Rent Control

The problem with Rent Control is that it does not address the gap between supply and demand. I know I'll get the "we need to move beyond market economics" comments, but there never seems to be anything suggested as to what we need to move beyond to.

Rent control is politically popular because it appears to the voting public that the government is controlling those nasty capitalist landlords. Ultimately though, it reduces standards, it reduces supply and it increases prices for new tenants. Sweeping out the tide can never work, and neither can trying to stop market forces.

Given the new Airbnb interference yesterday, with more to come, along with all the other attempts to effectively sieze control of people's properties I certainly don't see any future in property investment in ireland anymore.

Mr. Incognito wrote: »

I live in Dublin. It's quite expensive.

I often pass posters for some Socialist having a meeting about Rent Control.

Lets put a cap on rent. Sounds great - doesn't it. However its not.

http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/RentControl.html

Economists are virtually unanimous in concluding that rent controls are destructive. In a 1990 poll of 464 economists published in the May 1992 issue of the American Economic Review, 93 percent of U.S. respondents agreed, either completely or with provisos, that “a ceiling on rents reduces the quantity and quality of housing available.”1

Similarly, another study reported that more than 95 percent of the Canadian economists polled agreed with the statement.2 The agreement cuts across the usual political spectrum, ranging all the way from Nobel Prize winners milton friedman and friedrich hayek on the “right” to their fellow Nobel laureate gunnar myrdal, an important architect of the Swedish Labor Party’s welfare state, on the “left.”

Myrdal stated, “Rent control has in certain Western countries constituted, maybe, the worst example of poor planning by governments lacking courage and vision.”3 His fellow Swedish economist (and socialist) Assar Lindbeck asserted, “In many cases rent control appears to be the most efficient technique presently known to destroy a city—except for bombing.”4

The PRTB Statistics show 80% of Registered Landlords have 1 property and 90% of Registered Landlords have 2 properties.

If we want cheap rent we have to make building large apartments cheaper and build up. You want cheap then you make it easier to build- relaxed planning laws in specific zones. The PRTB has been a disaster allowing tenants to squat for 18 months without paying rent and clogging supply.

Ways to solve the housing crisis.

Short Term

1. Allow Adjudicators at the PRTB to dismiss vexatious claims without a automatic right of appeal to the Tribunal.

2. Regulate properly for long term renting. Irish people need to get over this nonsense Idea of owning a three bedroom home in Dublin.

3. Allow Landlords a 100% income tax deduction on rent received from social and affordable housing tenants.

4. Mandatory for the PRTB to hold Deposits. This ensures you are registered and cuts out cash in hand slum landlords.

Medium Term

5. Relax planning laws for parts of the inner city to allow high rise residential development.

Long Term

6. More public infrastructure to allow people commute from longer distances.

I really wish we would stop electing idiots and run this country properly.

I totally agree with your ideas, but they will never happen with the current "useful idiots" Irish politician. Look instead at what they are trying to do:
http://oireachtasdebates.oireachtas.ie/debates%20authoring/debateswebpack.nsf/takes/dail2017102400046?opendocument

I suggest the forum members to read the scary debate of these communists representatives that are trying to suspend the constitutional right to private property (in all but name by tabling a glaring uncostitutional motion) using the housing crisis as an excuse to turn the country into a socialist state. The only good thing was that finally the Housing minister clearly put his foot down and stated that the government is against it, but Fianna Fail is taking a very treacherous position on this (for sure to get some political gains)

The constitutional right of private property is not for the Oireachtas alone to decide, if they really want to suspend it, they should follow appropriate constitutional routes and present it to the people in a referendum, I seriously doubt they would get it through.

What really worries me is that if socialists/communists parties in Ireland gain more votes in the next election, they will absolutely destroy the Irish economy (not just the residential housing market like they are already doing).

The only good news from the motion is that the Oireachtas was basically split in 3 FG vs FF vs Socialists/Communists and nothing came out of it (the original motion was rejected yesterday):
http://oireachtasdebates.oireachtas.ie/debates%20authoring/debateswebpack.nsf/takes/dail2017102600024?opendocument

I also want to add a comment on the particular poster making gratuitous jokes on such a serious topic like the one raised by the OP. This is the property forum, not the online humour forum that he can find here:
https://www.boards.ie/b/forum/22
where I am sure his/her humour will be much more appreciated.

Browney7 wrote: »

I must have been asleep the last few years and missed the socialist/communist parties driving the economy off a cliff in the mid 2000's?

Did I then miss them nationalising defunct banks of no systemic importance adding billions to the national debt?

Surely I didn't miss them presiding over the gross mis management of NAMA and screwing up future infrastructural and housing provision for years. Have they also created a situation where we now have Poor houses (cough "family hubs") and over three thousand children living in emergency accommodation?

Have they stood by and let banks treat thousands of property owners disgracefully by abdicating contractual obligations for years by revoking tracker mortgages and misleading customers?

Those communists really screwed everything up alright. Let me get my pitchfork

I agree on the fact that FF massively screwed up the Irish economy and then FG just ignored any warning on housing, but where I strongly disagree is that by defending the communist/socialist Venezuela style policies of PBP, Sinn Féin and the likes your ideas become a serious problem for the economy, especially when these parties try to introduce them in a total uncostitutional way using the housing crisis as an excuse as they tried with the last defeated motion and the Anti-Eviction bill in January. Abolition of property rights by the back-door is really what they would like, because the front-door (i.e. a referendum) would result in a major defeat for them: Ireland is not yet a socialist republic, the vast majority of the Irish people still work hard, own property and do not depend on state handouts.
FG and FF are not good and incompetent, but the alternatives are way worse and in my life I have touched first hand the results of their comrades policies (their top priority policy is always the suspension of individual property rights) since the 80s (Eastern Europe, Cuba, Venezuela). I have profound hate of this kind of people and their policies and their way to impose them on other people (through violence and oppression).

Browney7 wrote: »

Something has to give and the masses need a break which they aren't seeing our "centre" delivering.

Essentially the "have's" will have to concede they have enough and more needs to go round to the "have nots".

A fiver a week extra to take home pay to pay for astronomic rent ain't going to cut it much longer.

So you think those who work every day that pay over half of their pay to taxes and mortgage or rent should have less in their pocket at the end of the day, so that the "have nots" who don't work get more? I find your logic.... disturbing. But not surprising.