"Some sane ideas to fix this housing madness"

T McGibney said:

It was never going to be even a partial solution to any situation of scarcity. How can something that artificially hikes prices for one subset of homebuyers ever be?

I most certainly didn't say that. You know well what the word "contributor" means. If you're going to put words into my mouth, at least be accurate.

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Like when you said I " touted" something when I clearly didn't. Yeah you seem to have selective memory.

Paul O Mahoney said:

Like when you said I " touted" something when I clearly didn't. Yeah you seem to have selective memory.

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I said "You touted it as a solution to the current crisis".

100% factual.

As with earlier in the week, you can ad hominem me all evening if you wish but I won't be responding in kind.

T McGibney said:

I said "You touted it as a solution to the current crisis".

100% factual.

As with earlier in the week, you can ad hominem me all evening if you wish but I won't be responding in kind.

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Again I did not and I didn't ad hominem you at anytime , you did not quote my post in full and I regard that practice as rude and un mannerly.

Does anyone know if this has begun or is it still stalled in Government roundabouts, the amounts of the Grant's seem a bit low.

Paul O Mahoney said:

Again I did not and I didn't ad hominem you at anytime , you did not quote my post in full and I regard that practice as rude and un mannerly.

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Here we go again.

And

Paul O Mahoney said:

Yeah you seem to have selective memory.

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Leo said:

I would have assumed the other. There has been a shift away from the countryside over the past few decades and the rising values of city properties that are well serve by public transport and other services usually incentivises people to sell if they are no longer required, or renovate and rent given the escalation in rents in recent years.

With that it is the more remote properties with poor or no access to public services that are being left idle or used as holiday homes on occasion.

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Dublin perhaps but in say Cork, Galway the movement seems outward.

What I was trying to say was that within the larger urban areas like Cork, Limerick and Galway the vacant properties including council properties would already be in areas where services are already in situ and any future requirements to provide them would already be in place.

I might be completely wrong but I still hold the view that unless its shown that renovations etc are more costly than new builds given the myriad of other factors then fine.

The title of the thread has the word " sensible " in it and what hit the press recently isn't sensible nor economical but it'll probably go ahead.

I'll state this again solutions must be found and all stakeholders must be part if those solutions either wise we are going to repeat the same mistakes were made for the last 50 years.

Time is of the essence and short term stop gaps may be needed but in tandem to that a clear equitable strategy fit for a modern country also needs to found.

Paul O Mahoney said:

Dublin perhaps but in say Cork, Galway the movement seems outward.

What I was trying to say was that within the larger urban areas like Cork, Limerick and Galway the vacant properties including council properties would already be in areas where services are already in situ and any future requirements to provide them would already be in place.

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The data from last year isn't published yet, and may well show a pandemic and remote working impact, but the CSO has been reporting a slow but steady urbanisation of the population,

There certainly are some unusued properties in desirable and services aras, but when the need is of the scale of 10's of thousands of additional properties a year, existing dwellings will only scratch the surface. It's a high effort, low gain approach.

Let's face it, the vast majority of these are in private ownership, and you just can't force people to rent them out if they don't want to, Taxation can encourage it, but only to an extent.

Leo said:

The data from last year isn't published yet, and may well show a pandemic and remote working impact, but the CSO has been reporting a slow but steady urbanisation of the population,

There certainly are some unusued properties in desirable and services aras, but when the need is of the scale of 10's of thousands of additional properties a year, existing dwellings will only scratch the surface. It's a high effort, low gain approach.

Let's face it, the vast majority of these are in private ownership, and you just can't force people to rent them out if they don't want to, Taxation can encourage it, but only to an extent.

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It'll be interesting to see, and there maybe counter flows emerging, from viewing houses particularly in North Wexford most of the fellow viewers would certainly be my generation and would have large amounts of equity and one couple mentioned their children had flown the nest.

Our daughter has moved into Dublin to " get on with her life" so it might be the young moving into cities and the old moving out.

Paul O Mahoney said:

It'll be interesting to see, and there maybe counter flows emerging, from viewing houses particularly in North Wexford most of the fellow viewers would certainly be my generation and would have large amounts of equity and one couple mentioned their children had flown the nest.

Our daughter has moved into Dublin to " get on with her life" so it might be the young moving into cities and the old moving out.

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Yeah, I think there are signs already that a lot of employers, or at least some of their current managers, aren't so keen on staff working remotely the vast majority of the time. Younger people will always gravitate towards the office and the social life that accompanies it. Overall I'd expect our move towards greater urbanisation will continue.

Brendan Burgess said:

I have an opinion piece in today's Sunday Times

Some sane ideas to fix this housing madness

It’s a crazy housing world. Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown county council is buying luxury apartments for €788,741 each for social housing. In Cabinteely, the same cou

www.thetimes.co.uk

I am sure that the paper will soon be sold out in the rush, so just in case you can't get a copy, here is a trailer...

It’s a crazy housing world.

Dun Laoghaire Rathdown Council is buying luxury apartments for €788,741 each to provide social housing.

In Cabinteely, the same Council has agreed to lease an entire block of 81 newly built apartments at a rent of about €24,000 each. Very few private tenants could afford to rent these luxury apartments, but when the taxpayer is paying, money is no object.

First time buyers working in Dublin can only afford to buy in Dundalk, Portlaoise and Wexford while social housing tenants insist on being housed in their own community.

The government has recently announced grants of up to €144,000 to developers to build apartments because the developers say that it’s no longer economically viable to build apartments. This must come as a surprise to someone who can’t afford to buy a newly built apartment at the current prices.

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If the council is doing so its because in doing so it skipped ALL the stages of agreeing the development, paying the cost of design, going through planning etc - just let someone else do it and then lease it all out, and kick the can 20 years down the road.
Its just short term thinking - largely because there isn't political consensus on how to house a large population of people who cannot afford to house themselves.

The Centre/Right want to go on the basis that a % of private housing goes to social/affordable (thus just pays for the house, not the rest of the costs, planning etc the developers problem).
The left wants traditional social housing in 100% council owned/developed units but from what I can see no LA is building any of these bigger than 30-40 homes.
Each side would literally prefer to burn the other crowd's preferred fix to the ground rather than see it go through.
Rinse and repeat.