2021 Irish Property Market chat - *mod warnings post 1*

Idbatterim wrote: »

how about a scheme where a child would buy the family home for their family and the elderly parent or parents would move to an apartment or duplex nearby? you could offer tax incentives...

like no stamp duty on purchase or either property...

I think you would need a far better tax incentive to get elderly people to move. I think it's a great idea but people fear change. My mother was forced to sell the family home and was so upset. She now realizes all the benefits of an apartment. She is happier now but wouldn't have made the decision willingly.

I think we need a carrot and a stick.

beauf wrote: »

Unless you have a load of apartments sitting empty in peoples community under your sleeve I can't see how that would work.

maybe when the new blocks are built, they allow for the ground floor ones say, to be kept for older people, it would probably be a lot nicer for the elderly, to also be living beside the elderly in the apartments. DCC head said yesterday about the new development plan, the days of 3/4 bed semi d in dublin are well gone...

I propose a solution or idea with rounding, that could actually work here. Will they force people out of their homes here ? no. Will they introduce anything but a token gesture, waste of time property tax like we currently have? NOT A CHANCE!

This is a huge part of the problem here, you simply cant solve the crisis or opportunity, depending on where you stand. Without changing the system, the system they dont want to touch. Proper property taxes would be an obvious first step, will never happen here. You could even flag it a year or two in advance and say from 2023, the rates will be revised. They were set sooooo low though, how do you effectively triple or quadruple them (at least) to actually make them effective, from a political perspective...

Cyrus wrote: »

i think people are underestimating the ability of people to buy in SCD, there are plenty of couples both earning plenty of money that can afford it. As long as that persists property prices in more desirable areas will reflect that.

This is whats being a missed a large % of the population did not get affected by PUP or Covid when it comes to wages and in fact these people are saving more due to not having to travel to work or pay 10 euro for a soggy sambo and a coffee in Dublin city center areas which can be seen by the historic savings figures back in Oct/Nov of 2020.

PropQueries wrote: »

What you're showing does appear to make sense from just looking at the real world. For example, the children of many of the people who moved into council/corporation houses built right up the 1980's would now be in their 30's and may have flown the nest by now so there's probably just a couple living in many of those 3 bed houses.

What areas of Dublin would most of the council/corporation houses have built in the 1980's? I imagine it would have been Fingal and south county Dublin

Can you please explain so why in the 2016 census both of these places had 3+ occupants per semi-detached which is above the country average of 2.88

beauf wrote: »

I mentioned this on these forums before that so many place are souless here, no community central space, no planned green spaces. It just cram new developments on top of each other with no thought to how it will be to live there.

I was basically laughed out of it, by people who only interest was getting their foot on the property ladder that suited their immediate needs, no care about long term living.

Its something that has always bugged me.

Something they do much better in Spain from what I know.
Centers/recreational areas/schools etc are built before/at the same time as big new housing projects so the infrastructure and amenieties are there from day one and creates a community.

awec wrote: »

Since the government is buying a 30% stake I would assume that the value of that 30% stake fluctuates with the value of the property. Up or down.

This was not the case with previous HTB Schemes in Ireland.

Previously if the property was under the market value at the date of purchase the owner still owned the full 30%.
e.g.
house market value at date of purchase 350k
Gov Equity 30% 105k
Individual 70% 245k

Individual sells the house 5 years later for 300k he only gets 195k (300-105) to repay against his mortgage with the bank.

Individual sells the house 5 years later for 400k he gets 280k (245+35) and the government get 120k (105+15)

If it is like the UK then these properties struggle to make the market value at date of purchase for a number of years to come.

fliball123 wrote:

So you dont believe what the experts think. I think I will believe experts over you with your track record. Sorry but 4/6% Obsolescence is the norm for this country. Houses have to be knocked down in order to build new devs.

The experts got it so right last time

PropQueries wrote:

The Irish Independent reported "Renters to save €11,000 under new affordable housing scheme, minister claims"

He made reference to the scheme in England and how well it worked, however a review of same scheme found that 60% of the people that availed of it did not need it.

It was basically used as risk spreading tool

schmittel wrote: »

@Timingbelt

Is the data telling us that this is skewed by because "most of the under-occupied houses are in rural areas with people 65+" as per your claim?

I don't think so.

We have 69.6% of population living in underoccupied houses.

Age profile:



Degree of Urbanisation:



So the data is telling us 90.6% of people over 65 and 80.6% of people living in rural areas are living in underoccupied houses - NB that is very different to to telling us that 90.6% of underoccupied houses are lived in by 65 year olds or 80.6% of underoccupied houses are in rural areas.

According to the CSOs analysis of Urban and Rural Life in Ireland, 2019:



If 31.4% of population live in a rural area and 80.6% of people living in rural areas live in underoccupied houses we can estimate a number for comparison.

Total population - 4.9m

31.4% living in rural area = 1,538,600
80.6% of these = 1,323,196 people living in under occupied houses in rural areas.

69.6% of total population live in underoccupied houses = 3,410,400 people.
If 1,323,196 of these are living in rural areas, then 2,087,204 of these live in Cities or Towns and Suburbs. Or in other words a significantly higher number.

How many of these in rural areas are over 65? Age profile of the country is:



So 14.3% of the total population is over 65. Presumably in rural areas that is higher so let's double it to avoid any argument - 28.6%

28.6% of the 1,323,196 = 370,475 people living in underoccupied houses in rural areas over 65.

Or to put it another way - about 11% of the total number of people living in underoccupied houses in the country.

It seems not to be the case "that most of the under-occupied houses are in rural areas with people 65+." Not even close.

One of us is misrepresenting the data to suit our narrative. Is it you or me?

The reason that Ireland has a higher rate of under-occupied housing units is because of the different type of stock we have compared to our European counterparts. We have more semi-detached properties and they have more apartments which have less rooms.

The definition of under-occupied as per the SILC survey is as follows:
Under-occupation is defined on the basis of the number of rooms available to the household, the household’s size, as well as its members’ ages and family situation.

If we take the number of rooms available the average for Ireland is 5.2 rooms per household with the average no of persons per room being 0.53.

This does not mean that no of average bedrooms per person is 0.53

This statistic does not tell us a lot about a property being under-occupied it just tells us that we have different type of housing stock with more rooms.

Instead if we look at the statistic of how many people per housing unit it gives a much better picture of under-occupied

Detached house Semi- detached house Terraced house Apartments
Aggregate Rural Area Aggregate Town Area Aggregate Rural Area Aggregate Town Area Aggregate Rural Area Aggregate Town Area Aggregate Rural Area Aggregate Town Area

Border 2.88 2.75 2.51 2.65 2.20 2.22 1.67 1.70
Dublin 3.18 3.07 2.92 3.03 2.83 2.72 2.14 2.15
Mid-East 3.09 3.14 2.77 3.10 2.62 2.66 1.97 2.13
Midland 2.97 2.80 2.71 2.90 2.52 2.49 1.93 1.86
Mid-West 2.88 2.82 2.57 2.73 2.33 2.38 1.86 1.92
South-East 2.96 2.78 2.61 2.75 2.36 2.33 1.89 1.76
South-West 2.89 2.93 2.57 2.80 2.35 2.46 1.76 1.89
West 2.84 2.79 2.41 2.70 2.15 2.39 1.72 1.94


As you can see from the data Dublin and Mid-East have the highest ratio of people per housing unit with the Border counties (including Leitrim) having the lowest.

I also broke down the Regions by age group:
Under 18 18-64 65+
Border               21% 64% 15%
Dublin City 15% 72% 13%
Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown 19% 66% 16%
Fingal 22% 69% 9%
Midlands 22% 66% 13%
South Dublin 21% 68% 11%
West 20% 65% 15%
Mid East 22% 67% 11%
Mid west 20% 65% 15%
South-East 21% 65% 14%
South West 20% 66% 14%


I have to admit that I was surprised that DLR had the highest % of 65+

So what is this data telling us:
If we assume

1. Detached properties should have 4 people occupying the property
2. Semi-Detached should have 3 people occupying the property
3. Terraced Houses should have 2.5 people occupying the property
4. Apartments should have 2 people occupying the property

Then we would have the following capacity

Detached house Semi- detached house Terraced house Apartments Total Capacity
Aggregate Rural Area Aggregate Town Area Aggregate Rural Area Aggregate Town Area Aggregate Rural Area Aggregate Town Area Aggregate Rural Area Aggregate Town Area Aggregate Rural Area Aggregate Town Area

Border 91,715 16,432 5,732 6,206 1,186 2,189 545 1,391 99,178 26,218
Dublin 5,136 45,221 88 -4,487 -165 -28,329 -52 -18,028 5,007 -5,623
Mid-East 59,757 33,122 2,093 -6,549 -403 -4,484 56 -2,265 61,503 19,824
Midland 46,290 15,117 2,048 2,140 -35 99 37 734 48,340 18,090
Mid-West 82,478 21,829 4,311 9,099 728 2,268 187 848 87,704 34,044
South-East 66,937 22,266 3,526 7,343 443 3,132 82 1,748 70,988 34,489
South-West 96,626 37,855 4,162 9,874 769 1,526 308 2,093 101,865 51,348
West 102,126 21,715 4,456 7,384 654 1,075 368 638 107,604 30,812

582,188 209,202

schmittel wrote: »

Are you still saying that most of the under-occupied houses are in rural areas with people 65+?

What I am saying is that reason that Ireland is an outlier is due to its type of housing stock and that whatever capacity that we do have is mainly in Rural areas. Yes I assumed last night that there would be a higher % of 65+ in the Rural areas than there actually is.

No where does the data suggest that we could solve the housing crisis with a different use of existing stock in Urban areas.

Maybe you utilise stock in DLR better as 1 in 5 people there is in the 65+ category with the exception of this the data suggest that we couldn't solve the housing crisis with a different use of existing stock in Urban areas as the capacity is in Rural locations.

schmittel wrote: »

I get you're saying all that now. But there was no assumption yesterday. What the data was telling us then was:



I'm asking you a simple question - having looked at the data again, do you think you were you wrong yesterday to say that or do you you still believe the data is telling us that most of the under-occupied houses are in rural areas with people 65+?

Ignoring that question and posting about different types of housing stock and assumptions sounds a lot like clutching at straws. Which is kind of ironic.

What I said last night is that you trying to prove that we have no housing crisis by using the under-occupied data was clutching at Straws and said it was Ironic. I was wrong in saying 65+ which I have already stated.

Are you willing to admit that the data does not indicate that we have a under-occupied issue in the cities?