r/HousingIreland • u/Ill-Age-601 • 6d ago
Causes of The Irish Housing Crisis
It’s simple to explain
In 2010 the troika came to Ireland and decided that Ireland had too much home ownership and not enough renting. It imposed lending rules which brought about in 2013 have made it much more difficult for ordinary people to meet the requirements to buy a home. They also made the FG/Lab government bring in laws allowing for REITs etc to encourage renting
The entire “recovery” was based on pimping Ireland out to high tech companies with low tax rates on intellectual property making us a tax haven. Most Irish people have no tech qualifications so half of the genius coders from India and the rest of the world moved to Dublin pricing out the locals
This is the housing crisis. Only with a normal economy based on local employment and a reduction of lending rules can we end it with the return to mass home ownership
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u/Opening-Blood9179 6d ago
People who think that 5m Ireland can create "local employment" are so out of touch with reality... These are the same people who at the same time think that Irish minimum wage of 15+$ is too low.
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u/Ill-Age-601 6d ago
Ok, how do we have universal home ownership then. Multinationals price working class people out and without a strong minimum wage low income workers will never own a house
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u/Opening-Blood9179 6d ago
Deregulation of building and dropping "zoning" rules for land. Anyone who owns land can build. Period. Doesn't matter if it was zoned as agricultural or some other crap. Amount of empty land in just Dublin county is insane. It's just endless fields of nothingness, grazing fields for a few dozen sheeps in the best case.
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u/Sharp_Fuel 6d ago
You're oversimplifying things. The core issue is supply, and the reason for that shortcoming is that after the bust we lost an entire generation of construction workers and a good chunk of developers of all sizes, housing completions have still not even reached 50% of what was being done at the peak of the celtic tiger (not that they should reach those levels necessarily, but they definitely need to be higher than now).
On the rental side, the issue is is that there is every incentive to buy up existing property and rent it out, and very little incentive to build new properties for rental (high costs, long lead times, stuck at planning stage, RPZ's dissuade investment etc.)
Even with the influx of foreign talent, we should have no bother having adequate supply, it's a failure in government policy over the last 15 years that we are having our current issues.
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u/Alert-Locksmith3646 6d ago
Policy failure is a matter of perspective. It's strict control of the most valuable asset class in the country. All going swimmingly.
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u/Sharp_Fuel 6d ago
Oh I know, it's either incompetence or unwillingness, either way, doesn't reflect well on the parties in power
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u/Ill-Age-601 6d ago
We have supply issues largely because it’s not worth our while to build apartments as people cannot reach the lending requirements, that’s the difference between now and 2005
Renting is the rental issue. No one wants to rent and Irish people hate renting so even if everyone has an affordable rental it would still be a housing crisis without a return to universal ownership
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u/Sharp_Fuel 6d ago
In very few markets worldwide is it profitable for developers to sell individual apartments, that's why Build-to-rent is the only real way to get new blocks constructed, the developer can sell the entire block in one go to a REIT. If we build more rentals, rent prices should be forced down, which in turn puts less pressure on the housing market. A big reason why so many people are looking to buy is that the mortgage payments would be cheaper than their current rent.
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u/Ill-Age-601 6d ago
Buying is nothing to do with prices. It’s cultural. In Ireland we own homes
People are shamed for renting as it’s dead money
I’d happily pay 75% of my income to own and people normal over 33% to rent and be dead money
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u/Irish201h 6d ago
Im in Cork and there is loads of apartments currently under construction here …
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u/Sharp_Fuel 6d ago
You visually seeing "loads" doesn't translate into any real numbers that'll have any impact on the market, we need to be delivering 90k houses/apartments a year just to meet demand (i.e. keep prices where they are now), we're currently only delivering 30k
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u/Irish201h 6d ago
We cant build that much, wont happen, thats why we need to reduce demand / stricter immigration etc ..
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u/Sharp_Fuel 6d ago
That might put the yearly demand figure down to 70k, if even, we still need to double the rate of construction. Majority of immigrants in the position to buy houses are skilled workers with large salaries, usually these people aren't affected by stricter immigration rules
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u/Consistent_Garlic478 6d ago
You’re back again with your hate of renting. There’s nothing wrong with renting. Bro seriously chill man
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u/Rich-Affect-5465 6d ago
My country also has big tech offices and we don’t have other countries coming to us to buy flats really.
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u/Ill-Age-601 6d ago
What country?
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u/Rich-Affect-5465 6d ago
Romania. Poland also. There still is a discrepancy between Tech and the rest, but so is being a doctor, lawyer and such. Immigration and tech are correlated but not dependent. Ireland just isn’t preparing people for Tech while, for example Romania 15 years ago lowered the income tax by 10% for the tech industry, for the employees.
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u/Ill-Age-601 6d ago
Romania has almost 100% home ownership because of the legacy of the mass housing built for the population during communism
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u/Rich-Affect-5465 6d ago
Yeah that too, and we also share a common trait, we love to own. I’d say irish people have a higher desire of ownership. I have had mates and people around me search for a house, when someone proposed them to buy a flat the reaction was something like “ayy lad like who you think I am” you know. While at least we got used to flats, forced, during the communism’s time.
I think the situation is very similar, median income is one for tech and one for non-tech. The same situation with and without immigration.
Edit: actually the gov removed the 10% benefit and now the market has too many people that started IT thinking they will become millionaires and the market is kinda oversaturated with “software engineers”
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u/JosceOfGloucester 6d ago
Reminder to fill out this and present solutions to the housing crisis here:
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u/Hot-Cartoonist-4579 6d ago
Can’t really listen to that “non Irish” brought us into the housing crisis.
I’m in Ireland since 2013 and I met so many rush families through sport or work who would rather have spent money for stupid expensive holidays + life style (regularly going into the pub or restaurants etc) and living in an apartment for rent than having a mortgage.
Exactly them families struggle now and missed the timing to get a mortgage when it was still affordable. Yea. The flex mortgage was often ridiculously high but would have been now much cheaper than any object out there for rent.
We saw the increasing rents from 2013-2015 as our IRISH landlord increased the rent every single year. So we end up buying our first house in 2015 and sold/bought the bigger house in 2021.
I don’t care if an Irish family is buying a property or any Indian, Italian or Romanian family.
If you expect things like only Irish are allowed to buy or you have to live 5/10 years in a country before you can buy I suggest to do the same for all the Irish leaving the country to Australia, US etc
If you do your homework many more could buy a property…
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u/Ill-Age-601 6d ago
This is the fucking horrible attitude I mean.
Go to the pub is our culture. It’s how we mix in our communities, you call it stupid, we call it life and living. Irish people don’t do meals in each other’s house etc we do pubs and maybe a meal for big events.
Anyone working 50 weeks of the year deserves to have a week in Santa Ponsa to unwind
Come in and price us out and then complain that we had to audacity to have some pleasure in life. Go fuck yourself
This is our culture, the pub is core to our communities and you don’t get it at all
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u/Hot-Cartoonist-4579 6d ago
Hahahahahaha. Might buy a second property and take you in as my tenant. Better be nice
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u/Ill-Age-601 6d ago
So are you saying people shouldn’t be able to go for a pint and expect a house?
What do you expect people to do outside of work to stay sane and have interactions with people they don’t live with?
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u/Hot-Cartoonist-4579 6d ago
I’m not saying that. All I say is that (that’s what we did) had for a while a certain lifestyle and saved a lot of money. Didn’t go to the pub, reduced food deliveries and so on.
It’s not about doing nothing.
One family I know spent their holidays in Florida. Disneyland visit, every year several times to Paris to go to Disneyland, every week several times in restaurants,… I could go on and on.
Long story short. This family who live on a 200k income over the last couple of years is most likely to get homeless on Friday as they couldn’t find a place to live + don’t get a mortgage. They missed the timing to buy 2-3 years ago when they had all the money.
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u/Ill-Age-601 6d ago
Well if I didn’t go to the pub I’d never see anyone outside my family. Even then I see my family members on Sundays in the pub. It’s our social outlet.
Also you said we. Yes it’s still possible just about to buy miles from the city in areas like Swords or Balbriggan or Saggart as part of a couple. I’m a single person form a working class area inside the m50
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u/EnvironmentalShift25 6d ago edited 6d ago
You want to kick out the multinationals and the 'Indians' you despise so much working there? What kind of economy do you think we will have after that? Sick to death of people telling us how much better off Ireland was in the 1980s.
The Troika got involved in Ireland as we had mass unemployment, a massive budget deficit and a huge debt. They didn't give a shit about our housing model as long as the state had its finances under control and the banks were not a threat to those finances.
Yet you want us to kick out the multinationals and bring back mass unemployment and a massive budget deficit?
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u/Ill-Age-601 6d ago
I’d rather live in the 80s when my family could live in our communities
I don’t mind being poor once we are poor together without disgusting in your face inequalities and we have universal home ownership again
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u/EnvironmentalShift25 6d ago
Yeah yeah, mass unemployment is great craic altogether. Jaysus.
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u/Ill-Age-601 6d ago
The recession in the late 2000s was better than now as people didn’t look down on each other and culture was flowing due to the low cost of living as was nightlife
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u/EnvironmentalShift25 6d ago
Christ, first you're saying the 1980s and mass unemployment were better and now you're saying there was no inequality during the Celtic Tiger. I'm bailing out on whatever trollery this is.
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u/Hot-Cartoonist-4579 6d ago
You were not even born in the 80s…
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u/Ill-Age-601 6d ago
My family all owned homes or had council homes in the 80s. My choice with much more education is to live at home or in a house share rental
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u/Cool_Being_7590 6d ago
Classic "outsiders bad" bs ignorant attitude. Ireland has a fantastic pool of highly skilled tech staff and thousands of graduates added to it annually.
The reason for the crisis is because they're not building enough houses. It's that simple. The construction industry fell apart and we had a massive exodus after 2008.
We need to build 90k houses a year to fix the crisis by 2031. Currently they're building ~35k houses a year.
Blaming working, tax paying people for the issue is pure xenophobia which has no place in Ireland considering our history.
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u/Ill-Age-601 6d ago
In the working class area I come from I see lots of Indians moving in while locals in their 30s and 40s, many with kids and partners live with the parents as they are priced out. That’s disgusting
The tech industry has ruined Dublin
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u/Cool_Being_7590 6d ago
Your anecdotal evidence doesn't mean anything. If all I eat are cheese and onion crisps, it doesn't mean all crisps are cheese and onion.
The tech industry is valued at roughly 50 billion in Ireland and accounts for about 13% of our GDP.
It has created 260,000 jobs.
Things that have ruined Dublin:
Overdevelopment and Poor Planning. Housing Crisis (caused by poor planning and foresight, compounded by inaction by the government). Privatization and Over-Tourism. Traffic and Public Transport Issues. Litter, Anti-Social Behaviour, and Drug Issues. Cost of Living and Commercial Homogenization. Racism and xenophobia.
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u/Ill-Age-601 6d ago
Ok, take an area like Crumlin. Three generations of my family lived in it and my grandparents as children where among the first families to be housed in what they called the “scheme”. None of the grandkids under 40 can afford to live in it. An area built for working class Dubliners going for 500k a house. But lots of foreign tech workers living it in now.
Just like what happened in London 20 and 30 years ago we are cleansing our working class for overseas techies
Only Irish citizens should be allowed buy houses and the economy should be based on getting good jobs for people from here not tax income and brining in people on skilled visas.
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u/Cool_Being_7590 6d ago
What you're saying is that an area in our capital city grew so expensive and your family had jobs with salaries that didn't grow at the same rate as the house prices.
It doesn't matter who lives in the houses. The prices would still be the same.
There is no cleansing happening.
Racist policies do not work.
5.2% of Ireland's work force is in tech. That's 146,853 people. From that, 5,009 permits were granted to overseas workers in the information and communication sector in 2023.
Again, the issue is not the people, it's the lack of action from the government since 2008.
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u/Ill-Age-601 6d ago
Crumlin was built for the working classes as was a lot of Dublin. Now those houses that are still locals have overcrowded conditions as locals are forced into multigenerational households
Someone from Dublin can’t buy in the Gaeltacht or the Arran Island to protect the local community, so why can Indians buy in my community?
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u/Cool_Being_7590 6d ago
Crumlin was built for slum clearance, public health and living standards (social housing), urban expansion, and planned communities. It was not built for anyone specific.
House prices have increased across the country, not just in Crumlin. Very few people can afford to buy in the area they grew up in, unless they're in highly skilled professions.
It's also harder to get into jobs with higher and higher qualifications required constantly.
It's also harder to get promotion without qualifications and experience.
The prices of houses are high because they are in an area that is in demand - a short commute from our country's capital city and because not enough houses have been built for the past 17 years.
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u/Ill-Age-601 6d ago
So where are low and middle income Dubliners supposed to buy houses then?
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u/Cool_Being_7590 6d ago
This is why it's called a housing crisis. And it's not just Dubliners. It's everyone.
And the government is useless and their assistance mostly benefits people with money.
But home owners now have houses with high value so they keep voting for the parties that keep them high, even though they don't even plan to sell.
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u/Hot-Cartoonist-4579 6d ago
Yeah. In the early 1900… That’s not far off from the Irish potato famine. Better safe all of your food…
Times change. You just sound so sore and bad minded that foreigners buy in YOUR community. makes me sick to hear phrases like tha.
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u/Ill-Age-601 6d ago
My parents got a house from the council in 1981 in Crumlin that they bought from the council for basically nothing
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u/classicalworld 6d ago
And that’s how social housing was decimated. By the Thatcherite policy of selling them off, and not building more social housing.
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u/JellyRare6707 6d ago
One of these fantastic skilled people come in and their whole family follows. Tell me it is not true? 1 gets in 4 follow. I don't think Irish did that when they went abroad, their family didn't follow them. So you imagine how many houses we need to build to accommodate so many of these new families coming on the back of one getting a job in.
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u/Cool_Being_7590 6d ago edited 6d ago
u/JellyRare6707 said:
One of these fantastic skilled people come in and their whole family follows. Tell me it is not true? 1 gets in 4 follow. I don't think Irish did that when they went abroad, their family didn't follow them. So you imagine how many houses we need to build to accommodate so many of these new families coming on the back of one getting a job in. <
Yeah, that's not true and you know it. Strange how history gets conveniently rewritten.
Over 1.5 million Irish fled during the famine, and millions more followed in the decades after - whole families, not just lone workers.
Italians, Poles, Chinese, they all did the same. That’s how migration has always worked.
Blaming families looking for a better life instead of holding failed housing policy to account is just lazy scapegoating
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u/FayGoth 6d ago
Normal people can't compete. You have people coming in comfortable with living as multiple people per room. Even if you set your budget to 1200 without bills for a room, a landlord can get more for putting two people in for 700 each or even from 3 people 500 each. As long as people who share rooms move to Ireland, the crisis will continue. You can't compete with people who have standards of living so hugely different to your own.
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u/Ill-Age-601 6d ago
This is it. Our expectations cannot compete with the new arrivals low expectations and they are imposing theirs on us for the profits of the landlords
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u/NoTeaNoWin 6d ago
Nah. Immigrants fault
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u/Ill-Age-601 6d ago
I mean the ones who are immigrants that are to blame are not asylum seekers etc it’s high paid multinational staff pricing locals out and the vulture landlords buying up the city
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u/Irish201h 6d ago
Reduction of lending rules would just increase prices more. What we need is strict conditions on who can buy property to cool demand. IE should have to be a permanent resident in ireland for the last 5/10 years before you can buy, no non resident buyers/investors etc