70,000 homes though. Many of them studios or one bedroom apartments. Like it or not developers are key to solving the housing crisis and we need homes.
Prices of materials have legitimately skyrocketed. It’s probably up an average of 30-40%. The cost of labour too has gone up. It’s easy to paint developers as greedy plenty people have delayed building a house because they are waiting for materials to come down.
Maybe it will be questioned why so much land in NAMA was sold because it could have been used in an exchange with private industry where social housing could have been built cheaply. But it’s too late now since NAMA is closed.
I think at one stage NAMA had close to 50-80 billion in assets and a lot of it were former building estates and green field sites that were sold on to private industry and equity groups.
Probably a big missed chance in retrospect but the political pressure was very high to recoup the losses from the banking crisis. They could have adjusted the scope to include a social housing dimension.
There was cases of NAMA apartments being left idle for the best part of a decade.
>Construction of high-rise, high-density apartments has become ‘economically unviable’
This is the crux of this thing.
And a lot of people in Ireland seem to disagree with that statement.
The reality is that housing for the poorest of us that require government support could be considered a public service, but other housing isn’t.
It’s a commodity, a resource, a business and an industry with costs and an expectation of a certain margin of profit.
If it isn’t possible to make a profit? Well then the investment simply won’t be made and the houses won’t get built.
We can argue all day what rate of profit that you think is acceptable for the companies to make, but it doesn’t make a difference. There is a line of % where the developers just won’t be bothered unless they clear.
Labour is more expensive than it’s ever been, materials are more expensive than they’ve ever been, insurances are expensive, freight is expensive, exchange rates are all over the place.
I know of at least 2 large Irish developers that are currently leaving the housing market and changing the business model towards renewables and retrofits.
Between these companies they make thousands of units a year but building housing just isn’t making them any money and is causing a significant amount of hassle for them, so they’re just leaving the market.
They aren’t going to be the only ones.
Frank McDonald is opposed to anything taller than a 3 bed semi-detached house so I wouldn’t be too reliant on his opinion.
That being said if building these apartments has become economically unviable the government should first look at reducing the cost of developments before advance purchasing of apartments. There are many examples like the one given in the article “14 two-bed social housing units in a high-rise scheme now under construction at Eglinton Road in Donnybrook were priced at €762,916 each” that are just not an effective use of public funds.
What is the point in all the construction related taxes and levies if they are going to just be funneled back to developers by advance purchasing expensive housing?
The 10.5 million it will cost to purchase those 14 units would be better spent elsewhere.
Don’t build that.
Don’t build there
Don’t build with them
and people wonder why there’s a housing crisis.
Jesus fucking Christ just build some government owned housing stock. This is perverse.
This is an article by Frank McDonald. If you’re struggling to rent at the moment, Frank is your enemy. If you want modern public transport for Dublin, Frank thinks you can just fuck off. He needs to just go away.
3 huge developments just on my road alone for hundreds of homes all staled, They can’t afford to finish them due to the rising costs of materials, and this is 10 mins from Dublin city center.
Not the government, taxpayers. Why pay nurses when you can let developers profit off substandard buildings and then take zero liability
Here’s a simple way to get developers to shit or get off the pot:
Compulsory purchase the land at 50% market price, if they don’t act on the planning application within 6 months.
11 comments
70,000 homes though. Many of them studios or one bedroom apartments. Like it or not developers are key to solving the housing crisis and we need homes.
Prices of materials have legitimately skyrocketed. It’s probably up an average of 30-40%. The cost of labour too has gone up. It’s easy to paint developers as greedy plenty people have delayed building a house because they are waiting for materials to come down.
Maybe it will be questioned why so much land in NAMA was sold because it could have been used in an exchange with private industry where social housing could have been built cheaply. But it’s too late now since NAMA is closed.
I think at one stage NAMA had close to 50-80 billion in assets and a lot of it were former building estates and green field sites that were sold on to private industry and equity groups.
Probably a big missed chance in retrospect but the political pressure was very high to recoup the losses from the banking crisis. They could have adjusted the scope to include a social housing dimension.
There was cases of NAMA apartments being left idle for the best part of a decade.
>Construction of high-rise, high-density apartments has become ‘economically unviable’
This is the crux of this thing.
And a lot of people in Ireland seem to disagree with that statement.
The reality is that housing for the poorest of us that require government support could be considered a public service, but other housing isn’t.
It’s a commodity, a resource, a business and an industry with costs and an expectation of a certain margin of profit.
If it isn’t possible to make a profit? Well then the investment simply won’t be made and the houses won’t get built.
We can argue all day what rate of profit that you think is acceptable for the companies to make, but it doesn’t make a difference. There is a line of % where the developers just won’t be bothered unless they clear.
Labour is more expensive than it’s ever been, materials are more expensive than they’ve ever been, insurances are expensive, freight is expensive, exchange rates are all over the place.
I know of at least 2 large Irish developers that are currently leaving the housing market and changing the business model towards renewables and retrofits.
Between these companies they make thousands of units a year but building housing just isn’t making them any money and is causing a significant amount of hassle for them, so they’re just leaving the market.
They aren’t going to be the only ones.
Frank McDonald is opposed to anything taller than a 3 bed semi-detached house so I wouldn’t be too reliant on his opinion.
That being said if building these apartments has become economically unviable the government should first look at reducing the cost of developments before advance purchasing of apartments. There are many examples like the one given in the article “14 two-bed social housing units in a high-rise scheme now under construction at Eglinton Road in Donnybrook were priced at €762,916 each” that are just not an effective use of public funds.
What is the point in all the construction related taxes and levies if they are going to just be funneled back to developers by advance purchasing expensive housing?
The 10.5 million it will cost to purchase those 14 units would be better spent elsewhere.
Don’t build that.
Don’t build there
Don’t build with them
and people wonder why there’s a housing crisis.
Jesus fucking Christ just build some government owned housing stock. This is perverse.
This is an article by Frank McDonald. If you’re struggling to rent at the moment, Frank is your enemy. If you want modern public transport for Dublin, Frank thinks you can just fuck off. He needs to just go away.
3 huge developments just on my road alone for hundreds of homes all staled, They can’t afford to finish them due to the rising costs of materials, and this is 10 mins from Dublin city center.
Not the government, taxpayers. Why pay nurses when you can let developers profit off substandard buildings and then take zero liability
Here’s a simple way to get developers to shit or get off the pot:
Compulsory purchase the land at 50% market price, if they don’t act on the planning application within 6 months.