Charities now buying more homes than cuckoo funds as state-funded housing bodies bought close to €1bn in property last year
by NotAnotherOne2024
Charities now buying more homes than cuckoo funds as state-funded housing bodies bought close to €1bn in property last year
by NotAnotherOne2024
23 comments
This sounds an awful lot like taxpayers bidding against themselves.
Haha bidding against a charity to buy a home 💀
“The biggest single residential property deal last year was Clúid Housing’s €159m deal for 328 units at Airton Plaza in Tallaght, Dublin, with many of the units already earmarked for cost-rental tenancies.
Approved housing bodies (AHB), which are independent charities but work largely with taxpayer funding, have emerged as the largest buyers of multiple housing units in Ireland, the trawl of records shows.
The state-funded AHBs manage the properties – primarily apartment complexes – for both social housing tenants and subsidised private sector tenancies under the cost-rental model.
An analysis of large-scale, multi-unit acquisitions reported to the Property Price Register shows at least 41 schemes with a combined €911m were bought by AHBs or the Land Development Agency.
That is a multiple of the number or value of deals done by institutional investors last year, the so-called cuckoo funds that had dominated the sector in recent years.
Ireland has 540 AHBs that work with local authorities and councils to build and maintain social housing, but six major players dominated the 2024 statistics: Clúid Housing, Oaklee, Tuath, Co-operative Housing Ireland, Respond Housing and Circle VHA.
Lorcan Sirr, senior lecturer and housing policy analyst at TU Dublin, said there are questions over the model of buying completed developments at arms length from the State.
“A majority of the delivery for these houses is done by turnkey – which means buying new homes when they’re built.
“It’s essentially a pre-sale agreement made with the developer to fund or buy it when it’s built. Most people are also not aware that when the AHBs do this, while they do it well, it’s not adding to the State’s stock of social housing because these belong to the housing bodies themselves.
“The State does not have a massive amount of control over that. We need an awful lot of social housing, there’s no argument over that. The question is if turnkey is the right way to do it,” he said.
He also warned of the potential backlash from prospective homebuyers as schemes are snapped up before coming to the market.
“New houses, more than apartments, would be especially attractive to first-time buyers – it can be incredibly frustrating to people looking to buy houses to see them acquired by the State in one of its various forms for social housing,” Mr Sirr said.
A report last year by the Department of Housing suggested taxpayer-backed bodies, including approved housing bodies, are also taking increasingly risky roles as forward-funders of schemes including apartments that the private sector does not see as viable.
These forward-funding arrangements involve making stage payments to developers as work is under way rather than paying outright for “turnkey homes”, and can cut costs by mitigating the need for debt.
However, they also mean the State exposes itself to new risks, including cost inflation, developer and contractor solvency, and a risk that any savings are not passed on in final unit prices, the report warns. It estimates around €4.6bn of such contracts are now in place.
The Housing Alliance – a collaboration of the six major AHBs – has said that it has approximately 21,000 projects in the pipeline until 2027.
Out of the 12,492 social homes – including social housing and cost-rental schemes – built last year, 5,981 were delivered by the six top AHBs, according to the Approved Housing Bodies Regulatory Authority (AHBRA).
Clúid Housing confirmed to the Irish Independent that it delivered 1,525 new social and cost-rental homes through “a mix of construction and acquisition” last year.
“We have 1,100 new homes in the pipeline for delivery in 2025, with a further 1,000 homes in the pipeline for delivery each subsequent year,” it said.
Circle Voluntary Housing Association (VHA) said it delivered 216 homes in counties Clare, Limerick, Wexford and the Dublin local authorities of Dublin City Council and South Dublin County Council.
“We delivered over 2,500 homes and currently provide services to more than 5,000 people. We work collaboratively with local authorities, state agencies, developers, and funders to address Ireland’s housing needs,” it said.
Respond currently has 2,925 new social and cost-rental homes in development at 21 sites across the country under its €1.2bn construction programme.
Outside of the major AHBs, debt advisory and housing firm New Beginning has already paid €54.5m for a block of 111 apartments near St James’s Hospital in Dublin 8 this year.
AHBs have stepped in to the market after institutional investors, that dominated sales of new apartment blocks at the start of the decade, stopped buying as interest rates rose and rent caps tightened.
At the time, they were also seen as pushing first-time buyers out of the housing market.”
Honestly what chance do working young people have against this? If the government just built their own for their own use, we wouldn’t be in competition with them?
>Ireland has 540 AHBs that work with local authorities and councils to build and maintain social housing, but six major players dominated the 2024 statistics: Clúid Housing, Oaklee, Tuath, Co-operative Housing Ireland, Respond Housing and Circle VHA.
Seems like a needlessly large number of groups doing the exact same things.
When they say 30000 ish houses are built would love to know what number are bought by first time buyers as just seems like the deck is stacked against them with their own taxes bidding against them.
Like was mentioned by a few parties in the election around a government building company, and it is needed as current approach is not working
The rise of Housing Association NGOs is a blight.
Whilst ostensibly a good thing, these bodies become involved in purchasing properties rather than building them.
They add another layer of capital extraction in the wages and fees expended in acquiring those properties and all of the money goes into the pockets of private enterprise.
The move away from Local Authority building has had serious consequences.
As has the removal and outlawing of the traditional bedsit style accommodation.
Bedsit were the usual accommodation for single folk & often students.
By seeming them below the minimum standard acceptable and creating the new “studio apartment” minimum.
000’s of properties were immediately removed the market and now those folk who were in Bedsits are competing with everyone else at a new minimum and constrained supply.
Local Authorities and Housing Associations must, absolutely must begin building.
Adding more units to the overall supply rather than competing with buyers for the existing constrained supply of units.
The absolute stupidity of NGOs & Councils competing with FTBs at the low end of the market?
Is contributing to outrageous & continuing supply growth & constraint that can only be addressed by removing the NGO/LA demand from the private market in its entirety.
Taxpayers’ money being used against them. But this is what everyone voted for
Ffs what chance do people have at all? Burn the fucking system to the ground as well as the Dáil. They font work for the people that’s for sure.
As a person who was able to get accommodation close to my hospital after a very heavy round of treatment, I can say how vital these properties are. It allowed me to heal and not be in a hospital environment ( I’d been in isolation in St James for 4 weeks). It also was vital when an issue did flare up, and I was able to zoom back to the hospital to get it righted. I’m from Cork, so being at home was never a possibility for the weeks after treatment.
From all of this experience, I found out that Ireland really does run on charities. I was going to be paying €2000 a month for a house around the hospital if it wasn’t for the charity.
It’s fucking bullshit, the ordinary buyer hasn’t a hope
If the state is buying property it should be in the hands of the state.
These ‘charities’ are basically just an extension of the state
So thats two houses in Stepaside
Are the charities involved approved housing bodies? And if so, is it not positive that they are buying more homes than cuckoo funds because the ABHs provide homes for people who are currently homeless and who are on the social housing list, and they run the affordable housing and affordable rental schemes thereby making housing more accessable to people who cannot afford to purchase their own home outright. I could be mistaken but I would see this as a positive.
This means that people who want to buy their own house are losing out to people who live in council houses.
This can’t be right
Can’t out bid the government when going after a house. They have unlimited funds. Basically bidding against your own tax money.
This really shows once again that getting rid of local authority public housing was done entirely for idological reasons, now the NGOs are trying to do the same job.
Keep the ~~recovery~~ wealth transfer going
Just a complete scam
Would be nice to know the distribution of people on housing lost: citizens, immigrants, asylum seekers.
If majority of beneficiaries is one of latter two groups, then the situation is extremely unfair towards tax payers.
Unless we build public housing at scale, this is the most effective way to reduce homelessness. Public housing would be much better, but if we’re dependent on private developers to deliver housing, and we continue to protect the private market at all costs, this is the best way to reduce homelessness.
When we have the same outrage about charities doing this as we did for cuckoo funds?
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