q3. ie even just last year:

In Q4 2024, Ireland saw 8,732 new dwelling completions[1], Q3 2024 was 8,939 [2]

[1]https://www.cso.ie/en/releasesandpublications/ep/p-ndc/newdwellingcompletionsq42024/

[2]https://bpfi.ie/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/BPFI_Housing_Market_MonitorQ3_2024_12.12.24.pdf

The idea that we're going to surge from 2025's 24,325 completions at end Q3 to anywhere near the government's goal of 40k, as the poster was suggesting, is just completely insane - no historical data would back that up.

What’s definitive is the quarterly rolling averages, not the “cherry picking” you are engaged in.

It’s so tedious that we have people just prepared to behave like this.

We’re dealing with someone who cherry picked a number and decided to run with that as the narrative.

Simple facts on Ireland’s housing output:

• pre COVID to end of 2019 we had 21k housing completions
• During the acute COVID period of 2020 to 2021 we had an an average of 20.5k

2022 saw a substantial increase in completions to 29.5k, as homes delayed during the shut down completed leading to a substantial increase in completions. People keep claiming Ireland never reached the Housing for All target but they actually beat them in 2022 and 2023 (after missing them the previous year which was the first full year of the index).

Ireland went from being 7th pre COVID (Ireland would have been last or near last 10 years ago) to number 1 on the Deloitte Housing Development Intensity measure of housing output between 2019 to 2024.

There are massive criticisms to be made of housing policy here and the waste and delay, but it’s never grounded in serious debate. Just people making stuff up and demanding “big bang” State interventions (when that’s all they’ve been doing for 15 years). The referencing of times when we had far looser development (1990s and 2000s) which was often developer led and at times corrupt is hilarious given that. We have a lot of people who claim to care about housing but are just not in anyway serious about the topic when you scratch the surface.

Let’s stick to what you actually posted.

1975 is not what you posted about.

I never said we were building enough houses, I merely pointed out your misleading statement.

Upper end of the market may be slowing, but the lower end has now become the new lower upper end with some crazy prices being paid.

Capture of the political system through lobbying is not fraud, however it was identified as a major contributing factor to the last crash.

Developers, Landowner and investment fund lobbyists are all from the FFG gene pool

What the government could do to reduce build cost is to depress land prices by using legislation.

Changing the way land value is taxed after rezoning would make most impact.

But to be clear, this is a deflection from the point.

The “we aren’t building anything” brigade are gaslighting people, it’s just wrong.

And the approach by this brigade is more deflection once their lies are called out.

What I prefer to look at (rather than this endless doom loop) is where we actually are.

33-35k as we are at is not an awful place to be. The 41k “need” was not pulled out of their asses (neither was the 33k btw).

Comparing to past decades-

1. The quality isn’t comparable
2. The locations aren’t comparable
3. The use cases aren’t comparable (over half the homes in the West were built as holiday homes once upon a time)

We also have to look at stuff like retrofitting and the impact on supply. This is a key input to any model assumption. Putting some of our spare building capacity into helps, as does even the vacant home grants.

Where we are positives;

1. We have a under occupied housing stock, we have more than enough 3 beds
2. We are building a good amount of public houses per year
3. We’ve tackled some of the hold ups in planning through the new Act (still being implemented)
4. We’ve tackled some of the regulatory stupidity - standards, RPZ etc
5. FTB scheme has been a huge success and is a path to he ownership
6. We now have the majority of transport infrastructure through planning that will enable ToD in Dublin (at least)

Negatives

1. We bottled it on Co-Living
2. We’ve driven out foreign investment
3. Cork remains behind on Luas and Bus Connects, not withstanding progress on the CACR
4. Water and electricity is behind where it needs to be from a planning perspective
5. Our costs are still too high and we are wasting investment
6. The NPF remains far too prescriptive and isn’t flexible enough. Whilst we are building better homes in better areas, there isn’t enough in Dublin City centre

"Housing target should be revised up to 60,000 homes per year, Dublin Chamber says"

"Construction Industry Federation and its member body Irish Home Builders’ Association call for 60,000 housing units per annum"

"Today, the government has approved revised housing targets for the period 2025 to 2030, aiming to deliver a total of 303,000 new homes across Ireland. This ambitious plan sets an average of over 50,000 homes per year"

We need 60k homes a year, and the government's own lowest possible plans are for 50k+ homes a year.

In the private sector in any job if you hit 50-60% of your yearly targets you'd be fired very quickly for incompetence.

"33-35k" is very clearly utter failure, and we haven't even hit that last year or likely this year.

https://www.irishtimes.com/business/2025/07/03/housing-target-should-be-revised-up-to-60000-homes-per-year-dublin-chamber-says/

https://cif.ie/2024/09/13/construction-industry-federation-and-irish-home-builders-association-call-for-60000-housing-units-per-annum-and-an-increase-in-residential-land-zoning-by-local-authorities/

https://www.gov.ie/en/department-of-housing-local-government-and-heritage/press-releases/government-agrees-to-progress-amendments-to-draft-revision-of-national-planning-framework-ambitious-new-housing-targets/