Exclusive: Institutional investors bought over two thirds of all new- builds in Dublin for the first three months of this year. Government introduced a higher stamp duty for these purchases last year claiming it would stop this. It did not apply to apartments. aoife moore for the Sunday times

25 comments

1. Does “institutional investors” mean REITs or does it mean AHBs like Cluid buying up social housing?

   That makes a big difference IMHO and I think it’s not great journalism to fail to make it clear.

2. Why wouldn’t they? Interest rates in Ireland are like -9%.

   The best part? If these institutional investors were to go bust the gov would have to bail them out lest the property market crash again, angering everyone over the age of 45.

3. Does this include new builds that were forward funded by those investors or no?

4. They also bought 64% of new homes in Kilkenny and 58% of new homes in Monaghan. This is no longer a “Dublin” problem

5. Low hanging fruit right there – ban institutions from buying namaland and beyond property. It’s neocolonialism if you don’t.

6. So AGM has upgraded from just being a SF mouth piece to straight up lying for them in a national paper.

   I’d also love to know what’s exclusive about this article, the data comes from the CSO.

7. Surely it’s very easy to stop that ,if the government wanted

8. Clients of government politicians cash in on deal brokered by said politicians.

9. I recently bought a new build in Kildare. I think there is 32 houses in the road and approx 9 of them seem to be used as rentals, only tell as there seems to be the same furniture in each of them

10. This is so depressing.

11. This government is failing us all.

12. Who are these investors?

13. Government are either complete incompetent, don’t care or are in on it with back handers.

    I genuinely don’t know which of the above is scarier

14. Or they could just ban institutional investment on residential housing new builds whether apartments or houses of any kind. 🤔🧐 But of course not. Wouldn’t suit their pockets.

15. And people still ask me why I won’t come home. I love the place and there’s a big part of me that wants to, but I know I’d be caught up in this mess renting forever just like everyone else.

16. How did this headline get approved. The author is counting charities and local authorities as institutional investors.

17. It is not just new builds they are buying. Out bidding everyone for houses and apartments all over.

18. That this is news is sad. Everyone knows this is happening.

19. The government are complicit. Its time to change the government and put a 90% tax on these investors. They are not welcome here.

20. Before we get too excited, they probably funded the construction too (either the same institution or another one). This is the most abundant and capable source of funding out there. They have to be part of the solution so more home can be built AND sold affordablly to public buyers.

21. Aoife Moore is a weak journalist that allows her own agenda to feed through into misleading narratives and headlines. She is as biased as any journalist you would see for Fox.

    In this case, she is deliberately counting charities and local authorities as institutions.

22. IT should be obvious to everyone by now that the government doesn’t give a damn about people being squeezed due to lack of housing.

    Nothing will change until the people in power are removed.

    Next election FFG will come to your door and try to schmooze you and shit talk you into liking them just long enough to con you out of your vote. For the love of god don’t fall for it. 10,000s of Irish people are suffering because of the housing crisis and we need to stand up for them.

    FFG landlords have laughed at us and collected the rent long enough.

23. “This paper constructs a partial equilibrium of housing flow market to investigate the impact of foreign investment upon housing prices. The theoretical model demonstrates that the inflow of foreign investment will result in the appreciation of house prices. The empirical results illustrate that the foreign investment has a trivial impact on the house prices. In addition, the paper finds that the household income rather that developing cost is the most important fact influencing the urban housing prices. The other findings are as follows: the interest rate policy is nearly invalid; the housing prices in bigger cites is more prone to increase; the substituting effect between rental market and ownership market is weak.”

    https://www.researchgate.net/publication/252057326_The_impact_of_foreign_investment_on_housing_prices

24. Well, surprise surprise.

25. This would be funny if it wasn’t so sad. I can’t tell if your government are corrupt or incompetent or both.