If we started building homes out of landlords, we could take in refugees from off-world
> But the problem is we’re not very good in Ireland at increasing the supply of housing
From 2000-2008 we were building loads of housing. 90k units were built in 2006 alone, . This economist is acting like we’re inherently incapable of increasing supply but that’s not true. Presenting the mechanisms behind the housing crisis as passive in this way diverts the problem away from the only solution, which is direct government intervention in the market. Not by means of grants or tax incentives to private developers, but by building massive amounts of social housing and making it available to all.
Not with the current immigration levels , demand is far higher than supply. Profit always wins. 400k for a 105 sq meter ,3 bed semi…
That article is nonsense click bait..
Question Why is housing unaffordable: answer lack of supply
Solution build more housing to increase supply
No mention of:
wage or material inflation
Houses are built on land and that is a finite resource
Ridiculous caps on city building height
the revised building regs and specification
Council development fees
Social housing is a nett loss to taxpayer due to rules around cheap but outs
Read economics for dummies and came up with a “solution” for the housing crisis
Reduce taxes on developers
Eliminate taxes on residential construction work
Complete a cost / benefit analysis onConstruction regulations
Eliminate part V requirement for developers
Decrease size of new homes
New planning system, promote building mid-rise
Encourage leaving cert applicants to take up trades, rather than attending college for the sake of it
Plant a 500,000sf government run modular housing factory in the midlands
The options are endless, however the electorate has no appetite to address the underlying causes behind our housing crisis. It’s a complex issue, with no single solution. “Build more social houses” is not the remedy
I sure hope so, otherwise I’m fucked
The regulations have made housing very expensive. Any tax breaks won’t be passed onto the buyer.
There’s 2 whole housing estates near me that aren’t going on sale at all to the general public cause companies have bought them to house their workers that are coming from abroad
No. House prices in Ireland are immutable, ancient principles of the Universe. No matter what point in time or space you are, house prices in Ireland are a fixed constant – like the gravitational constant.
There is no way for humans to affect this anymore than humans could change the laws of thermo-dynamics.
This immortal truth is called the Divine Right of Houses in Ireland and pre-dates humanity.
They could build upwards within the city limits for starters but seems to be opposed by others with clout. Many people appear destined to rent for life and for those that cant afford a home its hard to see how they can retire at all. Its an ugly prospect of haves and have nots.
Maybe in 70 years if everyone stops having babies.
We could absolutely fix it.
But there’s some problems.
We have a government who don’t want to fix it – they repeatedly miss targets, under spend and rely on foreign investment- then act surprised when it doesn’t translate to houses on the market – investors in property don’t want a one off capex profit, they want recurring profits.
We also are short on tradesmen. Why? Its become difficult to do, used to be you didn’t need to be able to read or write to go out and build a house, any eejit could be general labour so long as you knew what you were doing on site. I for example, have experience in construction, could go out building houses tomorrow, but I’m not going to have some wanker who studied h&s lecture me all day. Worked on a site before where the h&s lad had never set foot on a site before – how is he allowed to dictate to anyone.
Finally, housing specs. I own a 1970s house – it’s nice, cosy and secure. Nothing in it meets current building regs. You could not legally build this house today – but you can live in one quite happily.
When I got my smart meter, the lad says the cable from my mains board no longer meets the regs, needs to be thicker – I asked, why, had the voltage increased? Is there a higher amp load? He says no, they just changed the regs is all.
So how do we fix it?
Oversight on government spending, regulation of property investment, deregulation of some areas and better regulation of others in construction.
Honestly think we should create a semi public housing contruction body that uses public funds but is subject to the same management styles as private enterprise
This is *somewhat* true…
Classical economics can’t be ignored, if we’re going to solve housing issues. Even without effects on price, supply is still supply. If it’s not built, it doesn’t exist. If there isn’t enough, or good enough… That’s a shortage.
“Demand side solutions,” subsidizing more as prices rise… has no strategic logic or legs to it. I agree here too.
OTOH, in 2023, I think classic economics should have developed some skepticism about its own models.
Market prices for housing is not “just supply and demand.” “Demand” is, largely, whatever banks are willing to loan people. Ireland’s housing market rose fell and rose again. Supply was constant. “People who live in houses” was still “mostly everyone.” Prices tripled, then halved, then trippled again.
That wasn’t supply and “demand” fluctuating wildly. It was banking rules. It was also investor interest, interest rates, relative investability of stocks… All sorts of things that aren’t the number of houses and the number of people who want to live in them.
A naive “it’s just supply and demand” is a fish of a position. Not serious, at this point. May as well just shout at landlords again.
Then there’s a more abstract questions. Can the Irish government have any new policy/endevour, of sufficient scale to affect something housing affordability… At all?
Can the various interests, ideologies, public skepticism, naysaying and whatever else be managed in a way that gets something big done. That in itself is a task.
Could we imagine, for example, Ireland building a new town? Not saying it’s a necessity, just using it as a scale. Say any party campaigns on building a town. They negotiate coalition terms… Can they succeed? Will that town get built?
My answer is no. Not currently, but maybe I’m wrong. Hasn’t been a lot of trying in my lifetime.
Look, Ireland has land. Houses are not that hard, or that expensive to build. The actual problems are outside of this box.
We’re currently falling further and further behind in providing supply to meet demand.
But that’s because the supply is small and population growth is outstripping it.
So what’s the solution if we can’t increase supply to meet demand?
Demand decreases to meet supply. There’s plenty of economists that believe we’re going to have a recession soon or we may already be at the start of one.
If there’s a recession, people will leave Ireland. If there’s a deep recession, lots of people will leave.
That’s the most realistic way to ‘solve’ the housing problem. A solution that might be worse than the problem but a solution nonetheless.
There might other financial things I’m not aware about so I could be wrong/ it might not be possible.
The Irish government should put in place the same system as France and possibly other countries where you pay the value of the house and get rid of this bidding crap.
How are first time buyers going to be able to afford a house that’s being sold for 200k and then it ends up being 320k because of greedy developers.
If you go into a shop and buy a book you pay that price, why can’t houses be the same.
Short answer: Build more diverse forms of housing.
Basically, we have missing rungs on the property ladder in Ireland, yet too many people are perfectly happy to bicker over the rungs that we have.
We have and continue to over rely on the private sector for everything. Tax breaks and grants don’t appear to be affecting house prices at all. Subsidizing rents doesn’t appear to be lowering them either.
So what are we meant to do? Expand the scope beyond neoliberal policy. Simply throwing money at the private sector won’t make it magically spawn buildings into existance or lower rents. It isn’t working. Especially considering the fact it is against the private markets interest to lower prices, high prices are in their interest.
Public building needs to take place for one, rebuilding the council/social housing which was demolished during “Regeneration” in the cities, were perfectly good houses were knocked alongside derelicts, hundreds of housing units gone, which are only being replaced now, a decade later and at a slow rate. The powers that be reduced housing stock when we needed it most.
We need that social housing, houses, apartments, bungalows etc. Apartments especially. Bachelor pads. The bottom rung of the ladder. Why should bachelors, couples, and families all have to compete for the same type of accommodation? More options are needed badly.
What is expected nowadays, since the crash, is that first time buyers are expected to jump the massive gap between the property ladder rungs which remain, while competing for the same narrow selection with everyone else looking to buy for whatever reason. A narrow market. It’s not a sustainable situation.
Now the neolibs and classical libs can hum and haw over reality, but nothing will fix the problem if the scope isn’t widened beyond neoliberal policy. That’s the root problem, policy.
I’d go back on the tools if you made it VERY worth my while. Couldn’t be arsed otherwise
17 comments
If we started building homes out of landlords, we could take in refugees from off-world
> But the problem is we’re not very good in Ireland at increasing the supply of housing
From 2000-2008 we were building loads of housing. 90k units were built in 2006 alone, . This economist is acting like we’re inherently incapable of increasing supply but that’s not true. Presenting the mechanisms behind the housing crisis as passive in this way diverts the problem away from the only solution, which is direct government intervention in the market. Not by means of grants or tax incentives to private developers, but by building massive amounts of social housing and making it available to all.
Not with the current immigration levels , demand is far higher than supply. Profit always wins. 400k for a 105 sq meter ,3 bed semi…
That article is nonsense click bait..
Question Why is housing unaffordable: answer lack of supply
Solution build more housing to increase supply
No mention of:
wage or material inflation
Houses are built on land and that is a finite resource
Ridiculous caps on city building height
the revised building regs and specification
Council development fees
Social housing is a nett loss to taxpayer due to rules around cheap but outs
Read economics for dummies and came up with a “solution” for the housing crisis
Reduce taxes on developers
Eliminate taxes on residential construction work
Complete a cost / benefit analysis onConstruction regulations
Eliminate part V requirement for developers
Decrease size of new homes
New planning system, promote building mid-rise
Encourage leaving cert applicants to take up trades, rather than attending college for the sake of it
Plant a 500,000sf government run modular housing factory in the midlands
The options are endless, however the electorate has no appetite to address the underlying causes behind our housing crisis. It’s a complex issue, with no single solution. “Build more social houses” is not the remedy
I sure hope so, otherwise I’m fucked
The regulations have made housing very expensive. Any tax breaks won’t be passed onto the buyer.
There’s 2 whole housing estates near me that aren’t going on sale at all to the general public cause companies have bought them to house their workers that are coming from abroad
No. House prices in Ireland are immutable, ancient principles of the Universe. No matter what point in time or space you are, house prices in Ireland are a fixed constant – like the gravitational constant.
There is no way for humans to affect this anymore than humans could change the laws of thermo-dynamics.
This immortal truth is called the Divine Right of Houses in Ireland and pre-dates humanity.
They could build upwards within the city limits for starters but seems to be opposed by others with clout. Many people appear destined to rent for life and for those that cant afford a home its hard to see how they can retire at all. Its an ugly prospect of haves and have nots.
Maybe in 70 years if everyone stops having babies.
We could absolutely fix it.
But there’s some problems.
We have a government who don’t want to fix it – they repeatedly miss targets, under spend and rely on foreign investment- then act surprised when it doesn’t translate to houses on the market – investors in property don’t want a one off capex profit, they want recurring profits.
We also are short on tradesmen. Why? Its become difficult to do, used to be you didn’t need to be able to read or write to go out and build a house, any eejit could be general labour so long as you knew what you were doing on site. I for example, have experience in construction, could go out building houses tomorrow, but I’m not going to have some wanker who studied h&s lecture me all day. Worked on a site before where the h&s lad had never set foot on a site before – how is he allowed to dictate to anyone.
Finally, housing specs. I own a 1970s house – it’s nice, cosy and secure. Nothing in it meets current building regs. You could not legally build this house today – but you can live in one quite happily.
When I got my smart meter, the lad says the cable from my mains board no longer meets the regs, needs to be thicker – I asked, why, had the voltage increased? Is there a higher amp load? He says no, they just changed the regs is all.
So how do we fix it?
Oversight on government spending, regulation of property investment, deregulation of some areas and better regulation of others in construction.
Honestly think we should create a semi public housing contruction body that uses public funds but is subject to the same management styles as private enterprise
This is *somewhat* true…
Classical economics can’t be ignored, if we’re going to solve housing issues. Even without effects on price, supply is still supply. If it’s not built, it doesn’t exist. If there isn’t enough, or good enough… That’s a shortage.
“Demand side solutions,” subsidizing more as prices rise… has no strategic logic or legs to it. I agree here too.
OTOH, in 2023, I think classic economics should have developed some skepticism about its own models.
Market prices for housing is not “just supply and demand.” “Demand” is, largely, whatever banks are willing to loan people. Ireland’s housing market rose fell and rose again. Supply was constant. “People who live in houses” was still “mostly everyone.” Prices tripled, then halved, then trippled again.
That wasn’t supply and “demand” fluctuating wildly. It was banking rules. It was also investor interest, interest rates, relative investability of stocks… All sorts of things that aren’t the number of houses and the number of people who want to live in them.
A naive “it’s just supply and demand” is a fish of a position. Not serious, at this point. May as well just shout at landlords again.
Then there’s a more abstract questions. Can the Irish government have any new policy/endevour, of sufficient scale to affect something housing affordability… At all?
Can the various interests, ideologies, public skepticism, naysaying and whatever else be managed in a way that gets something big done. That in itself is a task.
Could we imagine, for example, Ireland building a new town? Not saying it’s a necessity, just using it as a scale. Say any party campaigns on building a town. They negotiate coalition terms… Can they succeed? Will that town get built?
My answer is no. Not currently, but maybe I’m wrong. Hasn’t been a lot of trying in my lifetime.
Look, Ireland has land. Houses are not that hard, or that expensive to build. The actual problems are outside of this box.
We’re currently falling further and further behind in providing supply to meet demand.
But that’s because the supply is small and population growth is outstripping it.
So what’s the solution if we can’t increase supply to meet demand?
Demand decreases to meet supply. There’s plenty of economists that believe we’re going to have a recession soon or we may already be at the start of one.
If there’s a recession, people will leave Ireland. If there’s a deep recession, lots of people will leave.
That’s the most realistic way to ‘solve’ the housing problem. A solution that might be worse than the problem but a solution nonetheless.
There might other financial things I’m not aware about so I could be wrong/ it might not be possible.
The Irish government should put in place the same system as France and possibly other countries where you pay the value of the house and get rid of this bidding crap.
How are first time buyers going to be able to afford a house that’s being sold for 200k and then it ends up being 320k because of greedy developers.
If you go into a shop and buy a book you pay that price, why can’t houses be the same.
Short answer: Build more diverse forms of housing.
Basically, we have missing rungs on the property ladder in Ireland, yet too many people are perfectly happy to bicker over the rungs that we have.
We have and continue to over rely on the private sector for everything. Tax breaks and grants don’t appear to be affecting house prices at all. Subsidizing rents doesn’t appear to be lowering them either.
So what are we meant to do? Expand the scope beyond neoliberal policy. Simply throwing money at the private sector won’t make it magically spawn buildings into existance or lower rents. It isn’t working. Especially considering the fact it is against the private markets interest to lower prices, high prices are in their interest.
Public building needs to take place for one, rebuilding the council/social housing which was demolished during “Regeneration” in the cities, were perfectly good houses were knocked alongside derelicts, hundreds of housing units gone, which are only being replaced now, a decade later and at a slow rate. The powers that be reduced housing stock when we needed it most.
We need that social housing, houses, apartments, bungalows etc. Apartments especially. Bachelor pads. The bottom rung of the ladder. Why should bachelors, couples, and families all have to compete for the same type of accommodation? More options are needed badly.
What is expected nowadays, since the crash, is that first time buyers are expected to jump the massive gap between the property ladder rungs which remain, while competing for the same narrow selection with everyone else looking to buy for whatever reason. A narrow market. It’s not a sustainable situation.
Now the neolibs and classical libs can hum and haw over reality, but nothing will fix the problem if the scope isn’t widened beyond neoliberal policy. That’s the root problem, policy.
I’d go back on the tools if you made it VERY worth my while. Couldn’t be arsed otherwise