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

» Its a no brainer to buy a home

Provided you can afford buying one…

It will be tailored to people’s needs and finances—they have the most powerful tool at their fingertips: taxation. The point is that the government (or whoever actually runs it) will end up running the entire accommodation system—whether renting or owning—once it proves unable to function properly on its own.

Isn't that identical to the current Shared Ownership scheme run by the current FF/FG government?

Never going to happen outside of planet flat earth.

No, the key is the property is always affordable, thereby rebuilding a pool of affordable homes over time

In Ireland we hand over state land and receive back 500k "affordable" apartments/houses

https://www.citizensinformation.ie/en/housing/owning-a-home/help-with-buying-a-home/first-home-scheme/

I am certain that the IK is copying the Irish success with this scheme.

There are 90k affordable housing supports in the 2025 - 2030 plan.

I dont think this means 90k affordable homes will be built by the govt.

If councils and AHBs keep purchasing private homes for sale and converting them to affordable, social or cost rental homes, we will keep highjacking the private supply and new house prices will continue to rise.

The 90k affordable homes target needs to be built or directly funded by govt and AHBs, so private supply can also flourish.

As long as private supply is diverted into govt supported housing we wont ever get on top of new home price inflation because there are barely any new homes reaching the private market.

Its a challenge but we have a rapidly growing population and the workforce of any industry can be increased.

Construction will become a sought after career as AI displaces a lot of jobs in the future.

The govt can contract out new builds.

It doesnt need to use council staff to build, but we need to get away from private developers building private homes, only for them to be snatched away by AHBs and councils upon completion.

In addition, a sector highly subsidised by the state is actively advertising on national media for construction workers looking for a career change to install solar panels

I've posted here in the past on how solar panels could be installed far cheaper and efficiently than the current system thus freeing up workers in the solar panel sector for the construction sector

Almost Everything the government touches drives up the cost

All the more reason for the councils and AHBs to scale up their own building plans and leave the private market to deliver private homes to market.

We are still building offices when we already have an over supply. That over supply will require workers who will need housing. We should be building the housing before we build the offices - that's what planning is supposed to be for.

If anyone looks for planning permission for offices we need to ask them where they think the people who work there are going to live and to prove that there is housing capacity to support the number of people working there and that there are transport networks that can support these numbers. And we need to balance housing and workspaces by location - for example in Dublin if we put all the work places in the east side of the city (as we are still doing) then we end up with everybody commuting in the same direction as the sea gets in the way of putting housing any further east. If we mix housing and workplaces we might reduce commutes but more importantly we balance commutes - mass transit moving in both directions - a bus full of passangers comes east and goes back west full of passengers.

Planning can also be used to control the levels of build-to-rent - make build-to-rent a factor in planning permission to help balance out housing usage across the city.

It's interesting to see the Government targetting unused savings and encouraging people to put their money into the stock market. Savings behaviour over the years has shown that the majority of the population are risk-averse. These unused savings could be targetted to support state housing in the form of housing bonds. Housing is a long-term investment ideally suited to this kind of scheme. If we look at the council housing built from the 20s through to the 60s we can see that these generated income streams for decades (and some still do) - I'd be interested to see the figures relating to these (build cost, rental income, maintenance costs, sell off prices). A modern scheme like this could easily give a small yield (similar if not better than state savings and bank deposit accounts).

The average dublin council rent is around 300 a month. HAP payments run from 430 (single person) to 1240 (family) per month. By owning the properties the council will be receiving 300 a month vs paying out something between 430 and 1200 a month - lets say an average net of 900 per month saving to the finance minister. Given that there will still be a value in the property, that rents will rise over time and that there would otherwise be an oppportunity cost to the government if it was to use exchequeur funds this seems that it could be a viable proposition. Remember also that nobody would be being forced to this - you would only buy a housing bond if you wanted to.

Grade A office space is renting and is in short supply, thats why developers are still building it.

Old office space is what drives the vacancy rate as it isnt wanted by state bodies or large private organisations.

Ha ha

The ESG disease is turning property into a disposable product, accelerating deriliction

Carbon neutral mehole