>Several companies, who have spoken to the Business Post on condition of anonymity, have described how they have acquired significant portfolios of homes, which they are either renting to employees at subsidised rates or allowing them to live in for free, as part of a benefits package to attract workers.
>Other companies have described how they are having to lease homes for their employees, and then charge rents at subsidised rates to ensure their workers have access to affordable accommodation.
>…
>One company owner working in the construction sector said they had accumulated a property portfolio of 15 homes in the last few years using company capital, and their employees were staying there for free as part of a benefits package.
>“In the last five years, we started to notice a big issue with accommodation. We started buying houses, just one or two at the start, and now we have 15,” the business owner said.
>“It is getting harder and harder to get workers, and for those workers to get any accommodation at all, not to mind affordable accommodation. This isn’t about generating additional revenue from charging rents as we are offering the places for free. This is desperation. We have been left with no choice. We do not want to do this.”
>…
>Employees who stay in company-owned/rented accommodation for free or at subsidised rates are liable for benefit in kind tax on the equivalent cost of renting that accommodation at the monthly market rate less whatever subsidised rate they are paying their employer. It is up to the employer to process that tax, but according to one source, many are not, as the costs involved are already so high.
>…
>One owner of a hotel told the Business Post that, prior to the pandemic, they had never leased houses for their employees, but now they were leasing ten different homes just to house staff.
>“People had nowhere to live. At one stage, we had people living in the hotel for months in a guest bedroom which is worth up to €6,000 a month. So it makes more sense to rent for them. We are now subsidising those rents and paying all of their bills, as a way to also address the current cost of living crisis.”
>Peter MacCann, general manager at the Merrion, said it was providing subsidised accommodation in another Dublin hotel and privately leased home to around 20 staff.
>Last November, Nicky Logue, general manager of the Intercontinental Hotel, told this newspaper the hotel group had “a minimum 100 people at the moment” in temporary accommodation at a sister four-star property.
Isn’t our government such wonderful people for leaving this happen
I know of one person living in an appartment owned by a major tech company to (temporarily?) house staff that moves over to Dublin.
In my previous company had someone who was living in a hotel for a couple months because they couldn’t find any accommodation, paid for by work.
I also know of another house in Ballsbridge that a major tech firm wanted to buy to house staff, the deal didn’t end up happening for whatever reason.
Instead the owners (now in their late 80’s) let the house stay vacant for two years so they could “by pass” RPZ increases from 3000 / month to 4200 a month. The family owns over 6 million in real estate in Dublin alone.
I hate everything about this
The Leinster Academy bought a house near my parents’ place for probably the same reason.
You will own nothing and be happy.
I couldn’t imagine the stress of having your housing being reliant on your employer, and then having to deal with any type of workplace issue; payment, harassment, sexual assault. It’s a recipe for absolute disaster, and of course we’re walking right into blind as fuck, as per fucking usual.
Google paid for all the apartments at the end of Barrow Street long before they were even finished
The future is here, Decent housing is only available via employee benefit and if you’re fired you’re both unemployed and homeless
Remember guys! Stay out of trouble, get an education, work hard all your life and you too will never be able to amount to anything in this kip of a country unless man and dad were mates with someone in FFG.
A house in our estate has just gone sold to a company for this exact reason, I never really heard of it before. 100k over asking price and wouldn’t describe our area as anything special at all …
So, is this the first step towards Chinese style ‘worker campuses’ and all of that…? Really doesn’t sound great. It’s happening in California too – places like SF are now just totally unaffordable. I even saw a guy holding a sign in a car (which he was obviously sleeping in) with “Will code for bed!”
Ireland’s getting increasingly unattractive as a place to live and I have no idea how we’re going to survive in our retirement. I don’t think anyone has ever even thought about it.
Our whole economic model is built around securing your accommodation in the early and mid part of your career, and retiring with an asset and a roof over your head. That’s gone now, so I worry we’re going to end up with a generation of destitute old people, particularly if the economic miracle of FDI dries up.
We should absolutely not be linking housing and employment or health and employment. It’s a recipe for a total dystopia.
I owe my soul to the company store….
I don’t mind this as much because the housing is always being used and thus taking demand off the market.
How are first time buyers or owner occupiers supposed to compete?
Firms either way over bid or offer flexibility and speed that a person can’t. Then there is just the simple matter a process involving a firm is considered more ‘secure’ when selling.
It might be nice if they built houses for employees, a bit like Guinness did in the past.
Stop voting FFG. They hate you! And they think it’s funny.
What if they made it for just the next 5 years no one needs any planning permission to build and see if that helps . Things are already so bad may as well try something else
Fucking Famine Gael. They probably think this is the market solving itself.
Fuck. Anymore in any country if you lose your job you could easily lose your home. This is however a giant conflict of interest it would seem. Or, do they buy the house and sell it to the employee…not rent it to them? Lads, someone buy a plot of land and start a town. Get a developer to come to your town and build. Never let this happen in your town and you’ll be the new capitol in no time.
I was just thinking the other day about how the world is about to move back to workhouses, but a “modern” version.
Lol, I remember seeing comments on this subreddit a while ago saying that these employers are hiring so many people, they’re partially responsible for the housing, and they should invest in fixing it.
Well, how does it look now?
This was obviously gonna happen. These employers cannot produce housing out of thin air or build it themselves, they’ll buy from the existing stock.
Ireland LLP.
It’s no longer a country.
Intel have been doing this since they came to Ireland. We lived beside a house Intel owned for different managers to live in while working on projects. Lots of their staff living in hotels too
It will just be tech companies and big pharma for their own workers. Many of whom come from abroad
So eh, what jobs are buying apartments? I know Google and a few other tech companies had some properties but anyone else?
You load 16 tons, what do you get?
Another day older and deeper in debt
St. Peter, don’t you call me ’cause I can’t go
I owe my soul to the company store
Here is a lot of hyperbole in this thread. I don’t for a minute believe that employers are intending to get into the Irish housing market permanently. They and employees are stuck at the moment because of the housing crisis, but once things start to ease up, whenever that is, I’m expecting they will exit the housing market rapidly.
Or you know…..employers could stop hiring people outside of the country and importing talent to then house instead of hiringblically and slightly aiding the situation….?
I would expect these properties are used until the employee can find a property of their own to rent, and they’re not just let to you permanently by your employer as most of the comments here assume.
Accommodation is a constant problem for new hires in the tech company I work in, I’d imagine these are used as a kind of new hire perk in an industry where hiring is very competitive.
just move, unironically. vote with your feet and move off this godforsaken island, housing is not going to get better because of a trillion reasons
They’ll have to do something about housing being seen and used as an investment opportunity.
At some point we are just going to have to pass a law that if you own anything more than something with 3 or 4 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms and some living space that your taxes bills are going to increase exponentially.
Should help free up a lot of houses people are sitting on as investments.
Any company that comes to Ireland with the intention of bringing over workers from overseas should commit to building housing to accommodate the staff to keep rental costs in the area from rising
Horrible. Watch suicide rates soar along with property prices.
How the things will start to ease up? after a big crash? Google and few others companies are buying up properties, they wont get rid of it.. And normal workers will have less and less chances to compete to have their own roof. You will own nothing and will you be happy.
Company towns here we come!
I was actually offered a job in Northern Ireland, where a flat was provided. It didn’t matter if I lived in the flat or not, rates where taken out of the wages to pay for it so that’s why it only paid £19K a year. Rather than offer the right wage for the job, they offered a flat that you will pay for whether you use it or not.
Question is how far will this go before we do something about it?
39 comments
Some snippets for those without a sub:
>Several companies, who have spoken to the Business Post on condition of anonymity, have described how they have acquired significant portfolios of homes, which they are either renting to employees at subsidised rates or allowing them to live in for free, as part of a benefits package to attract workers.
>Other companies have described how they are having to lease homes for their employees, and then charge rents at subsidised rates to ensure their workers have access to affordable accommodation.
>…
>One company owner working in the construction sector said they had accumulated a property portfolio of 15 homes in the last few years using company capital, and their employees were staying there for free as part of a benefits package.
>“In the last five years, we started to notice a big issue with accommodation. We started buying houses, just one or two at the start, and now we have 15,” the business owner said.
>“It is getting harder and harder to get workers, and for those workers to get any accommodation at all, not to mind affordable accommodation. This isn’t about generating additional revenue from charging rents as we are offering the places for free. This is desperation. We have been left with no choice. We do not want to do this.”
>…
>Employees who stay in company-owned/rented accommodation for free or at subsidised rates are liable for benefit in kind tax on the equivalent cost of renting that accommodation at the monthly market rate less whatever subsidised rate they are paying their employer. It is up to the employer to process that tax, but according to one source, many are not, as the costs involved are already so high.
>…
>One owner of a hotel told the Business Post that, prior to the pandemic, they had never leased houses for their employees, but now they were leasing ten different homes just to house staff.
>“People had nowhere to live. At one stage, we had people living in the hotel for months in a guest bedroom which is worth up to €6,000 a month. So it makes more sense to rent for them. We are now subsidising those rents and paying all of their bills, as a way to also address the current cost of living crisis.”
>Peter MacCann, general manager at the Merrion, said it was providing subsidised accommodation in another Dublin hotel and privately leased home to around 20 staff.
>Last November, Nicky Logue, general manager of the Intercontinental Hotel, told this newspaper the hotel group had “a minimum 100 people at the moment” in temporary accommodation at a sister four-star property.
Isn’t our government such wonderful people for leaving this happen
I know of one person living in an appartment owned by a major tech company to (temporarily?) house staff that moves over to Dublin.
In my previous company had someone who was living in a hotel for a couple months because they couldn’t find any accommodation, paid for by work.
I also know of another house in Ballsbridge that a major tech firm wanted to buy to house staff, the deal didn’t end up happening for whatever reason.
Instead the owners (now in their late 80’s) let the house stay vacant for two years so they could “by pass” RPZ increases from 3000 / month to 4200 a month. The family owns over 6 million in real estate in Dublin alone.
I hate everything about this
The Leinster Academy bought a house near my parents’ place for probably the same reason.
You will own nothing and be happy.
I couldn’t imagine the stress of having your housing being reliant on your employer, and then having to deal with any type of workplace issue; payment, harassment, sexual assault. It’s a recipe for absolute disaster, and of course we’re walking right into blind as fuck, as per fucking usual.
Google paid for all the apartments at the end of Barrow Street long before they were even finished
The future is here, Decent housing is only available via employee benefit and if you’re fired you’re both unemployed and homeless
Remember guys! Stay out of trouble, get an education, work hard all your life and you too will never be able to amount to anything in this kip of a country unless man and dad were mates with someone in FFG.
A house in our estate has just gone sold to a company for this exact reason, I never really heard of it before. 100k over asking price and wouldn’t describe our area as anything special at all …
So, is this the first step towards Chinese style ‘worker campuses’ and all of that…? Really doesn’t sound great. It’s happening in California too – places like SF are now just totally unaffordable. I even saw a guy holding a sign in a car (which he was obviously sleeping in) with “Will code for bed!”
Ireland’s getting increasingly unattractive as a place to live and I have no idea how we’re going to survive in our retirement. I don’t think anyone has ever even thought about it.
Our whole economic model is built around securing your accommodation in the early and mid part of your career, and retiring with an asset and a roof over your head. That’s gone now, so I worry we’re going to end up with a generation of destitute old people, particularly if the economic miracle of FDI dries up.
We should absolutely not be linking housing and employment or health and employment. It’s a recipe for a total dystopia.
I owe my soul to the company store….
I don’t mind this as much because the housing is always being used and thus taking demand off the market.
How are first time buyers or owner occupiers supposed to compete?
Firms either way over bid or offer flexibility and speed that a person can’t. Then there is just the simple matter a process involving a firm is considered more ‘secure’ when selling.
It might be nice if they built houses for employees, a bit like Guinness did in the past.
Stop voting FFG. They hate you! And they think it’s funny.
What if they made it for just the next 5 years no one needs any planning permission to build and see if that helps . Things are already so bad may as well try something else
Fucking Famine Gael. They probably think this is the market solving itself.
Fuck. Anymore in any country if you lose your job you could easily lose your home. This is however a giant conflict of interest it would seem. Or, do they buy the house and sell it to the employee…not rent it to them? Lads, someone buy a plot of land and start a town. Get a developer to come to your town and build. Never let this happen in your town and you’ll be the new capitol in no time.
This has been happening for a while, all the Boland’s Mills apartments were bought by Google to rent to their workers https://www.thejournal.ie/google-bolands-quay-4020888-May2018/
No names, no evidence, no backup.
It’s public record who owns houses.
ABSOLUTE BULLSHITE.
I was just thinking the other day about how the world is about to move back to workhouses, but a “modern” version.
Lol, I remember seeing comments on this subreddit a while ago saying that these employers are hiring so many people, they’re partially responsible for the housing, and they should invest in fixing it.
Well, how does it look now?
This was obviously gonna happen. These employers cannot produce housing out of thin air or build it themselves, they’ll buy from the existing stock.
Ireland LLP.
It’s no longer a country.
Intel have been doing this since they came to Ireland. We lived beside a house Intel owned for different managers to live in while working on projects. Lots of their staff living in hotels too
It will just be tech companies and big pharma for their own workers. Many of whom come from abroad
So eh, what jobs are buying apartments? I know Google and a few other tech companies had some properties but anyone else?
You load 16 tons, what do you get?
Another day older and deeper in debt
St. Peter, don’t you call me ’cause I can’t go
I owe my soul to the company store
Here is a lot of hyperbole in this thread. I don’t for a minute believe that employers are intending to get into the Irish housing market permanently. They and employees are stuck at the moment because of the housing crisis, but once things start to ease up, whenever that is, I’m expecting they will exit the housing market rapidly.
Or you know…..employers could stop hiring people outside of the country and importing talent to then house instead of hiringblically and slightly aiding the situation….?
I would expect these properties are used until the employee can find a property of their own to rent, and they’re not just let to you permanently by your employer as most of the comments here assume.
Accommodation is a constant problem for new hires in the tech company I work in, I’d imagine these are used as a kind of new hire perk in an industry where hiring is very competitive.
just move, unironically. vote with your feet and move off this godforsaken island, housing is not going to get better because of a trillion reasons
They’ll have to do something about housing being seen and used as an investment opportunity.
At some point we are just going to have to pass a law that if you own anything more than something with 3 or 4 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms and some living space that your taxes bills are going to increase exponentially.
Should help free up a lot of houses people are sitting on as investments.
Any company that comes to Ireland with the intention of bringing over workers from overseas should commit to building housing to accommodate the staff to keep rental costs in the area from rising
Horrible. Watch suicide rates soar along with property prices.
How the things will start to ease up? after a big crash? Google and few others companies are buying up properties, they wont get rid of it.. And normal workers will have less and less chances to compete to have their own roof. You will own nothing and will you be happy.
Company towns here we come!
I was actually offered a job in Northern Ireland, where a flat was provided. It didn’t matter if I lived in the flat or not, rates where taken out of the wages to pay for it so that’s why it only paid £19K a year. Rather than offer the right wage for the job, they offered a flat that you will pay for whether you use it or not.
Question is how far will this go before we do something about it?
Dublin is such a shit hole. Just move elsewhere