ESRI: 2/3rds of people living in houses too big for their needs

Purple said:
I agree. There's lots of things required to solve the problem.


Good points but how many people who work from home have a dedicated office?
Click to expand...
These days you might have 2 people working from home... box bedroom might be used.
 
Purple said:
Less than 10% is the workforce work from home full time.
Click to expand...
Right now perhaps. Strong chance of that increasing significantly. Even at 10% it seems already a factor that should be considered by the ESRI when assessing what is 'utilisation'.
 
Even if less than 10% work from home full time, are there stats on if someone is wfh in a household everyday? In mine and in plenty of my peers it is, by staggering days in the office. So a separate space is needed and in constant use. Anyone looking for housing now who potentially could WFH would certainly be bearing it in mind, hoping to have an extra bedroom/convertible attic/garage or space for a garden pod.
 
We wanted to downsize from a 5 bed to a 3 bed. We looked at houses in Mount Merrion, near to where we live. We wanted a south facing back garden to grab some of the winter sun. The developer wanted €50k extra for the south facing garden. Lots need to change.
 
The way the standard houses are built, living space downstairs and bedrooms upstairs, if you downsize, you reduce your basic living space. You might not need the bedrooms, but want the living space. I don't need more bedrooms but my living space is tight. As for apartment living, I have to deal with the risk of one omc, not something I would recommend.
 
S class said:
The average Irish bedroom can easily accommodate 2 bunk beds.
Therefore the average Irish 3 bedroomed house can easily accommodate 12 people.

My guess is that 99.9% of Irish homes are under utilised.
Click to expand...
I very much doubt that's the metric that the ERSI used.
 
My parents have a 4 bedroom house. They might have moved a few years ago but there are only large houses in the area. They’ve been there for 60 + years and they don’t want to move from the area.
So maybe more developments with mixed size housing and apartments might help that in the future. That wasn’t done 60 years ago.
They aren’t going to move now. Actually having spare rooms for carers is working out well and the WFH space for their kids came in handy during covid so we could mind them when they were otherwise very isolated.
 
I was going to work for the ESRI, until I did some research.
I dont like the way research reports are released, in order to support Government policies, and are timed that way.
Who cares if other European countries have a higher concentration of apartments dwellers.
 
Last edited:
downsizing is a touchy subject - a few politicians have mentioned it in recent years and immediately been torn to pieces for "trying to force old people out of their homes". The main issue is there are very few suitable properties for older people to move into, they don't want small apartments where their neighbours are all short-term renters. There's also issues around financing, and I suppose general inertia. But there's undeniably a lot of older couples rattling around in large family homes that cost a fortune to maintain. I get the impression in other countries (the UK for example) it's more common to downsize in later life.
 
Purple said:
Irish Times Article, More than two-thirds of people are living in homes too big for their needs, ESRI research finds.


In 1991 the average household size was 3.34 people. It is now 2.7. With a population of 5 million that means we need 1,852,000 housing units. If we had the same average household size as we did in 1991 we'd need 1,500.000 housing units or around 350,000 less than we have now. In other words due to the reduction in household size we've spent around a hundred billion euro building homes without housing any more people.

I've commented frequently here that the reduction in the average household size over the last 30 years is a major driver in our housing shortage. The reduction in household size alone has consumed around half of all of the accommodation we've built in the last 20 years. My contention is that there's no solution to our housing shortage without better utilisation of our existing housing stock and that can only be achieved with a significant increase inn property tax.
Click to expand...
We should be like the UK and introduce bedroom taxes. Collect arrears in rent from those that owe it. Examine under capacity in social housing. Then when introducing increased property tax all areas should be treated equally. Not just certain leafy suburbs. We need swimming pools, gyms, libraries in every town in Ireland. Who exactly needs housing? I often hear this said but it is never quantified. All of the young couples in our area have saved and bought homes. It was not easy but they did it.
 
Presumably only those with social housing would face bedroom tax. Not sure that’ll work.

An acquaintance is in a council house, her kids have left, she wants an apartment. Was told she was getting one. Packed and is ready and waiting. 4 months later she’s still waiting, her house is half empty, her apartment is ready and empty. It’s not a speedy process. But it’s happening. So some councils are doing this.
 
fistophobia said:
I was going to work for the ESRI, until I did some research.
I dont like the way research reports are released, in order to support Government policies, and are timed that way.
Who cares if other European countries have a higher concentration of apartments dwellers.
Click to expand...
Yes alot of the surveys they do now are highly questionable and seem to be done to support government policies. The fiscal advisory Council produced a report critical of the recent government tax and spend budget, they got their fingers rapped by government. You won't find the esri doing that though. Also they seem to be veering into areas that are not economic but social and results based on surveys (highly questionable) rather than hard data . Didn't they also release a report on venereal disease during the week and based their report on a survey of young people sexual practices. How is this useful or relevant, nobody is going to be truthful in such a survey?
 
I recall visiting a supposidly 5 bed room new build a few years back. It would have been physically impossible to get a bed into the 5th "bedroom", a cot maybe but that would be it.

We are using land differently for new builds nowadays. Gardens are way smaller. I could move to be bigger and "better" new build with a more modern interior but the garden would be a third of what I have now. I actually think that is a pity as there is a need to encourage kids to get out and about and postage stamp gardens don't help.

I also think we should be building homes and communities, not rabbit hutches. San Sebastian is an example of how to do it in my opinions. Dozens of new apartment blocks close to the city centre, with the ground floor of each block given over to bars, restaurants and shops, proper public transport and green spaced/playgrounds etc all over the place.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top