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

Are you incapable of answering a question or just continuing to deflect when you struggle?

Me calling out your lies on our housing output change over the last few years is not me saying it’s enough, again please just quit the misrepresentation and outright lies here.

Tell me why you said “we need” 60,000 houses a year and why you like that particular number. Why not the 93,000 from Davy?

We built circa similar numbers in the late 80s early 90s in what were difficult times with significant outward migration and half the population

In 1985 we had 1.03 million in employment rising to 1.23 million in 1995. In 2025, we have 2,818,100 in employment

Based on these figures alone, would you think it would be prudent to be building double the current output.

But again;

Where were these homes built?

What was the quality (size, energy rating etc)?

What services were provided?

What was the purpose of these homes (primary residence, holiday home)?

Bungalows and detached houses were over half of the housing stock built in 1981, for example. Single dwellings amounted to just 18% in 2024 per the CSO. Some of this is less space in more urban areas for detached homes, but a lot of it is also less homes being scattered in more remote locations (ie many of them second homes).

We are in the process of retrofitting many of the homes from that era, none of that comes into the unit by unit comparison.

“Double the homes” is just a throwaway line. What does that mean? Current unit sizes, more studios? More one beds?

Quite clearly we have a massive deficit, such that any form of increase in a short term would be gobbled up.

But if we built double the current rate of crude numbers of homes, our output per capita would be about 12 per 1,000 citizens. In 2023 the country ranked just below us was 5.88 (we were 6.12) per the Deloitte Housing Development intensity review of 19 European countries. Is that realistic? I would say again that we are too beholden to the idea of perfect planning. The dream of having all the infrastructure there for new builds is delusional. That’s part of the problem, we’ve swung the other way. This is constraining supply to a degree but you are overegging the comparison with prior decades.

My personal opinion is we need about 8 per 1,000 consistently over the next decade which is basically at the 41k figure in the latest housing plan. The current number of houses in Ireland is 395 per 1,000 people, 73 below the OECD average and implies about 350k units below what’s required. In crude terms over a decade with a growth of 7 per 1,000 (the 8 to he built minus 1 for obselecence) we’d be there or thereabouts with the OECD average. But I’d go further and say that might be actually be too many given the number of under-occupied homes in Ireland. We have a rate of 67% in Ireland vs. an European Average of 33%, the implication is that of occupied housing that we have at least 650k more rooms available within our existing housing stock than our peers. Even if we got halfway to that EU average, we’d free up 325k rooms. At say 3.5 rooms per housing unit, that’s not far off 100k less housing units needed here than any “average” implies.

The definition of Under-Occupied per Eurostat.

https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php?title=Glossary:Under-occupied_dwelling

The precise number of rooms is impossible to tell, I just went for 1. Another EU measure says we have one of the highest number of rooms per member of the population at 2.1, the EU average is 1.6. This implies 2.6m ish extra rooms…(Eurostat excludes kitchens, halls, bathrooms from this as well).

Ireland also has a lower “over-crowded accommodation” rate at 3.2%, versus 17.2% in the EU.

Oddly we of course have a high household size relative to most of these countries, which is counter intuitive to the above but is likely largely to do with our massive supply of 3 bedroom houses used in house shares.

So my point above on supply is that we also have to look at the type of supply and the capacity we have. I don’t believe for us to have a “normal” market that we necessarily need to be at the OECD average number of dwellings per 1,000. Sure we might prefer to all be like the Swedes and living alone at 18 but we have the housing stock we have and solutions have to be tailored to both our strengths and weaknesses. We absolutely need more studios and 1 beds but we also do have a higher proportion of higher capacity homes that are available right now and ones we are investing it to give them a longer lifespan. As much as I think it’s a waste to have UCD students in 3 bed semi Ds in Stillorgan with overgrown gardens, it’s a perfectly fine way to live in your college years as long as the rent is affordable.

It’s one of the reasons why I’m so critical of the constant range of “we actually need X” number of houses with people not putting much further thought or detail into said statement. This is even the case with some of the Housing Commissions work, as detailed as it was.

In order to help single people which I think is an acute issue, I’d actually argue we’d be better off building 30,000 studios and one beds a year for 3 or 4 years rather than say 30,000 of mixed studios to 5+ bedrooms (and as such, having a lot more capacity) houses as we do now. But we aren’t even having those discussions…sure it’s easier to just say “we should be building 60,000!”.

Back for more. You aren’t serious about this topic.

Again you misrepresented the picture and it’s fairly clear you are happy to deliberately degrade any discussion on this.

The new targets are a seperate point.

Again I ask you to outline why you think we need 60,000 and not 93,000 homes. Based on the level of your input I don’t have much hope of an intelligible response but I’ve asked you several times now.

Coming back every couple of days repeating the same misrepresentation and avoiding the topic just doesn’t cut it I’m afraid.

If your figures are correct, it would be necessary to have a functional market for it to work. The property market in Ireland has been dysfunctional for over 3 decades and that's not going to change under "no alternative" current leadership as they are doubling on policies that make the situation worse.

In the 80s you had far more people in each residential unit, little or no short term lets. There was little price difference between Dublin and rest of the country and agriculture was the dominant industry hence the one off homes at 50% in 1981. I don't know where you were in the 80s, 2nd homes were certainly not a thing

Again I'll say it if the government did nothing, we would build more homes as the future picture is much clearer with 0 or close to 0 interference.

Currently the developers are well aware that the bigger the problem gets the more they can extract from the taxpayer. Provision of most expensive "social/affordable" homes in the world is far more lucrative than meeting open market demand at the highest employment/wage rate the country has ever seen. They have there people/lobbyists dictating policy. The ministers are communications trained to hoodwink the public and the dysfunction continues.

I'm aware of several state subsidised 3 bed affordable purchase homes going to a single applicant. There is no will to tackle under utilised housing in the public sector, nevermind the private sector

I live in an estate built in the late 60s early 70s, it's has 3,4, and 5 bed units. Many of the 3 bed units have been extended over time. At least 50% of the homes are occupied by 1 person or a couple, 3 homes are empty. The estate is walking distance to every amenity and is located in the fastest job growth region in the country.

1 home has multiple families living with a local business nearby (Asian)

I agree we need to be more inventive on efficient use of housing, unfortunately that's not going to happen under the current regime. It, like everything else housing related is being made worse

Second homes were a thing. There were still people in Ireland quite well off, inequality was higher.

Your argument comes down to a world of libertarian policies. I wouldn’t disagree that this would yield more homes, but I also live in the real world and that’s simply not going to happen. It’s kind of pointless having debates with people who argue the extremes on these points.

It’s crazy that this has been going on for so long. Its an awful situation for those buyers. Raised in the Dail.

Report from the Meath chronicle.

https://www.meathchronicle.ie/2025/11/19/families-face-losing-homes-and-e250000-in-deposits-as-rathmolyon-estate-developer-moves-to-liquidate-company/

I had to look up the term libertarian to see what it means. Posters here longer got a laugh out of Villa05 being labelled this

If you acknowledge that more homes would be built if the government spent nothing on demand side Imagine what could be achieved if the state switched to supply side measures with the state the buyer of last resort on unsold compliant properties removing a significant risk for builders/developers. This would encourage new entrants and reduces risk and cost of capital, thereby instantly reducing build cost

The state could then refrain from handing over state land to developers to deliver more unaffordable homes or the most expensive social homes in the world..

The state itself should engage builders to build on this land for affordable rental purposes thereby creating cash flow from idle land. This cash flow could potentially be reinvested to increase the pool of affordable rentals

The point is more about interventions vs non interventions. The evidence is quite clear that more liberal intervention across the spectrum leads to more supply. The 2000s here a clear example of that.

But that’s not the reality of today. I don’t agree with the point on the State using the First Time Buyers grant or pre purchasing developments. If the State did not do that then we would have basically no supply right now. The evidence of that is clear when you look at how the pre funded Build To Let market collapsing resulted in apartment construction completely stagnating. If the State goes to a “buyer of last resort” I don’t think that means much in the current context beyond being a moral hazard that will backfire when inevitably the property market collapses. If the State goes for a more pro supply sided approach then I don’t think the demand point would be needed at all. By that I mean stopping the excessive regulation of apartment size, removing the effective Co-Living Ban, removing NPF targets, removing LAPs, permanently reducing the tax burden on building etc then yeah you wouldn’t need the demand side interventions. But that’s not what people want in Ireland. The CEO of Hines basically described this as the public demanding Mercedes standards for all and as such it requiring Mercedes funding for all.