Is the State competing against homebuyers?

[willielovesall]

Currently, I'm shopping around for an apartment and every viewing I go to, there's a man there that I suspected was an investor.

So I got talking to him and he told me that he is indeed an investor but that his company buys property and leases it to the county councils. This is the approach the council is taking with social housing. Instead of building social houses, they are taking properties out of the market that the rest of us have to buy. He gave me an outline of the kind of properties he's looking for (2-bed to 3-bed houses)

Normally, I won't care about this kind of thing but this was really disconcerting to me for a few reasons.

I pay €1800/month in rent. I badly want to out of the rental market and getting a mortgage approved was already difficult.

Now I find out that the government is effectively competing against me as a cash buyer. Realistically, I don't believe any couple is able to compete against the state in a bid. It angers me because it's my taxes that are effectively making it hard for me to make my life easier.

They also give some people in society a completely unfair advantage over the rest of us. The state may also artificially inflate the property price making it even harder for couples to buy.

Finally, the last thing I wanted to mention. The investor mentioned that the state has bought houses that people refuse because it's not close to their family or it's not big enough.

Is there a policy in place where the state buys houses that are on the open market?

 

[Palerider]

I don't know about a policy but this is not new, I sold a house to a local authority in 1996.

With few new builds competition is tough and yes you are competing indirectly against those who require housing but do not have the means to secure this on their own.

Tough as it is that is the society we live in.

 

[Delboy]

Your not only in competition with the State, different State funded bodies are bidding against each other pushing up the end price that the taxpayer has to fund!
It's like the California gold rush

 

[willielovesall]

The investor himself seemed to think it was a bad policy as there were an awful lot of refusals by the council. A lot of them would only take houses and even when the council acquired them, people would refuse them because it was not near there family or was too small.

So these people get a choice, meanwhile, if you want to move to Dublin and WORK, you're backed into a corner with the rental market and end up taking a place that is way overvalued.

This kind of action really hits consumers hard

 

[Purple]

The investor himself seemed to think it was a bad policy as there were an awful lot of refusals by the council. A lot of them would only take houses and even when the council acquired them, people would refuse them because it was not near there family or was too small.

So these people get a choice, meanwhile, if you want to move to Dublin and WORK, you're backed into a corner with the rental market and end up taking a place that is way overvalued.

This kind of action really hits consumers hard

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