State is now buying 20% of all new builds

Brendan Burgess

Brendan Burgess

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A good article by Charlie Weston here:

Revealed: One in five new-build homes is now being snapped up by State


The State is squeezing out first-time home buyers by snapping up new homes rather than building their own.


Official figures show approximately one in every five newly built residential properties was snapped up by a combination of local authorities and taxpayer-funded housing bodies last year.


In some counties the State is snapping up more than half of all new homes in estates.
 
But it's not just that the state is squeezing out for the home buyer, they are also pushing up prices.

And they are doing the same with rent. By paying so many people HAP, they are pushing up rents.

So those who try to pay their own rent without state assistance or who try to buy a home, are finding that the state is using their taxes to push up the prices.

Brendan
 
Various public officials have issued denials that the are impacting the market, saying absurd things like "we don't buy many new builds" and "we buy a different kind of house than first-time buyers".
 
And Lorcan Sirr has an opinion piece on it

Lorcan Sirr: 'Watch out for the magpie as it swoops on new estates to lock out our first-time buyers'

Councils are also not ramping up capacity and replenishing their own housebuilding skills.

They have traditionally built very high quality housing, with an eye to long-term maintenance and costs. A house bought from a builder only has to be good on the day it is sold.

The purchase of housing developments on their entirety also goes against the Government policy imperative of tenant mix.


 
Brendan Burgess said:
Councils are also not ramping up capacity and replenishing their own housebuilding skills.
Click to expand...
There is already a shortage of trades people in the country and in a lot of other countries as well.
A lot of politicians and media commentators talk about Councils employing direct labour to build houses. Where are all these skilled tradesmen now

Nobody asks are these trades persons to be given full time pensionable jobs.
More full time engineers to be employed in full time pensionable jobs to supervise and certify the work.
How will the amount of work per day etc be measured.
There are many trades used in building a housing estate.

Some commentators and politicians go on about this in an nonsencical way as if this would solve the crisis in 3 years or so.

How many trades people would it take to do this. ( If they were available )
What would this number of trades people do after the 3 years having solved the housing crisis.
Probably pay out 10's of millions to them to make them redundent
 
Dermot said:
There is already a shortage of trades people in the country and in a lot of other countries as well.
A lot of politicians and media commentators talk about Councils employing direct labour to build houses. Where are all these skilled tradesmen now

Nobody asks are these trades persons to be given full time pensionable jobs.
More full time engineers to be employed in full time pensionable jobs to supervise and certify the work.
How will the amount of work per day etc be measured.
There are many trades used in building a housing estate.

Some commentators and politicians go on about this in an nonsencical way as if this would solve the crisis in 3 years or so.

How many trades people would it take to do this. ( If they were available )
What would this number of trades people do after the 3 years having solved the housing crisis.
Probably pay out 10's of millions to them to make them redundent
Click to expand...

Almost all of the commentary re_ " how to solve the housing crisis" is stereotypical money tree left wing fantasy economics.

Then again it's harder to find Conservative views in the Irish media than find a cheap place to rent in Dublin
 
From the Journal.ie last year; "according to figures from Inside Airbnb, there were 2,672 full homes or apartments listed on the short-term rental platform last year in the area covered by Dublin City Council with a vast majority located within these postcodes."
That's about a billion worth of property. Why not apply existing planning laws and the requirement for a change in use to run a business from a private dwelling place and get 8 or 10 thousand people off the housing list in Dublin within the next month?
 
I do not think that article is good at all.

1. Let’s look at the figures.

Of 18000 houses/units built, the Council or a housing body purchased 2000. REITs purchased 700.

Article deliberately confused the issue by
a) stating REITs purchased a more headline 3000 units.
b) dismissing 7000 of the 18,000 to get to 12,000 and then saying that’s 18% giving the neat 1 in 5 headline grabbing.

2. Housing experts

a) Who?
b) One guy is mentioned, who he, is he really an expert
c) what is the bald claim that the state can build state housing cheaper based on, like hello national children’s hospital, broadband, Irish water fiasco,

3. Bold claims, 1/2 all homes in some estates

a) where?
b) are we talking Sligo council buying 10 apartments in a block of 20. Or Leitrim buying 2 houses in an estate if 4. Or are we saying 5000 units in an estate of 10,0000. Clearly not if it’s 2000 units over all.

4. State v house body

No breakdown of these figures. Are we saying housing bodies should not purchase homes for those they are housing. Don’t we want people housed.

Are we saying that first time buyers should get homes before families in hotels.

5. Playing with figures

I think 2000 units over 26 counties is nothing.

Could someone tell me how housing in Cork, Limerick of Galway is unaffordable to first time buyers. I won’t even mention Sligo or Waterford.
 
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Bronte said:
c) what is the bald claim that the state can build state housing cheaper based on, like hello national children’s hospital, broadband, Irish water fiasco,
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There were headlines last year relating to developments where they pointed out how much more expensive council builds were!
 
Many of these 2,672 AirBnBs may be PPRs with the owner letting people use their homes or apartments for small parts of the year; I personally know a good few people in Dublin who do this when they're on holidays or away for the weekend or whatever. Different enforcement of planning laws won't change anything with these.
 
Bronte said:
You don't have a link by any chance. Was it the Indo !
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Times article here, there were others at the time pointing to a development of about 60 social housing units in Dublin, mainly 1-2 bed apartments and duplexes where the per-unit build cost was €330k on land the council already owned. SCSI build costs for private developments were lower at the time and they include all site costs.

Here it is in the spending report, Cornamona Court, €360k per unit!
 
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South Dublin council targets luxury scheme for social housing
Local authority aims to secure all 90 units in Dundrum development
www.irishtimes.com

South Dublin council targets luxury scheme for social housing

Local authority aims to secure all 90 units in Dundrum development
www.irishtimes.com www.irishtimes.com
Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council is pursuing a plan to secure all 90 units at an apartment scheme beside [broken link removed] Town Centre for social housing. Nearing completion, the Herbert Hill scheme, by publicly-listed developer Glenveagh, made headlines when it emerged that it would be sold in a single block to the private rented sector as opposed to being offered for individual sale.
A number of institutional buyers are understood to have expressed interest in acquiring Herbert Hill on that basis., However, Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown council has added a new dimension to the sale process with an offer to lease the exclusive scheme in its entirety for use as social housing...
...The plan’s key selling point, according to the prospectus, is that it will provide the buyer of Herbert Hill the guarantee of a 25-year stream of rental income, linked to inflation and underpinned by what it describes as a “quasi-government backed tenancy covenant” from Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council.

While Davy says in the document that the apartments at the south Dublin development could deliver gross rental income of some €2.8 million on the open market, the guaranteed income from the council is being set in the region of €2.1 million. It is understood this figure would see the council paying monthly rents of some €2,000 for one-bed apartments, €2,500 for two-bed units, and €3,000 for three-bed units.
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The sooner this country goes bust again, the better. We need the adults from the Troika back in to manage our economic affairs because we're certainly not capable of doing so
 
Delboy said:
The sooner this country goes bust again, the better. We need the adults from the Troika back in to manage our economic affairs because we're certainly not capable of doing so
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DLR is the local authority with (by far) the most expensive housing stock.

There is no cheap development for the local authority to pick up.

New build social housing on a large scale is very hard due to NIMBYism or mountains.
 
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