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> Housing benefits must be spent on housing. It is almost impossible to receive housing benefit in Ireland. Legally all landlords must accept it, practically f
by dbspin 1y ago
> Housing benefits must be spent on housing.
It is almost impossible to receive housing benefit in Ireland. Legally all landlords must accept it, practically few to none in major cities do.
> The pricing of housing is defined by supply and demand.
About 20% of Irish homes are bought by investment funds, another huge (difficult to specify) percentage are bought to rent by small to medium sized landlords. The Irish state Land Development Agency build around 3.5k homes per year, meanwhile Davies estimate the state needs around 93k new homes per year. Investing in any kind of investment fund or ETFs is taxed at 41% under the exit tax in Ireland. In addition, the “deemed disposal” rule means investments are taxed as though sold every eight years, even if they haven't been.
These are all artificial extreme pressures on housing in Ireland specifically, that mean that this is not a simple 'supply and demand' problem. It's a supply and demand of people who need housing vs entities who require profit - and have concomitant class affiliations and monies to spend on political influence problem.
- CalRobert 1y agoWhile this is all true, the reason housing in Ireland is an attractive investment is because it is incredibly scarce, and homeowners have the ability to preserve this scarcity.
- dbspin 1y agoAbsolutely. Which is why it's economically and socially essentially - while being politically impossible, to crash the price of housing.
- CalRobert 1y agoEverything Ireland has done to try to make housing more affordable has been a bizarre scheme to do so while increasing prices. Help To Buy was, to be blunt, incredibly dumb, but it did help increase home prices while giving some people (first time buyers) a little bit of money.
- Supernaut 1y agoNo, crashing the property market would be economically and socially catastrophic. We know this for a fact, because it happened 16 years ago and we're still feeling the effects. What is required is that the many legal and financial barriers that exist to the economically-viable building of apartments and houses need to be dismantled. If we could have tens of thousands of new dwelling places made available each year, the asking prices for housing stock would start to gently decline. Society as a whole would accept this as a social good.
- dbspin 1y agoHard disagree. I lived through the last recession (here in Dublin Ireland), and life was better for most people across most dimensions. Whether it would have been sustainably so is a broader argument. But cheap buildings led to a massive cultural renaissance that was effectively killed (by council and government dictat) five years later. The only place in the developed world where housing prices have declined (or even remained stagnant) over the long term is Japan, a country in long term recession. I wrote about this in detail here - https://garethstack.com/2015/10/28/by-believing-passionately-in-something-that-still-does-not-exist-we-create-it/ https://garethstack.com/2015/10/28/by-believing-passionately...
- sojsurf 1y ago93,000 new homes per year? That's an impressive figure: The second largest city/settlement in Ireland, Belfast, has a population of about 350,000. If these new homes house three people each (a family with one child), it means that Ireland is growing at a speed of almost a new Belfast per year. Is the economy growing at a similar speed to support eight or nine more Belfasts in the next 10 years?
- dbspin 1y agoIt certainly is, here's the news article where I sourced the figure https://www.irishtimes.com/business/2025/02/05/republic-needs-93000-new-homes-a-year-say-davy/ https://www.irishtimes.com/business/2025/02/05/republic-need... The issue is as much a legacy of lack of investment as growth, as for a number of decades the state built no houses at all, forcing a generation into rental poverty.
- CalRobert 1y agoA few years ago the figure was 50,000 per year. They have been failing to build enough homes for almost 2 decades now, and have a lot of catching up to do.
- nabla9 1y ago> About 20% of Irish homes are bought by investment funds, It does not matter who owns them. If there is enough housing, investments funds will lower rents to match the demand. Investment funds can do excessive rent seeking only if the supply is limited. It's good if foreigners invest in housing, because hoses can't be moved overseas. Anyone disagreeing, argue against this statement: Exess rent seeking is possible only when there is scarcity. When people don't have choises, they must pay what is asked. If you have 100 people needing a house and 101 houses available, prices will decline. Maintaining empty house is a running loss and house prices and rents will decline to prevent that.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]