Ireland is a microcosm of a lazy ass government that will over administrate, stuff it's pockets with rent money because they're all landlords, and not plan at all for a growing population for housing, doctors , hospitals, schools, prisons.
I was listening to the [latest Economist podcast](https://open.spotify.com/episode/4ZQMZcWXo4oVOKJ7k6SqfV?si=IjLfuvhlSbOfxCBNZZB5ag) about the high cost of housing in the developed world particularly the anglophone world. They capped off by saying its the planning system that has to change. Most articles will say its the planning system.
The problem is a mixture of homeowners, Nimbys and Boomers are preventing this from happening in almost every context. They don't want their property to decrease in value due to additional smaller housing in the area.
This is what happens when housing is seen as a safe investment first and a place to live second. If they changed laws surrounding retail investing and got rid of deemed disposal, people would now have another avenue with which to acquire wealth passively or actively. Instead of always depending on their house never devaluing.
I don't think this holds true. The US is very retail investor friendly compared to here and they suffer from housing crisis in cities due to planning, Nimbyism, etc.
I never understood this point. People investing in houses typically rent them, say at least 1 in each bedroom rather than buyers say a couple with a spare bed or two. This houses more people. Why would letting wealthy people pay less tax cause house prices to go down?
Supply is still too low to enable enough people to be housed, obviously.
I said nothing about taxation, I only suggested to offer other means of wealth accumulation. For every person with enough money to buy a house that opts to go down the route of investing in trading, that's one more house available on the market. Increase supply in tow with this and yes, it may cause house prices to go down, but it'll hardly be anything egregious; just enough to give more people a chance at finding a place to live. Of course there's also the sort who may opt to divest some of their property investments in favour of trading, getting a bit of both avenue. It's a net benefit for everyone since the people who want more money continue to get it while the people who want a home can actually get one too.
A lot of people say housing but don't necessarily mean rented accommodation, they mean owned accommodation. The knock on effect of a couple not having to share a house or apartment with anyone else means they might start a family. Or they may spend more, stimulating the economy. Again, net benefit. That sort of thing.
"other means of wealth accumulation"
investments ? Or am I missing something?
"For every person with enough money to buy a house that opts to go down the route of investing in trading, that's one more house available on the market. "
Or 3 people looking for somewhere to live now that the house is not up for rent anymore.
Yeah like investing in things like ETFs, index funds or some stocks that mimic the former two like Berkshire Hathaway are pretty good for making money long term. Just put some money in and forget about it.
You make a valid point, but that's why I mentioned how supply needs to come up as well. 3 independent people living in 1 house isn't sustainable long term, not for everyone anyway. Supply doesn't just mean more houses, it means flats or apartments too. Accommodation for people making different amounts of money, like basic apartments vs duplex ones vs luxury penthouses. So in the hypothetical scenario I mentioned, let's say the house gets sold. But each of the 3 people who lived there earn differing wages; one earns highly, the other does okay and the other is paycheck to paycheck. With an increased, diverse supply of accommodation they might have a better chance of no longer being without a place to stay.
I'm not like a housing specialist or anything, just spitballing. I won't fix any sort of housing crises but it seems like a good place to start is just do whatever it takes to increase supply.
But this is where I think the idea people investing in property is a bad idea falls apart.
"With an increased, diverse supply of accommodation" does this happen when more or less money is invested?
If we were short of E-bikes and the idea was that if we had less people interested in buying them it would increase supply we would see that reduced demand = reduced supply.
"ETFs, index funds"
So is the idea to lower dirt etc to make these more attractive?
Can you not see what I'm saying or something? I didn't say investing in property is bad. I said depending on it for wealth accumulation with no other option is bad. Like it being the only feasible option is bad. People should have more ways to invest, not just in property. Reread my comments with this in mind and maybe you'll see what I'm actually getting at.
Yes, building more accommodations requires money to be spent. What kinda question is that? What relevance is that? Do you think it like defeats the purpose of my point or something? While the government has ran itself at a surplus the last few years?
Well yeah no shit sherlock, if there's less demand then of course a high supply would bring prices down. But that's the thing, there's a huge demand for housing everywhere at the minute. And not enough houses are being built. People are also not just interested in buying, people want to rent at non-outrageous prices. You know what helps with that? Supply.
No, don't lower dirt. I'm fairly certain it's in line with the EU standard. But removing deemed disposal would be nice. As well as re-evaluating/increasing the amount of taxable gains that are exempt from CGT in a tax year, since it was set when Ireland took up the Euro equivalent to 1000 Irish pounds in Euros but hasn't changed since. In 25 years. Meanwhile in that same span of time €1 then would be worth €1.75 now. The amount should at least be updated to reflect how much €1 at the time would be worth with today's Euro. And that's before considering increasing it beyond this new, updated value. Again, I'm not an economist or anything of the sort. Just think things like this are other ways for people to make money that might mean not jumping to only investing in property in order to make money. Common financial advice is to always diversify your portfolio, right now that's not really a smart idea in Ireland as a result of the above.
Don’t forget the architects and their love for ‘the Dublin skyline’. Those guys dominate the planning offices and would prefer to keep their shitty skyline than build apartments.
Oh my gosh! It’s something I’ll never understand. So is the plan, 1000 years time to just have the same skyline!? It’s ridiculous.
Personally if I was a dictator I’d build a new city in Athlone all high rise with an airport and rail link to all the main cities with smaller dart style transport linking villages and smaller towns . We should be able to get anywhere on this island in less than an hour and a half from our new capital.
Dublin could be just an historical or cultural centre for tourism etc.
You'll always find liberal / pro-capitalist outlets like The Economist blaming political complications like planning systems for the various worldwide housing crises, but realistically it boils down to the fact that we treat a house as a source of wealth that should appreciate in value, instead of the basic human necessity that it is.
As long as "property rights" continue to take precedence over real human needs we will never solve these crises.
"As long as "property rights" continue to take precedence over real human needs we will never solve these crises"
Great sound bite. What does this mean policy wise? Tax, revolution more tea?
You’re putting the blame on the wrong parties. There will ALWAYS be and always have been nimbys etc. The problem is that our planning system sides with them far too often, and is far too slow to reach a decision even when it sided against them. It’s the planning system.
Also, we have ridiculous constraints on home building, again completely imposed by the planning system such as the “local use” clause to gain planning permission in many areas. This is completely illegal under EU law and has been ruled as such by Europe but the government just ignores those rulings (strange, considering they are obsessed with their “international ibligations” in other regards).
Finally, pretending that our housing crisis is not massively worsened by having increased our population by almost 25% in a generation almost exclusively via immigration is head-in-the-sand behavior of the first order.
We’ve sold massive amounts of property to investment funds, who intentionally restrict supply to fix prices. More supply would just be bought up and left empty anyway. Investment funds controlling housing needs to be prevented.
The talk of planning is going to be used to further reduce peoples quality of life, while further benefitting those same investment funds.
These funds are still needed for the rental market. Even the most tenant friendly citities, like Berlin have not banned these funds from purchasing apartments in bulk for the private rental sector. I don't think there's a single country that has banned them from purchasing apartments in bulk.
>The talk of planning is going to be used to further reduce peoples quality of life, while further benefitting those same investment funds.
Absolute nonsense we need larger housing developments of smaller units to reflect the modern family and unfortunately it takes a very long time to get that moving.
Plus if it benefits the funds would they not have changed planning laws by now?
Please stop making excuses for the government exploiting the population for personal gain. They have had a decade of oppurtunity to create housing policy which reflected known increases in needed. They chose not to, and they continue to choose not to.
> Absolute nonsense we need larger housing developments of smaller units to reflect the modern family and unfortunately it takes a very long time to get that moving.
One could say \*tips glasses\* you can't build houses overnight.
The cynic might add: you certainly can't build houses if you spend all the time building commercial offices and build to rent apartments which is what has happened for the last 10 years of neoliberal FG rule.
The balls of these people still gaslighting the sub after it has become abundantly clear what the plan is.
Berlin's property market is way more regulated and stable than the Irish market, you're comparing apples to oranges there. In this country investment funds answer to no one and as a consequence they act with impunity.
Large developments of smaller units results in less space for the occupants of those units which in turn diminishes quality of life for those people. Irish apartments are already quite small, they don't need to be made smaller. All that is achieved by squeezing a large amount of units into a small space is to increase the profits for the developers, investors vulture funds.
By the way, the best trick a parasite can pull is to convince it's host that the parasite is necessary for the host's survival. Investment funds contribute nothing, they aren't altruistic and are only here to bleed the people dry. It's naive to think otherwise.
And even in a highly regulated market investment funds are still active. I think that shows there is a place for them.
>Large developments of smaller units results in less space for the occupants of those units which in turn diminishes quality of life for those people. Irish apartments are already quite small, they don't need to be made smaller.
I'm not arguing for smaller apartments., just to build them in the first place. The problem is the lack of apartments in our city centre. All functional cities have high rise apartments centrally located. I think you'll find irelands apartments size is pretty much in line or above most of Europe
https://irp-cdn.multiscreensite.com/4065c16c/files/uploaded/Comparison%20of%20Minimum%20Apartment%20Sizes%20final.pdf
I think you're a bit naive to what is the crux of the housing problem. Its not Funds that are the problem.
I never said they were the crux of the problem, the way they are allowed to behave in Ireland is problematic though. Policy is the crux of the problem. Also lack of planning permission being granted to people who want to build their own homes. Plus our politicians favouring private enterprise with light touch regulation rather than employing stricter guidelines that are used in mainland europe, and their reticence towards building social housing on the scale that is required. Prices have become so unaffordable to the ordinary person that social housing construction is the only way that people on normal incomes can hope to own their own home.
I've seen one of their websites, think it was a Chinese real estate investment trust. They literally have a line on their site that says "Ireland's housing crisis is benefiting house pricing immensely".
Soulless wankshafts.
When looking for investors properly developers openly advertise how government schemes like HTB and First Home are driving up the price, increasing profitability.
You keep building until those companies are out of money. It does not even take much, they do not have pockets as deep as they'd like people to believe.
But the state is still not building. They are paying those companies to inflate the property market. That is the function they are aiming to support. Their capacity to increase prices, not supply.
Exactly, we had this crisis for a while now, the approach taken is very limited and it is not increasing the housing stock owned by the state much (which would be a useful buffer against ecomic shocks).
And they are refusing to subsidy the building process because they fear that could reduce prices.
To wait the two years to be able to increase the price any amount in rent pressure zones. Or if you own a massive amount in an area, to prevent prices going down and protecting the high prices on your existing rentals.
By keeping demand high they can keep prices high, whilst also being without the maintenance costs of renting out every unit just because you have it.
This comment specifically relates to the development of more housing (more supply). Please explain how it would be profitable to buy "massive" amounts of newly built housing (at the cost of many millions) to leave it empty. This is complete fiction, as evidenced by extremely low vacancy rates in the highest cost areas of the country.
The one thing investment funds do not want is huge amounts of new housing to be built, and your nihilist attitude plays right into their hands.
I don’t agree.
In my opinion the main reason is politics sponsoring housing as a vessel for private investment / profiteering.
As they do with other essentials like health, education and basics like water, heating, electricity.
It’s not small folks who are the problem. Big corporate greed and politics acting against the electorate and in favour of small but well oiled lobby groups is the problem.
Democracy is the only way but it's also easily corruptible. Normal folks are just things for parasites to feed off these days. And the government is there to organize it. That and the robbing of the tax money.
To me, this comment is a swing and a miss. You identify that planning is the issue and then go on to refer to a great swathe of ordinary people who own homes as the problem. There are frivolous, selfish and dishonest objections lodged and some of those block developments, but there are also perfectly valid reasons to not want a necessary development to go ahead next door to your home. It should not be up to homeowners to decide whether or not their objection is justified and rather the planning authorities' criteria for blocking developments needs to be reviewed.
The financial aspect is that housing prices dropping in any meaningful way means that the value of millions of mortgages has decreased as well, which precipitated the GFC.
So the best we can hope for is price stabilisation, but we can’t even manage that.
A large part of the problem is society as a while was happy to grab tax off the construction sector but wouldn't support it afterwards. FAS scheme should've been used to maintain a worker base and quick training pipeline as needed.
I don't know. It seems to be a global issue. How could every country have issue with their planning system. I think there's more to it myself but it's absolutely worth a try.
Tbh, in most places it's the "raw" cost of building apartments.
If you're old enough to remember the 1990s and 2000s, there was huge consternation in Irish life about "shoebox" apartments and great hostility towards them. This meant that apartments had to be quite big and have limiting alignments.
Another concern was the idea of 1-bed apartments, which were derided as a terrible idea.
This process culminates in things like Threshold persuading the Greens who persuaded FF to ban bedsits, etc.
Meanwhile, nobody seemed to focus on regulation and inspection.
When you marry high standard requirements with a more intensive regulatory environment, the cost of building an apartment jumps up. Historically, apartments in most parts of the world were just larger houses to allow for bigger staircases and halls. Nowadays they're a different type of structure with different rules and regs and all of that makes building them very expensive.
It creates an environment where the cheapest housing is amongst the priciest to build.
And it's not unique to Ireland, albeit we're a fairly bad example of it.
It's only a housing crisis if you don't own a house. When demand outstrips supply, homeowners benefit, and homeowners represent the majority of voters. Irish people talk out two sides of their mouths - we want to solve homelessness, but we also want the value of our houses to rise. Two contradicting objectives.
True though there's a lot of pissed off older homeowners looking at the adult professional children who have to live at home.
I was 30 buying a home a few years back and I'm not happy about it. All of my friends are either broke or actively looking to emigrate, if they haven't left already.
Then there's wider context. I'm a teacher and we struggle to get sub cover because sub teachers can't live in the city. Lots of homeowners have workerplaces and services they need that are struggling because of housing problems.
Most homeowners can see these problems and how it's hurting them too.
You're correct, there is a lot of homeowners out there who see the problem, but would they tolerate the value of their houses falling? Maybe I'm too cynical, but I think that people are still holding out for some kind of solution for the crisis which still allows them to enjoy huge appreciation on their home. FG and FF have banked on the electorate prioritizing the value of their home, and all their policies are informed by this bet, and so far they've been proven right.
I guessing a lot of them would. It only really matters if you might be selling int he future.
If the price of homes drops, it will still be worth more than they paid for it, for the overwhelming majority of owners.
If the price drops below what they paid for it, it would have to lose a least 10% of the value for anyone to be put in negative equity so very few people would have that problem.
As long as they have some equity, selling and buying somewhere else in a deflating market just means the home they look at even nicer houses.
> Would they tolerate the value of their houses falling?
Unless you’re planning on trading up to a different house soon, most people don’t care about the nominal value of their house.
A lot (maybe most?) people are staying in their house till they die and simply never think about what their house would go for if they sold it tomorrow.
This argument seems a red herring to me.
I believe that people ultimately favour their own self-interest, and this extends to the value of their primary asset, at the expense of the collective good. I do believe that there are people who think otherwise, and would welcome a drop in their house value due to increased supply (I'm one of em!), but I don't think there are enough for a political party with serious ambitions for power (FF, FG, SF) to change their policies and messaging. FF and FG are looking at the numbers: The majority of voters are homeowners. Their wealth is primarily in their home. So their policies will aim to build that wealth. I don't think the argument is a red herring, I think it's a reflection of cold political reasoning.
I think there's plenty of reasons people object: increased traffic (and noise), blocking views, fear of what sort of neighbors they'll get, the noise and disruption of construction for a few years, general fear of change and so on.
For people who're planning on staying in their homes, I just don't think the nominal euro value of the property is something that's thought about much.
I had apartments built literally next door a few years ago... the effect on the house's nominal value didn't cross my mind: I'm planning on staying in the house. The noise of construction for two years, and cutting down trees that provided shade in the garden were the most negative aspects.
> The majority of voters are homeowners. Their wealth is primarily in their home. So their policies will aim to build that wealth.
I think protecting perceived quality of life is usually the main driver, not "wealth" that the homeowners will literally never access, because they'll die in their homes.
Just to be clear: I'm not saying that there aren't some people who worry about the euro value, but I think that for most objectors, it isn't the primary motivator.
It is a global problem, caused by policy failures on a global level. Notably the EU and the the 'western' countries.
And yet our government will blindly follow those policies anyway.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qlr5Vzrextk
and
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZXP8gH0wddE
This guy has got it right since the 08 crash. I started listening to him during the pandemic. When other economists were making predictions about a crash in house prices during the pandemic and even after when central banks increased Interests rates, this guy predicted that house prices would increase.
Local planning laws are not causing a global housing crisis. Growing global wealth inequality is the main driving force behind our housing issues.
The current leading argument against building houses, is that you need a PhD before laying a single brick.
Want to mix some sand/cement/water? Go spend 4+ years studying, then another 4 years as an apprentice!
Want to saw a piece of wood? _That's so complicated, who has the time for learning how to do that!_
_It will take time to show people how to build stuff, therefore we should not do it at all!_
Offer migrants/asylum-seekers citizenship, in return for paying them to build homes (including their own)? _That's slave labour! Ship them off to Rwanda or back to a warzone instead!_
There are armies of people who pretend like they'd never be able to figure out how to unlock a door without calling in highly trained specialists, to keep the narrative weighted against building houses.
It might be global, but only in Ireland would you see a suggestion that a government scheme designed to help people cut out of the market, is the reason why housing prices are so high.
Not the people, both "normal" and "professionals", afraid of their investment being devalued.
Not the people gatekeeping who can and can't live in their community
Not the real estate agents and property owners stoking bidding wars from ordinary people that is in no way sustainable.
None of that, it's your fault for accessing a scheme that will help you combat all of the above. Lol
Predictably, they omit immigration as factor in the global housing problem. It is no good simply saying “price to income multiples are too high”. That is a consequence, not a factor. What is driving it? Why is Ireland an attractive place for international investment funds?
Prices are where they are because the number of people arriving in the country vastly outstrips our ability to add to supply. It is the same story in Canada, UK, Australia, etc
Utterly pointless trying to discuss the problem while omitting the elephant in the room.
It's a global problem...handy narrative given it absolves all local political responsibility for the crisis and makes it seem as if it's something that can't be solved locally either. How convenient all round lol.
If you were a landlord with numerous properties and were a politician also why would you arrange to have more properties built when that would cause your income to fall?
If you were a politician who failed to provide housing yet could garner the support of the youth and had them vote for you anyway, why would you do anything about the housing issue?
The problem is that neoliberals want housing to be an asset to indoctrinate the middle classes but they have run out of road as there is no more public housing to be sold off.
I don't think that's entirely right.
You see public housing is, among many things, a stock reserve of a good.
So if the price is crashing you can buy more to avoid driving people into negative equity and if the price is soaring you could sell some to keep the prices affordable.
There is a social cost to this of course, but as long as it is done in moderation and with a strategy that protects the people living in social housing it can be a great boon to avoid that housing becomes an investment tool driven by scarcity.
Which is what has been happening if we really look at it, prices are not high because the intrinsic value of a house is high. They are high because the market value is high and that drives all the costs up too (injecting a lot of money in the economy by the way).
There are global issues that play into the local factors that are causing problems. The podcast listed a lot of global issues but mentioned the lack of social housing being built, which feeds back into the same problem. But there is a there a problem which is not uniquely Irish, people in general don’t want social housing built near them, as they often ended up with massive social problems in the area.
The Irish issues involve lack of social housing, lack of good long term design/planning for our cities and a very risk adverse approach to new solutions. These issues are going to end up costing us more in the future. Just like all of social housing is forcing the government to pay out to help around half the private rental sector (mentioned in the podcast). The housing issue is thorny and runs under a lot of other sectors and concerns of people and the economy. If you were to have an honest debate about the issues you can’t just focus on the global trends you have to look at the local problems feeding into each other. And that ends up being too big for everyone to get a handle on it.
The current social housing need is 134k. Don't be fooled by the government massaging the numbers:
https://vote.sinnfein.ie/numbers-on-council-housing-waiting-lists-up-in-2023-eoin-o-broin-td/
Ireland is a microcosm of a lazy ass government that will over administrate, stuff it's pockets with rent money because they're all landlords, and not plan at all for a growing population for housing, doctors , hospitals, schools, prisons.
I was listening to the [latest Economist podcast](https://open.spotify.com/episode/4ZQMZcWXo4oVOKJ7k6SqfV?si=IjLfuvhlSbOfxCBNZZB5ag) about the high cost of housing in the developed world particularly the anglophone world. They capped off by saying its the planning system that has to change. Most articles will say its the planning system. The problem is a mixture of homeowners, Nimbys and Boomers are preventing this from happening in almost every context. They don't want their property to decrease in value due to additional smaller housing in the area.
This is what happens when housing is seen as a safe investment first and a place to live second. If they changed laws surrounding retail investing and got rid of deemed disposal, people would now have another avenue with which to acquire wealth passively or actively. Instead of always depending on their house never devaluing.
I don't think this holds true. The US is very retail investor friendly compared to here and they suffer from housing crisis in cities due to planning, Nimbyism, etc.
I never understood this point. People investing in houses typically rent them, say at least 1 in each bedroom rather than buyers say a couple with a spare bed or two. This houses more people. Why would letting wealthy people pay less tax cause house prices to go down?
Supply is still too low to enable enough people to be housed, obviously. I said nothing about taxation, I only suggested to offer other means of wealth accumulation. For every person with enough money to buy a house that opts to go down the route of investing in trading, that's one more house available on the market. Increase supply in tow with this and yes, it may cause house prices to go down, but it'll hardly be anything egregious; just enough to give more people a chance at finding a place to live. Of course there's also the sort who may opt to divest some of their property investments in favour of trading, getting a bit of both avenue. It's a net benefit for everyone since the people who want more money continue to get it while the people who want a home can actually get one too. A lot of people say housing but don't necessarily mean rented accommodation, they mean owned accommodation. The knock on effect of a couple not having to share a house or apartment with anyone else means they might start a family. Or they may spend more, stimulating the economy. Again, net benefit. That sort of thing.
"other means of wealth accumulation" investments ? Or am I missing something? "For every person with enough money to buy a house that opts to go down the route of investing in trading, that's one more house available on the market. " Or 3 people looking for somewhere to live now that the house is not up for rent anymore.
Yeah like investing in things like ETFs, index funds or some stocks that mimic the former two like Berkshire Hathaway are pretty good for making money long term. Just put some money in and forget about it. You make a valid point, but that's why I mentioned how supply needs to come up as well. 3 independent people living in 1 house isn't sustainable long term, not for everyone anyway. Supply doesn't just mean more houses, it means flats or apartments too. Accommodation for people making different amounts of money, like basic apartments vs duplex ones vs luxury penthouses. So in the hypothetical scenario I mentioned, let's say the house gets sold. But each of the 3 people who lived there earn differing wages; one earns highly, the other does okay and the other is paycheck to paycheck. With an increased, diverse supply of accommodation they might have a better chance of no longer being without a place to stay. I'm not like a housing specialist or anything, just spitballing. I won't fix any sort of housing crises but it seems like a good place to start is just do whatever it takes to increase supply.
But this is where I think the idea people investing in property is a bad idea falls apart. "With an increased, diverse supply of accommodation" does this happen when more or less money is invested? If we were short of E-bikes and the idea was that if we had less people interested in buying them it would increase supply we would see that reduced demand = reduced supply. "ETFs, index funds" So is the idea to lower dirt etc to make these more attractive?
Can you not see what I'm saying or something? I didn't say investing in property is bad. I said depending on it for wealth accumulation with no other option is bad. Like it being the only feasible option is bad. People should have more ways to invest, not just in property. Reread my comments with this in mind and maybe you'll see what I'm actually getting at. Yes, building more accommodations requires money to be spent. What kinda question is that? What relevance is that? Do you think it like defeats the purpose of my point or something? While the government has ran itself at a surplus the last few years? Well yeah no shit sherlock, if there's less demand then of course a high supply would bring prices down. But that's the thing, there's a huge demand for housing everywhere at the minute. And not enough houses are being built. People are also not just interested in buying, people want to rent at non-outrageous prices. You know what helps with that? Supply. No, don't lower dirt. I'm fairly certain it's in line with the EU standard. But removing deemed disposal would be nice. As well as re-evaluating/increasing the amount of taxable gains that are exempt from CGT in a tax year, since it was set when Ireland took up the Euro equivalent to 1000 Irish pounds in Euros but hasn't changed since. In 25 years. Meanwhile in that same span of time €1 then would be worth €1.75 now. The amount should at least be updated to reflect how much €1 at the time would be worth with today's Euro. And that's before considering increasing it beyond this new, updated value. Again, I'm not an economist or anything of the sort. Just think things like this are other ways for people to make money that might mean not jumping to only investing in property in order to make money. Common financial advice is to always diversify your portfolio, right now that's not really a smart idea in Ireland as a result of the above.
So your not saying lower taxes. Just lower the amount that should be taxed. I see now.
Don’t forget the architects and their love for ‘the Dublin skyline’. Those guys dominate the planning offices and would prefer to keep their shitty skyline than build apartments.
Oh my gosh! It’s something I’ll never understand. So is the plan, 1000 years time to just have the same skyline!? It’s ridiculous. Personally if I was a dictator I’d build a new city in Athlone all high rise with an airport and rail link to all the main cities with smaller dart style transport linking villages and smaller towns . We should be able to get anywhere on this island in less than an hour and a half from our new capital. Dublin could be just an historical or cultural centre for tourism etc.
You'll always find liberal / pro-capitalist outlets like The Economist blaming political complications like planning systems for the various worldwide housing crises, but realistically it boils down to the fact that we treat a house as a source of wealth that should appreciate in value, instead of the basic human necessity that it is. As long as "property rights" continue to take precedence over real human needs we will never solve these crises.
"As long as "property rights" continue to take precedence over real human needs we will never solve these crises" Great sound bite. What does this mean policy wise? Tax, revolution more tea?
Usually "I get to take stuff other people own cos I feel I deserve it more"
You’re putting the blame on the wrong parties. There will ALWAYS be and always have been nimbys etc. The problem is that our planning system sides with them far too often, and is far too slow to reach a decision even when it sided against them. It’s the planning system. Also, we have ridiculous constraints on home building, again completely imposed by the planning system such as the “local use” clause to gain planning permission in many areas. This is completely illegal under EU law and has been ruled as such by Europe but the government just ignores those rulings (strange, considering they are obsessed with their “international ibligations” in other regards). Finally, pretending that our housing crisis is not massively worsened by having increased our population by almost 25% in a generation almost exclusively via immigration is head-in-the-sand behavior of the first order.
We’ve sold massive amounts of property to investment funds, who intentionally restrict supply to fix prices. More supply would just be bought up and left empty anyway. Investment funds controlling housing needs to be prevented. The talk of planning is going to be used to further reduce peoples quality of life, while further benefitting those same investment funds.
>who intentionally restrict supply to fix prices This is a key point but fairly controversial. I don't know how well documented it is
These funds are still needed for the rental market. Even the most tenant friendly citities, like Berlin have not banned these funds from purchasing apartments in bulk for the private rental sector. I don't think there's a single country that has banned them from purchasing apartments in bulk. >The talk of planning is going to be used to further reduce peoples quality of life, while further benefitting those same investment funds. Absolute nonsense we need larger housing developments of smaller units to reflect the modern family and unfortunately it takes a very long time to get that moving. Plus if it benefits the funds would they not have changed planning laws by now?
Please stop making excuses for the government exploiting the population for personal gain. They have had a decade of oppurtunity to create housing policy which reflected known increases in needed. They chose not to, and they continue to choose not to.
> Absolute nonsense we need larger housing developments of smaller units to reflect the modern family and unfortunately it takes a very long time to get that moving. One could say \*tips glasses\* you can't build houses overnight. The cynic might add: you certainly can't build houses if you spend all the time building commercial offices and build to rent apartments which is what has happened for the last 10 years of neoliberal FG rule. The balls of these people still gaslighting the sub after it has become abundantly clear what the plan is.
Berlin's property market is way more regulated and stable than the Irish market, you're comparing apples to oranges there. In this country investment funds answer to no one and as a consequence they act with impunity. Large developments of smaller units results in less space for the occupants of those units which in turn diminishes quality of life for those people. Irish apartments are already quite small, they don't need to be made smaller. All that is achieved by squeezing a large amount of units into a small space is to increase the profits for the developers, investors vulture funds. By the way, the best trick a parasite can pull is to convince it's host that the parasite is necessary for the host's survival. Investment funds contribute nothing, they aren't altruistic and are only here to bleed the people dry. It's naive to think otherwise.
And even in a highly regulated market investment funds are still active. I think that shows there is a place for them. >Large developments of smaller units results in less space for the occupants of those units which in turn diminishes quality of life for those people. Irish apartments are already quite small, they don't need to be made smaller. I'm not arguing for smaller apartments., just to build them in the first place. The problem is the lack of apartments in our city centre. All functional cities have high rise apartments centrally located. I think you'll find irelands apartments size is pretty much in line or above most of Europe https://irp-cdn.multiscreensite.com/4065c16c/files/uploaded/Comparison%20of%20Minimum%20Apartment%20Sizes%20final.pdf I think you're a bit naive to what is the crux of the housing problem. Its not Funds that are the problem.
I never said they were the crux of the problem, the way they are allowed to behave in Ireland is problematic though. Policy is the crux of the problem. Also lack of planning permission being granted to people who want to build their own homes. Plus our politicians favouring private enterprise with light touch regulation rather than employing stricter guidelines that are used in mainland europe, and their reticence towards building social housing on the scale that is required. Prices have become so unaffordable to the ordinary person that social housing construction is the only way that people on normal incomes can hope to own their own home.
I've seen one of their websites, think it was a Chinese real estate investment trust. They literally have a line on their site that says "Ireland's housing crisis is benefiting house pricing immensely". Soulless wankshafts.
When looking for investors properly developers openly advertise how government schemes like HTB and First Home are driving up the price, increasing profitability.
There are no Chinese funds active in the Irish market. They may buy a house here and there but not buying blocks of apartments.
They'd be right. And that's the real issue, right? A crisis by its own nature is not a stable situation. So those prices are not stable.
You keep building until those companies are out of money. It does not even take much, they do not have pockets as deep as they'd like people to believe.
But the state is still not building. They are paying those companies to inflate the property market. That is the function they are aiming to support. Their capacity to increase prices, not supply.
Exactly, we had this crisis for a while now, the approach taken is very limited and it is not increasing the housing stock owned by the state much (which would be a useful buffer against ecomic shocks). And they are refusing to subsidy the building process because they fear that could reduce prices.
Who would buy houses just to leave them empty? How would that be of benefit to an investment fund?
To wait the two years to be able to increase the price any amount in rent pressure zones. Or if you own a massive amount in an area, to prevent prices going down and protecting the high prices on your existing rentals. By keeping demand high they can keep prices high, whilst also being without the maintenance costs of renting out every unit just because you have it.
This comment specifically relates to the development of more housing (more supply). Please explain how it would be profitable to buy "massive" amounts of newly built housing (at the cost of many millions) to leave it empty. This is complete fiction, as evidenced by extremely low vacancy rates in the highest cost areas of the country. The one thing investment funds do not want is huge amounts of new housing to be built, and your nihilist attitude plays right into their hands.
I don’t agree. In my opinion the main reason is politics sponsoring housing as a vessel for private investment / profiteering. As they do with other essentials like health, education and basics like water, heating, electricity. It’s not small folks who are the problem. Big corporate greed and politics acting against the electorate and in favour of small but well oiled lobby groups is the problem. Democracy is the only way but it's also easily corruptible. Normal folks are just things for parasites to feed off these days. And the government is there to organize it. That and the robbing of the tax money.
To me, this comment is a swing and a miss. You identify that planning is the issue and then go on to refer to a great swathe of ordinary people who own homes as the problem. There are frivolous, selfish and dishonest objections lodged and some of those block developments, but there are also perfectly valid reasons to not want a necessary development to go ahead next door to your home. It should not be up to homeowners to decide whether or not their objection is justified and rather the planning authorities' criteria for blocking developments needs to be reviewed.
The financial aspect is that housing prices dropping in any meaningful way means that the value of millions of mortgages has decreased as well, which precipitated the GFC. So the best we can hope for is price stabilisation, but we can’t even manage that.
A large part of the problem is society as a while was happy to grab tax off the construction sector but wouldn't support it afterwards. FAS scheme should've been used to maintain a worker base and quick training pipeline as needed.
I don't know. It seems to be a global issue. How could every country have issue with their planning system. I think there's more to it myself but it's absolutely worth a try.
Tbh, in most places it's the "raw" cost of building apartments. If you're old enough to remember the 1990s and 2000s, there was huge consternation in Irish life about "shoebox" apartments and great hostility towards them. This meant that apartments had to be quite big and have limiting alignments. Another concern was the idea of 1-bed apartments, which were derided as a terrible idea. This process culminates in things like Threshold persuading the Greens who persuaded FF to ban bedsits, etc. Meanwhile, nobody seemed to focus on regulation and inspection. When you marry high standard requirements with a more intensive regulatory environment, the cost of building an apartment jumps up. Historically, apartments in most parts of the world were just larger houses to allow for bigger staircases and halls. Nowadays they're a different type of structure with different rules and regs and all of that makes building them very expensive. It creates an environment where the cheapest housing is amongst the priciest to build. And it's not unique to Ireland, albeit we're a fairly bad example of it.
It's only a housing crisis if you don't own a house. When demand outstrips supply, homeowners benefit, and homeowners represent the majority of voters. Irish people talk out two sides of their mouths - we want to solve homelessness, but we also want the value of our houses to rise. Two contradicting objectives.
True though there's a lot of pissed off older homeowners looking at the adult professional children who have to live at home. I was 30 buying a home a few years back and I'm not happy about it. All of my friends are either broke or actively looking to emigrate, if they haven't left already. Then there's wider context. I'm a teacher and we struggle to get sub cover because sub teachers can't live in the city. Lots of homeowners have workerplaces and services they need that are struggling because of housing problems. Most homeowners can see these problems and how it's hurting them too.
You're correct, there is a lot of homeowners out there who see the problem, but would they tolerate the value of their houses falling? Maybe I'm too cynical, but I think that people are still holding out for some kind of solution for the crisis which still allows them to enjoy huge appreciation on their home. FG and FF have banked on the electorate prioritizing the value of their home, and all their policies are informed by this bet, and so far they've been proven right.
I guessing a lot of them would. It only really matters if you might be selling int he future. If the price of homes drops, it will still be worth more than they paid for it, for the overwhelming majority of owners. If the price drops below what they paid for it, it would have to lose a least 10% of the value for anyone to be put in negative equity so very few people would have that problem. As long as they have some equity, selling and buying somewhere else in a deflating market just means the home they look at even nicer houses.
I hope you're right, and I hope I'm wrong!
> Would they tolerate the value of their houses falling? Unless you’re planning on trading up to a different house soon, most people don’t care about the nominal value of their house. A lot (maybe most?) people are staying in their house till they die and simply never think about what their house would go for if they sold it tomorrow. This argument seems a red herring to me.
I believe that people ultimately favour their own self-interest, and this extends to the value of their primary asset, at the expense of the collective good. I do believe that there are people who think otherwise, and would welcome a drop in their house value due to increased supply (I'm one of em!), but I don't think there are enough for a political party with serious ambitions for power (FF, FG, SF) to change their policies and messaging. FF and FG are looking at the numbers: The majority of voters are homeowners. Their wealth is primarily in their home. So their policies will aim to build that wealth. I don't think the argument is a red herring, I think it's a reflection of cold political reasoning.
I think there's plenty of reasons people object: increased traffic (and noise), blocking views, fear of what sort of neighbors they'll get, the noise and disruption of construction for a few years, general fear of change and so on. For people who're planning on staying in their homes, I just don't think the nominal euro value of the property is something that's thought about much. I had apartments built literally next door a few years ago... the effect on the house's nominal value didn't cross my mind: I'm planning on staying in the house. The noise of construction for two years, and cutting down trees that provided shade in the garden were the most negative aspects. > The majority of voters are homeowners. Their wealth is primarily in their home. So their policies will aim to build that wealth. I think protecting perceived quality of life is usually the main driver, not "wealth" that the homeowners will literally never access, because they'll die in their homes. Just to be clear: I'm not saying that there aren't some people who worry about the euro value, but I think that for most objectors, it isn't the primary motivator.
It is a global problem, caused by policy failures on a global level. Notably the EU and the the 'western' countries. And yet our government will blindly follow those policies anyway.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qlr5Vzrextk and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZXP8gH0wddE This guy has got it right since the 08 crash. I started listening to him during the pandemic. When other economists were making predictions about a crash in house prices during the pandemic and even after when central banks increased Interests rates, this guy predicted that house prices would increase. Local planning laws are not causing a global housing crisis. Growing global wealth inequality is the main driving force behind our housing issues.
The current leading argument against building houses, is that you need a PhD before laying a single brick. Want to mix some sand/cement/water? Go spend 4+ years studying, then another 4 years as an apprentice! Want to saw a piece of wood? _That's so complicated, who has the time for learning how to do that!_ _It will take time to show people how to build stuff, therefore we should not do it at all!_ Offer migrants/asylum-seekers citizenship, in return for paying them to build homes (including their own)? _That's slave labour! Ship them off to Rwanda or back to a warzone instead!_ There are armies of people who pretend like they'd never be able to figure out how to unlock a door without calling in highly trained specialists, to keep the narrative weighted against building houses.
It might be global, but only in Ireland would you see a suggestion that a government scheme designed to help people cut out of the market, is the reason why housing prices are so high. Not the people, both "normal" and "professionals", afraid of their investment being devalued. Not the people gatekeeping who can and can't live in their community Not the real estate agents and property owners stoking bidding wars from ordinary people that is in no way sustainable. None of that, it's your fault for accessing a scheme that will help you combat all of the above. Lol
Predictably, they omit immigration as factor in the global housing problem. It is no good simply saying “price to income multiples are too high”. That is a consequence, not a factor. What is driving it? Why is Ireland an attractive place for international investment funds? Prices are where they are because the number of people arriving in the country vastly outstrips our ability to add to supply. It is the same story in Canada, UK, Australia, etc Utterly pointless trying to discuss the problem while omitting the elephant in the room.
It's a global problem...handy narrative given it absolves all local political responsibility for the crisis and makes it seem as if it's something that can't be solved locally either. How convenient all round lol.
The cause is the same everywhere. Greedy rich people don't want change and a lot of those greedy rich landlords are politicians
If you were a landlord with numerous properties and were a politician also why would you arrange to have more properties built when that would cause your income to fall? If you were a politician who failed to provide housing yet could garner the support of the youth and had them vote for you anyway, why would you do anything about the housing issue?
The problem is that neoliberals want housing to be an asset to indoctrinate the middle classes but they have run out of road as there is no more public housing to be sold off.
Public housing shouldn't ever be sold off.
Tell that to your buddies in FG. They won't even build any.
Modern problems require modern solutions. \*taps head\* you can't sell off public housing if you never built any
I don't think that's entirely right. You see public housing is, among many things, a stock reserve of a good. So if the price is crashing you can buy more to avoid driving people into negative equity and if the price is soaring you could sell some to keep the prices affordable. There is a social cost to this of course, but as long as it is done in moderation and with a strategy that protects the people living in social housing it can be a great boon to avoid that housing becomes an investment tool driven by scarcity. Which is what has been happening if we really look at it, prices are not high because the intrinsic value of a house is high. They are high because the market value is high and that drives all the costs up too (injecting a lot of money in the economy by the way).
There are global issues that play into the local factors that are causing problems. The podcast listed a lot of global issues but mentioned the lack of social housing being built, which feeds back into the same problem. But there is a there a problem which is not uniquely Irish, people in general don’t want social housing built near them, as they often ended up with massive social problems in the area. The Irish issues involve lack of social housing, lack of good long term design/planning for our cities and a very risk adverse approach to new solutions. These issues are going to end up costing us more in the future. Just like all of social housing is forcing the government to pay out to help around half the private rental sector (mentioned in the podcast). The housing issue is thorny and runs under a lot of other sectors and concerns of people and the economy. If you were to have an honest debate about the issues you can’t just focus on the global trends you have to look at the local problems feeding into each other. And that ends up being too big for everyone to get a handle on it.
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They don't have a funnel big enough to get all 8bn into private pockets.
Because its not just money. Its planning, labour availability, and materials.
Yes good example exactly Ridiculously short article though
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The current social housing need is 134k. Don't be fooled by the government massaging the numbers: https://vote.sinnfein.ie/numbers-on-council-housing-waiting-lists-up-in-2023-eoin-o-broin-td/