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Ireland has the highest proportion of under occupied dwellings in the EU.

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  • Registered Users Posts: 7,139 ✭✭✭MrMusician18


    Graham wrote: »
    Ireland has chronic dwelling under occupancy because of legal delays? :confused:

    No, it's because when people have finished rearing their family they stay in a family size home instead of downsizing.

    The reasons for this are many. They want to preserve their ability to leave an inheritance, it's a very solid asset that they can dispose of should a financial emergency arise, they've lived there their while lives and enjoy the community and they want to keep rooms so that they can have their entire family stay when they come back to visit.

    Underoccupancy would be more of a reality in rural areas, where children leave the family home earlier in order to go to university, and do not return.


  • Registered Users Posts: 6,133 ✭✭✭Claw Hammer


    No, it's because when people have finished rearing their family they stay in a family size home instead of downsizing.

    The reasons for this are many. They want to preserve their ability to leave an inheritance, it's a very solid asset that they can dispose of should a financial emergency arise, they've lived there their while lives and enjoy the community and they want to keep rooms so that they can have their entire family stay when they come back to visit.

    Underoccupancy would be more of a reality in rural areas, where children leave the family home earlier in order to go to university, and do not return.

    what about the practical difficulties in downsizing? Ireland has an extremely difficult conveyancing system that makes it very difficult to move home when at an advanced age unless there is a lot of cash available to the person moving.


  • Registered Users Posts: 11,624 ✭✭✭✭meeeeh


    Big houses in rural areas are not an issue in relation to lack of housing. It's urban areas that suffer from lack of accommodation and that won't be solved by rural pensioners downsizing. They might have trouble maintaining and heating their properties but there are not buyers queuing for their houses.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 12,449 ✭✭✭✭pwurple


    seasidedub wrote: »
    I am not loaded. I worked in 5, yes 5 different countries to afford my house. I've never driven anything more expensive than a polo/micra.

    What I did not do was bring kids I could not afford into the world and expect the taxpayer to fund my lifestyle, preferably in the area I grew up in close to mammy.

    I actually want a social welfare system, a good health and education system and am satisfied to pay taxes for that. But we're not getting that because we have to fund people's irresponsibility. I have the way Ireland treated women historically- but now there is full contraception available and abortion. Yet over and over we see that a huge cohort of the people demanding social housing have never worked and had kids (And I mean the fathers too) that they just assumed the state would raise.

    Meanwhile we can't have scandi style day care or cheap student accommodation because we fund people who sleep in garda stations.

    Yeah, I agree with all of that.

    I'm simply saying that it's not just those two options.

    1) Social housing
    2) Owner occupied, earned by working across x number of countries.


    Where is option
    3) A basic Functional rental sector. With a range of accommodation ranging across size and affordability.


    Because what's happening at the moment is that our rental sector is collapsing. Units available are at a historic low, landlords are pouring out of the market due to the penalties and tax model.

    Is this something we want? As a society? To shrink our rental sector to zilch?


  • Registered Users Posts: 13,979 ✭✭✭✭Cuddlesworth


    meeeeh wrote: »
    Big houses in rural areas are not an issue in relation to lack of housing. It's urban areas that suffer from lack of accommodation and that won't be solved by rural pensioners downsizing. They might have trouble maintaining and heating their properties but there are not buyers queuing for their houses.

    There is another thread on here right now with somebody considering moving into what has become a halting site because there are zero rental options and the house prices have gone past their reach. And they are not in a urban setting.


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  • Registered Users Posts: 11,624 ✭✭✭✭meeeeh


    There is another thread on here right now with somebody considering moving into what has become a halting site because there are zero rental options and the house prices have gone past their reach. And they are not in a urban setting.

    I think I know the thread you are talking about and as far as I know they are also not able to get mortgage. The issue of funds will remain even if supply improves.


  • Registered Users Posts: 32,634 ✭✭✭✭Graces7


    Pushing elderly people "to the country" is an absolutely terrible idea! All it would do is cause serious isolation issues and inability to cope as people start to lose the ability to drive.

    It's grand when you're 65, 70 but when you hit being properly old being in a remote area has serious downsides.

    There's a lot of scope though for regeneration of villages and towns by encouraging people to move into those kinds of urban spaces. It means proper planning though and making them really attractive.

    We aren't really planning at all for when this generation gets old as we're not going to have as many people to look after us. We should be creating the kinds of communities we can retain independence in well into our 90s and beyond if we're lucky enough to get there.

    It works both ways. Nearly 80 here and refusing to even consider moving from a very remote place where I am happy and independent to a town or any retirement facility where I would be unhappy/
    .
    Old folk are individuals and uprooting is traumatic if they are ok where they are. The last one who died out here was 104 years old


  • Registered Users Posts: 7,139 ✭✭✭MrMusician18


    what about the practical difficulties in downsizing? Ireland has an extremely difficult conveyancing system that makes it very difficult to move home when at an advanced age unless there is a lot of cash available to the person moving.

    It's not that hard to sell a house from a transactional standpoint.

    Older Irish people don't downside because they don't want to downsize. Irish people will start living downstairs when they can no longer climb stairs rather than sell. It's a cultural thing.


  • Registered Users Posts: 31,001 ✭✭✭✭Lumen


    pwurple wrote: »
    landlords are pouring out of the market due to the penalties and tax model
    Is Ireland's approach to taxation of rental income different qualitatively from how it is treated in other countries with a functioning rental sector?


  • Registered Users Posts: 2,637 ✭✭✭brightspark


    Many people here are forgetting that a house isn't just a building to the residents/owners.

    To many it's their "home", full of memories, where their child spoke for the first time etc. a place where they have felt safe for most of their lives.

    It's also a place they have made "their own", decorated the way they like, with furniture they like etc., that may not be able to be replicated in a smaller property.


    But some people aren't sentimental in that case;

    The spare rooms aren't always "shrines", the widowed parent who moves into the downstairs room is sometimes freeing up the master bedroom for the married offspring when they visit, usually occasionally for celebrations, but sometimes, perhaps a decade or so later, for them to look after their elderly parent for a while instead of putting them into a nursing home.

    Given the significant legal and tax and other costs involved in moving, it isn't surprising that people choose to remain in their homes, even when sometimes that home is a little too small and at other times it's a bit too big.


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  • Registered Users Posts: 6,133 ✭✭✭Claw Hammer


    It's not that hard to sell a house from a transactional standpoint.

    Older Irish people don't downside because they don't want to downsize. Irish people will start living downstairs when they can no longer climb stairs rather than sell. It's a cultural thing.

    Selling a house is less than half of the problem. A new house has to be acquired in its place. That is where the biggest issues lie. It is difficult enough for young folk trying to trade up, it is even harder trying to trade down. AS for people not wanting to, the majority of purchasers in an apartment development in Mount Merrion were downsizers from the local area. Mount Merrion is an area with a mature population where houses are valuable and most have very big gardens. When it is feasible for people to downsize within their own area people will do it.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 12,449 ✭✭✭✭pwurple


    Lumen wrote: »
    Is Ireland's approach to taxation of rental income different qualitatively from how it is treated in other countries with a functioning rental sector?

    Short answer is Absolutely Yes.

    In the netherlands, where a larger proportion of the population rent, and many for their lifetime, not at huge cost... all sorts of units available to rent, including boathouses etc. The mortgage is taken into account as an expense. You calculate the value of the property (the WOZ value, value of property minus mortgage) and are taxed on that. Sounds reasonable doesn't it!

    Also in netherlands, landlords have slightly stronger rights than here, which makes the risk lower. The right to terminate a temporary lease (the cooling off period) without giving a reason for example.


    Portugal, tax on rental income of 28%

    Spain it's 24% of rental income.

    Germany, the rate is around 16%.

    I'll not google the whole lot for you. :D


  • Registered Users Posts: 31,001 ✭✭✭✭Lumen


    pwurple wrote: »
    In the netherlands, where a larger proportion of the population rent, and many for their lifetime, not at huge cost... all sorts of units available to rent, including boathouses etc. The mortgage is taken into account as an expense. You calculate the value of the property (the WOZ value, value of property minus mortgage) and are taxed on that. Sounds reasonable doesn't it!

    OK, according to my maths it seems like Irish-Dutch taxes work out about the same if you're leveraged to the hilt (75% mortgage @ 5%) but as you pay off the principal things get progressively worse until you're eventually paying three times as much tax in Ireland as in Netherlands. That's excluding non-interest allowable expenses. Including them would reduce the Irish tax bill so that maximum leverage gives a lower-than-Dutch tax take, but unleveraged landlords will still be much worse off.


  • Registered Users Posts: 32,634 ✭✭✭✭Graces7


    Many people here are forgetting that a house isn't just a building to the residents/owners.

    To many it's their "home", full of memories, where their child spoke for the first time etc. a place where they have felt safe for most of their lives.

    It's also a place they have made "their own", decorated the way they like, with furniture they like etc., that may not be able to be replicated in a smaller property.


    But some people aren't sentimental in that case;

    The spare rooms aren't always "shrines", the widowed parent who moves into the downstairs room is sometimes freeing up the master bedroom for the married offspring when they visit, usually occasionally for celebrations, but sometimes, perhaps a decade or so later, for them to look after their elderly parent for a while instead of putting them into a nursing home.

    Given the significant legal and tax and other costs involved in moving, it isn't surprising that people choose to remain in their homes, even when sometimes that home is a little too small and at other times it's a bit too big.

    excellent appraisal. thank you/I have rented several houses in my years in Ireland and almost all have been homes of eg parents now gone that are still
    precious to the family.

    they rent them out to avoid losing them by selling. Three were first time lets after bereavements. I learned a lot re Irish family life from them and all you say is so right


  • Registered Users Posts: 13,979 ✭✭✭✭Cuddlesworth


    meeeeh wrote: »
    Big houses in rural areas are not an issue in relation to lack of housing. It's urban areas that suffer from lack of accommodation and that won't be solved by rural pensioners downsizing. They might have trouble maintaining and heating their properties but there are not buyers queuing for their houses.

    I'm still curious as to what constitutes under occupied. For the first 6 houses on my row, if you counted per bedroom, it would average out at 40% of bedrooms occupied.


  • Registered Users Posts: 11,624 ✭✭✭✭meeeeh


    I'm still curious as to what constitutes under occupied. For the first 6 houses on my row, if you counted per bedroom, it would average out at 40% of bedrooms occupied.

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

    For statistical purposes, a dwelling is defined as under-occupied if the household living in it has at its disposal more than the minimum number of rooms considered adequate, and equal to:

    one room for the household;
    one room per couple in the household;
    one room for each single person aged 18 or more;
    one room per pair of single people of the same gender between 12 and 17 years of age;
    one room for each single person between 12 and 17 years of age and not included in the previous category;
    one room per pair of children under 12 years of age.

    Looking at the above definition just about any couple not living in one bedroom apartment is living in under occupied dwelling. Also family with two kids under 12 who don't need to share bedroom and so on.


  • Registered Users Posts: 117 ✭✭YipeeDee


    Thanks for sharing those figures, I’ve been trying to find out the percentages paid by LL’s in other EU countries.
    Do you have any link to the full list or info by any chance please?
    Cheers :)


  • Registered Users Posts: 117 ✭✭YipeeDee


    pwurple wrote: »
    Short answer is Absolutely Yes.

    In the netherlands, where a larger proportion of the population rent, and many for their lifetime, not at huge cost... all sorts of units available to rent, including boathouses etc. The mortgage is taken into account as an expense. You calculate the value of the property (the WOZ value, value of property minus mortgage) and are taxed on that. Sounds reasonable doesn't it!

    Also in netherlands, landlords have slightly stronger rights than here, which makes the risk lower. The right to terminate a temporary lease (the cooling off period) without giving a reason for example.


    Portugal, tax on rental income of 28%

    Spain it's 24% of rental income.

    Germany, the rate is around 16%.

    I'll not google the whole lot for you. :D
    @Pwurple Thanks for sharing those figures, I’ve been trying to find out the percentages paid by LL’s in other EU countries.
    Do you have any link to the full list or info by any chance please?
    Cheers :)


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 12,449 ✭✭✭✭pwurple


    YipeeDee wrote: »
    @Pwurple Thanks for sharing those figures, I’ve been trying to find out the percentages paid by LL’s in other EU countries.
    Do you have any link to the full list or info by any chance please?
    Cheers :)

    No, you will have to do your own legwork there.


  • Registered Users Posts: 8,184 ✭✭✭riclad


    Theres alot of single people living in 3 bed house,s ,
    council houses, if someone has 2 kids ,they grow up and leave the house ,
    the tenant can stay in the house and just pay the council rent.
    The council will not ask them to move into a 1 bed council flat .
    Alot of young people from rural area,s leave home to work or study in the
    city when they are 18 and finished secondary school


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  • Registered Users Posts: 2,637 ✭✭✭brightspark


    Is there an abundance of single bedroom houses/apartments to move all these people who are "over occupying" properties into even if they were willing to move?


  • Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 17,642 Mod ✭✭✭✭Graham


    No, and I'd say that's part of the problem.

    Generally declining household sizes and an ageing population and all we do is keep spewing out 3 and 4 bed semis.


  • Registered Users Posts: 25 previousmass


    Is there an abundance of single bedroom houses/apartments to move all these people who are "over occupying" properties into even if they were willing to move?

    My single bedroom house is under occupied by the definition because I have both a kitchen and a sitting room.


  • Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 17,642 Mod ✭✭✭✭Graham


    There's a caveat at the top of the definition but no additional detail:
    An under-occupied dwelling is a dwelling deemed to be too large for the needs of the household living in it, in terms of excess rooms and more specifically bedrooms.


  • Registered Users Posts: 11,624 ✭✭✭✭meeeeh


    My single bedroom house is under occupied by the definition because I have both a kitchen and a sitting room.

    I think bathroom and kitchen are not counted, at least it would make sense. Otherwise every house or apartment that has bathroom and kitchen would be under occupied.


  • Registered Users Posts: 25 previousmass


    meeeeh wrote: »
    I think bathroom and kitchen are not counted, at least it would make sense. Otherwise every house or apartment that has bathroom and kitchen would be under occupied.

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

    Kitchens count. Bathrooms don't.


  • Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 17,642 Mod ✭✭✭✭Graham


    Which appears to be contradicted/caveated by the rooms definition as quoted in my previous post:

    "and more specifically bedrooms"


  • Registered Users Posts: 25 previousmass


    Graham wrote: »
    There's a caveat at the top of the definition but no additional detail:

    If the intent was to simply count bedrooms they would have specified bedrooms in the criteria.
    Should have anyway.

    If they are just counting bedrooms "one room for the household" seems strange. Is a single person house only under occupied if it has 3 bedrooms?


  • Registered Users Posts: 4,027 ✭✭✭H3llR4iser


    Well, it's not really rocket science - in the same report, it emerges Ireland has both the highest number of "under-occupied" dwelling, and the highest percentage of people living in houses as opposed to apartments; It's not complicated to see the two things are tightly related.

    As a continental European who grew up in an apartment and never ever lived in a house, however, I have to bring a slightly different angle to this - the premises of the study might be a bit too generic and skewing the result more than a bit.

    I currently live alone in a two-bedroom apartment, so I am technically a perfect study case for the statistic; Even if I had a partner, we'd still be "under occupying" as there'd be a spare bedroom.

    The reality is way different - I find the place TOO SMALL; The bedrooms are barely larger than the beds, there's only one small 3-doors wardrobe, the only form of "storage" is one single shelf in the hot press. I had to get a small "Billy" bookcase from IKEA to store, well, books - it's 80cm wide and to put it in the living room I had to play a game of Tetris with the rest of the furniture (one table, four chairs, one coffee table and a couch). And...this is by far the best apartment I've lived in here in Ireland.

    In a nutshell, dwellings here are often designed as if the occupiers will be a couple of cartoon characters, owning one outfit they wear every single day and with no interest in life other than sleeping, watching TV and working. Houses are often no better - I've been in plenty that, while they have a large surface area in absolute terms, are divided in a labyrinthic nightmare of tiny, almost unusable rooms, each barely able to contain a double bed.

    Over most continental EU, with the odd exception of the "shoebox" ones, apartments are usually designed to accommodate a family - the rooms are larger, there is thought given to storage even in rooms where you'd think you need none (big "entertainment cupboards" covering an entire wall offering a TV mount, places for books, display cases and objects of various kinds are common); as a result, you'd often have numerically less rooms, but bigger and more "up to the task" when it comes to comfortably host a family.

    It does make sense that people here go for places that have more rooms than they need, just to claim the space and storage from those, while in most of Europe, the same space will usually come in a less "fragmented" format, with less rooms.


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  • Registered Users Posts: 234 ✭✭seasidedub


    H3llR4iser wrote: »
    Well, it's not really rocket science - in the same report, it emerges Ireland has both the highest number of "under-occupied" dwelling, and the highest percentage of people living in houses as opposed to apartments; It's not complicated to see the two things are tightly related.

    As a continental European who grew up in an apartment and never ever lived in a house, however, I have to bring a slightly different angle to this - the premises of the study might be a bit too generic and skewing the result more than a bit.

    I currently live alone in a two-bedroom apartment, so I am technically a perfect study case for the statistic; Even if I had a partner, we'd still be "under occupying" as there'd be a spare bedroom.

    The reality is way different - I find the place TOO SMALL; The bedrooms are barely larger than the beds, there's only one small 3-doors wardrobe, the only form of "storage" is one single shelf in the hot press. I had to get a small "Billy" bookcase from IKEA to store, well, books - it's 80cm wide and to put it in the living room I had to play a game of Tetris with the rest of the furniture (one table, four chairs, one coffee table and a couch). And...this is by far the best apartment I've lived in here in Ireland.

    In a nutshell, dwellings here are often designed as if the occupiers will be a couple of cartoon characters, owning one outfit they wear every single day and with no interest in life other than sleeping, watching TV and working. Houses are often no better - I've been in plenty that, while they have a large surface area in absolute terms, are divided in a labyrinthic nightmare of tiny, almost unusable rooms, each barely able to contain a double bed.

    Over most continental EU, with the odd exception of the "shoebox" ones, apartments are usually designed to accommodate a family - the rooms are larger, there is thought given to storage even in rooms where you'd think you need none (big "entertainment cupboards" covering an entire wall offering a TV mount, places for books, display cases and objects of various kinds are common); as a result, you'd often have numerically less rooms, but bigger and more "up to the task" when it comes to comfortably host a family.

    It does make sense that people here go for places that have more rooms than they need, just to claim the space and storage from those, while in most of Europe, the same space will usually come in a less "fragmented" format, with less rooms.


    This is exactly what I'm talking about - the concept of "bedrooms " as a judgement of property over or under occupancy is rubbish.

    I also lived in Continental Europe and my 2 bed flat was 110sqm. There was loads of storage built in the square hall (was opposed to the narrow ones here) and the two bedrooms were spacious enough to have built in wardrobes on 2 of the walls. A 3 bed semi in Dublin is often 90sqm, particularly ones from the 60s/70s.

    I've been viewing houses as am moving and they still are not building any storage - narrow halls with nowhere for shoes/coats/bags , and if there are built in wardrobes they aren't enough to hold everything. And what about hobby stuff etc? I need my 4 bed (read: 2 normal and 2 mini) house - 2 of the upstairs rooms are just for storage!


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