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

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/