Euronews on the broken Irish property market

[Abhannmor]

Did anyone else see the Euronews segment on the property market here this morning? They certainly didn't pull any punches

There was an interview with a woman who has bought a canal boat to live in. This is quite a serious option now.

The commentary was in French but with English subtitles. People across Europe will see this . Our reputation for compassion and even common sense being trashed Good. We deserve it.
' Local people told us that successive governments have done nothing to relieve the situation , preferring the status quo' *

In conclusion they said they had asked the Irish government to comment but got no reply. Evictions now exceed those during the Great Hunger of the 1840s.
Bravo Euronews. You don't get this on RTÉ but foreign stations are not beholden to the Landlord Dáil.

• quoting from memory

What happens to people when they are evicted?

I suppose there are two options. Stay with family/ friends or emergency accommodation provided by the council. A friend was staying in a hostel for a few months recently. Shared kitchen and TV lounge etc.

I suppose these places are under pressure now with the Ukraine war etc?

Ps People evicted won't be living on the side of the road and taking the Soup of course. But....its 2023.

It is absolutely horrendous but this is massively linked to the construction crash in 2008 which we particularly in Ireland absolutely have not recovered from. We do not have enough tradespeople or construction professionals to build what we need because the construction sector is so unattractive to graduates/apprentices for so many reasons (college courses for construction professions have incredibly low uptake and training for site based apprentices is incredibly low) and the cost of land is a significant issue. Previously the construction sector was ignoring the issues around recruitment because before covid they believed immigration would be the solution but covid has opened the sectors eyes up to this massive issue.

The government can not possibly have a quick fix solution for those particular issues but equally they are doing nothing longer term to rectify the issues either.

Yes I saw that and first time the truth really shown about what is happening in our country as 'good old rte' won't show it as in bed with government. Shocking what has happened in Ireland as housing not seen as a basic human need now but a money making machine for the super rich landlords and their cronies and vulture funds etc etc. Leo the Leak should be in jail for his crimes and leaking documents. Hse, Rte, Government and Irish Racing and Fisheries all corrupt as hell and what about Delaney who was never charged yet for his corruption and fraud in football here. They make me sick the lot of them as look after each other at the top, nepotism at it's finest. Sure wasn't their talk about 'no bank account Bertie' running for president. Mehole and Leo just want jobs in eu and yet another big pension, they could not care less about the normal person. Sorry rant over. Yes was a great little mini documentary about housing and was honest and detailed.

To the person above why could they not build those prefab houses for the Irish years ago as they are of good quality and last for years, they never had the will to do so but just want to be seen as doing good in eyes of eu now. The housing minister should be sacked as he is absolutely useless.

We have plenty of prefab domestic accommodation I worked in construction before 2008 and we were building vast swathes of prefab apartments for decades at that stage. I designed the prefab structure. The prefab methods have changed but prefab has been a significant part of Irish construction.

Good points there @BOOTS52PollyPrissyPants and @BallantyneValentine .

Plus a lot of skilled trades people emigrated after the Crash in 08. Nonetheless....I saw a photo on one of those Irish history pages on Facebook recently. An old black and white pic of Cabra West under construction in the 1940s. The largest housing project in Europe back then.

Imagine how broke we were and now the government has a massive tax surplus and we are the envy of the world - mar dhath! Yet decades ago we could build hydroelectric power stations. And massive housing schemes. Whereas as now.....it's all whining about the ' market can't be interfered with '.

Our hands are tied you see. Nothing to do with us TDs being landlords. That's just a strange coincidence.

We have a government who allow big foreign firms get great tax breaks in the Build to Rent sector.
To hell with the people who voted them in, who want homes to buy.
😢

Indeed @LadyEloise1 . Foreign corporations buying whole estates. All that hot money sloshing around. And the Revenue's € 16.5 billion surplus. Then the trillions offshore. Ugh. 🤮

Our hands are tied you see. Nothing to do with us TDs being landlords. That's just a strange coincidence.

This pretty much sums it up. The government could bring in all kinds of emergency legislation when it came to Covid. But are apparently powerless when it comes to the housing crisis. There's a lot of hand wringing and empty promises. Meanwhile, the numbers in homeless accommodation continue to rise, causing untold misery for the people and families behind those statistics and laying down untold problems for society as a whole going forward.

Just think if the Government took the Apple money or even the latest DPC fine money we'd have money that we didn't have already and we'd be able to pay for builders to come and build proper quality accommodation for everyone. We have the space, the government just chooses to turn the other way.

Even the accommodation that was built before the property bubble burst, its of such poor quality that the owners are having to spend several thousands on repairs that should have been mandatory before the properties were handed over to the estate agents for selling on, except they weren't.

It's shocking how things have gone in this country over the past 30 or so years.

This 💯

I watched this last night and I must admit it really saddens me at the state of the housing market and the future of the young people of Ireland. I also have had a first hand experience of the plight of the property market in Ireland and how it is really failing so many people. My family and I made the move to Ireland last year (after I was away for 17 years). The only house we could find in the area we wanted to live in was €3500 per month, which then went up to $4000 per month (despite it being in a RPZ - but the Landlord was able to do as there are no repercussions on the Landlord raising the rent beyond the permitted % increase). We had hoped to only rent for a year and then buy but the houses in the area were going for from 20-30% beyond the asking price on Daft. The availability of houses was shockingly low so for every house we arrived to view there was around 20/30 interested parties all desperate for a house and entering ridiculous bidding wars. The houses were no where near worth what they were going for and the worry of negative equity was in the back of our minds.
On top of that due to the lack of investment in infrastructure in the area we were looking to live all the local schools were struggling to accommodate all the children that were living there that had been brought in by the new developments which the developers were allowed to build without providing any new infrastructure (which is shameful). In fact my children were in a school that had doubled in pupil size over 4 years yet had no extra accommodation meaning kids were squeezed into the library, IT suite, staff rooms. So the situation we found ourselves in was we were looking to spend an extortionate amount of money on a house in an area where there was no room for the kids in the schools and no amenities. The population of this town was continuing to grow and the local council thought the answer to this was to put a ban on any new developments , not to increase investment in new schools / infrastructure. Which I suppose might be an act to try deter people from
Coming to the area but with a growing population across Ireland all it will do is hinder the supply of housing and increase the price of the stock that is available. Absolutely backward idiotic future town planning if you ask me. The older kids in the town who went off to uni in Ireland couldn’t afford to live in the cities they were studying so most of them were making mammoth trips to and from uni every day, thereby missing out on the whole uni experience in my opinion.
On top of this whist I was in Ireland I worked in the property world and saw first hand the influx of foreign vulture funds coming in buying up the housing stock and building new schemes - all of which they wanted (and were able to) to be 100% private units, with no affordable/ social housing, which was just shocking. There seemed to me very little rules around not allowing this to happen. I also experienced the tech firms that were building their own houses for their employees without having any obligation to contribute to the local infrastructure or provide social / affordable housing in their schemes - just big units full of rich tech employees.
so all in all after the year we had in Ireland and the state of the property market we couldn’t see a future for ourselves or our children there and we made the decision to return to the UK this year where we can own our own home and we don’t both have to work till we drop just to afford a mortgage. It really saddened me that Ireland has made it so hard for hard working people to return to and a place where young people feel they have no future. The Govt’s housing strategy is a disaster - it needs to ban vulture funds, it needs to deter multi-ownership and it needs to pump money into and prioritise afffordable / social housing schemes and make it a legal obligation on the developers where they build a scheme over a certain number of units to contribute to the local infrastructure by building new schools, GP units, roads, parks etc. until this is sorted and with a growing population, irelands housing issue will continue to get worse (unless the state of it continues to drive people out and deter people like myself from returning home). Very sad state for a country that purports to be one of the richest / most successful in the world.

Another point to add that I witnessed was the knock on effect of the housing crisis - in the area we lived , teachers , doctors, fire men - people all providing vital services etc couldn’t afford to live in the areas so the local schools suffered with teaching staff (no qualified supply staff at all) and struggled to fill vacant posts. Again, the answer is to build affordable housing otherwise these communities are truly missing out. The answer is NOT stop granting planning permission. It really is that simple - make it a legal obligation on the developers to provide affordable units owned by independent registered providers.

I'm so sorry about your sad experience @JustAMum2003 . Ours was a bit different because we moved back with Rural Resettlement. The rent was cheap enough - 1996. But it was rough for the first two years jobwise. We just bailed out without a parachute.

Now the kids are adults and....they can't afford to buy. One has moved back home and is saving hard. The upsides such as they are : No student debt hanging over them. Still in the EU.
Plus on recent trips to England they find it hard to relate to the place now. Which is a bit sad.

I totally agree with your suggestions. Govt must ignore the wealthy land hoarders and the Nimbys. Stop taxing work and production to death. Tax second homes. Tax empty homes . Tax unused land ! Build a bloody 21st century transport system too.

Richest country in Europe me arse - it's a casino.

How indeed can we not build houses? We're famed worldwide as builders.

@Abhannmor thank you for your kind word - it was sad and still is if I’m honest. All our hopes to return to Ireland were really shattered when we landed and just couldn’t make it work. If we had done it years ago when house prices were more realistic it might have been a different story. I think now it might be too late - my oldest is 12 so I’m not sure even if we looked to move back in a couple of years we could do it because my oldest would be too old to move from the Uk system to the Irish school system. It’s been hard on my kids and my OH. If you don’t mind me asking how old were your kids when you made the move?

I really don’t get how they haven’t sorted out the housing issue - it does feel like the GOvt just won’t wake up to what needs to be done . I went over to work in the property sector (having worked for developers building social / affordable housing in the Uk for nearly two decades) and couldn’t believe how there wasn’t the desire to build houses for the ordinary folk but rather the desire to was to build apt blocks for vulture funds and the big tech. And no town planning at all. I’m not sure how this is going to pan out for Ireland in the next few years but surely something has to change.

I think FFFG should be rebranded as Méfein as I have yet to see more than a smattering of politicians who are working for the good of the people and Country.

When Ireland was a poor poor country the government and councils were able to build huge council estates.
I'm in Dublin and can name Marino, Crumlin, Drimnagh, Cabra, Sallynoggin and Finglas.
I'm banging the same drum again I know but I just don't think our politicians care. 😢
They give tax breaks to big foreign investment companies and save unsecured bond holders, they allow developers who owe multi millions to resume their businesses - all to the detriment of the Irish people.

I know OP it's so depressing. I'm sick to the back teeth of hearing politicians talk about 'solving the housing crisis' - they've been in government for over a decade and it's worse than ever!

Where I live, I see so many apartments being built, but they are all either student accommodation, or 'rental only' - so basically being funded by foreign investment companies that will charge €2000 a month for a one bed or similar.

HOW are ordinary people supposed to afford this, or ever have a hope to save for their own home? You are right that the fact that TDs are overwhelmingly landlords makes this worse.

It bugs me because there are alternatives like tiny house living, which is popular in other countries like Canada and New Zealand, but our really strict laws would not allow these to be put on land, even if we owned the land. Even as a temporary solution to allow young people to live in for a few years to save for a deposit or something. But no, thinking outside the box is never considered.

Honestly, the only way I will ever own my own home is through inheritance, which is a depressing thought.

Hi @JustAMum2003 Our kids were 10 and twins aged 6. The eldest didn't have to do Irish. Oddly enough she used to sing in Irish from hearing the other children! It was hard at first as the system here was a bit more formal - the X tables and spelling etc.

That's probably changed since the late 90s though. Still where there's a will and all that. I lived in London for 30 years. Couldn't afford to buy there either tbh ...except for a brief period I'm the early 90s but we missed that bus.

We decided it's no use waiting for things to be perfect and just went for it. Totally agree @LadyEloise1 @Farmageddon @CordylineHair and other posters. There's so much govt and councils could do with a bit of gumption and imagination. Even fixing up the Ghost estates or empty homes seems to be beyond their wit .

Good call re the ghost estates @Abhannmor.

There's a large, tall apartment block up in Sandyford Dublin.
It's half built, sitting there, forlorn for years, sticking out like a sore thumb.
Why hasn't it been finished off to provide much needed homes ?

FFFG - the MéFéin party. Love it @CordylineHair
When SF get in on a wave FFFG will have think tanks discussing what went wrong.
Sadly I do think they are that stupid.

@Farmageddon it really upsets me too that many of the apartments being built are for rental only or student accommodation with high rents going to foreign investment companies.

I live in South Dublin and have 3 adult children living with me. They are saving hard but aren't on huge salaries so realistically they are years away from buying, especially since they are all single.

My brother works for a Dublin firm which employs a lot of minimum wage workers. A lot of the employees come from eastern Europe and would never manage to pay rent in Dublin on their low wage. So the company have bought a house (or possibly more than one) just so they can house their employees.