Demand Outweighs Supply: Significant Interest in 500 New Affordable Houses

The Irish Times reports that the County Council of south Dublin has a plan to build 500 new affordable homes. This is the first time a plan has been put in place to build affordable housing in south Dublin for well over a decade. The houses are planned to cost roughly €300,000. Therefore, for first time buyers, in order to purchase, the home buyers would have to place a down payment of €30,000. However, the home buyers could also benefit from the Help to Buy Scheme. Since the home buyers are purchasing affordable housing that is less than 500,000 euro, the first time buyers could receive a tax rebate of 5% of the 300k if the home buyers take out a mortgage of at least 70% of the home’s price. This €15,000 rebate could be very beneficial to most first time home buyers. In addition, the Irish Times predicted that the affordable homes will be 40% less than market price, a significant savings.  

As reported by the Irish times, the homes will be available in three locations. The first time …

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Outlook on the Irish Housing Market

Key issues regarding the stability of the Irish economy seen in the housing market. The key issue of the housing crisis can be defined as growing demand that is not meet by current supply.

Many current government policies are concerned with increasing the volume of supply of completing housing units. For example, Rebuilding Ireland is associated with increasing housing supply to reduce homelessness. However, over the past 3 years supply has increased but housing prices have increased at a rate higher than the increase in supply. Governmental policies focus too much on supplying more volume instead of focusing on the affordability of housing.

According to Goodbody BER Housebulding Tracker, it is estimated that an additional 18,855 new housing units were added in 2018. This estimation is in line with previous forecasts. The majority of new dwelling competitions in 2018 were located in the Greater Dublin Area. More specifically, housing completions in the Greater Dublin Area accounted for 60% of the total new housing schemes in 2018. Although there has been an increase in the supply of housing, many problems in …

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High land prices keeps developers from supplying homes that are demanded

High costs of land is making developers unable to supply homes that are truly needed to solve the housing crisis. According to a leading developer, land prices specifically need to be reduced by 25% to 35% to meet Ireland’s real demand for housing.

The development company, O’Flynn Group is currently developing 1,600  new housing units across 11 sites in Dublin and Cork. O’Flynn Group’s chief executive, Michael Flynn stated that Ireland’s residential construction activity may be nearing a plateau. He reasons his statement because of restricting limits of supplying homes, ranging from mortgage lending limits to skill shortages in construction. Regulation serves as another limiting factor in supplying homes.

According to O’Flynn, the real demand for housing is twice the amount developers are able to deliver. He continues to denote that if artificial restrictions are not limited, and demand for affordable housing is not met than the housing crisis will only continue. Lastly, he noted that more households will be forced into the rental sector with out the hope of saving if the trends previously described continue.

O’Flynn was prompted …

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Finance Minister Announces €1.25 Billion allocated to Social Housing

According to Finance Minister Donohoe, the Land Developmental Agency has identified sites where a potential  3,000 homes could be built. State bodies are working with the government to locate land that can deliver an additional 7,000 units.

Donohoe also pledged an increase allocation of €121 million to the Housing Assistance Payment. This additional €121 million serves as a emergency accommodation. Donohoe reveled a €60 million increase in funding will also go towards emergency accommodations.

Also, landlords will have 100% mortgage relief on loans used to pay for rental properties. This new relief for landlords will be in effect in the next year. This action will help reduce the risk of becoming a landlord.

Homelessness services were also planned to receive an increase of funding of  €30 million. This funding is to help alleviate the burdens of the housing crisis. The total spending on homelessness in 2019 is now boosted to €146 million. Donohoe’s report revealed that housing needs for 25,000 people will be met in 2019 due to the increase in supply of housing stock. The increasing trend in supply of housing has …

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Housing crisis only expected to get worse until 2023

According to Focus Ireland, the most optimistic statement on housing released by the government reveals that the housing crisis will continue get worse until 2022 or later. This statement is considered very optimistic as housing issues will likely progress into 2023.

The Department of Housing targets 48,000 new home completions by 2023. If this target is achieved, 2023 could be the first time that housing supply could potentially exceed housing demand. Figures provided by the Department of Housing have shown the first time that an admission denoted housing and homelessness will only continue to get worse in the next few years.

Although the Department of Housing has set a target of 48,000 new homes to be built by 2023, this target could be missed. If the target is completed or surpassed then burdens associated with the housing crisis could be significantly reduced. The problems that could be reduced would include reduced homelessness and new homes would create more supply for social and affordable housing. However, if homes were to be sold at current market values then the impact on …

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Why buy a council flat? Council buyouts to flop.

I don’t understand why a person would want to pay for something they could get for near free or where the charge for said thing is difficult to enforce. You see this every day when people park illegally or don’t put money in the meter, there are clamper’s out there but they don’t catch the vast majority of offenders.

That is why I see two articles in the Irish time that seem to contradict the likelihood of the each other.

Article 1: Council flat purchase scheme to start in 2012 Article 2: Tenants owe city council €21m in rent arrears

In the first one we are told that Dublin City Council (in particular) are close to bringing out a ‘tenant purchase scheme’ via the 2009 Housing Act for people who live in flats. The scheme has a few things that may hamper it…

For a start 65% of …

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A conversation with Kevin O’Rourke

Trinity Economist Kevin O’Rourke received a lot of attention recently which centred around a paper he wrote with Agustin Benetrix and Barry Eichengreen that featured on VOX.

The Sunday Tribune picked up on it with the headline ‘House price fall could be worst in history‘. Fairly powerful statement that! Kevin O’Rourke is a man who I personally have a lot of respect for (an example of his work is in a talk he gave to the CFA last year here) so we were delighted when he kindly took a call today while on a working holiday in France.

My questions are in bold, the main thrust of his answers follow them.

You say a rapid adjustment would be best, what can be done to facilitate that? “You have to start by wondering ‘do we think the Irish adjustment is …

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GO TO JAIL! Do not pass go, do not collect €200 million

The talk of ‘Economic Treason’ and calling for the heads of every banker are sadly starting to gain more and more traction, all of this is happening without concrete evidence thus far of exactly ‘who’ we are chasing and ‘for what’ specifically, largely the financial leaders greed is central to accusations of wrongdoing, and while greed may not be morally acceptable to right thinking individuals it is not actually a crime.

The FT recently had an article showing that executive pay misguided but that it didn’t make them criminal by nature, stupidity is an ‘equal opportuntities’ trait. It is important that every person in finance is not villified for what was something that all of society played a part in.

One question nobody is asking is ‘what part did I play in this?’, as a brokerage we are culpable, as a consumer I am personally culpable and as a citizen I will be paying for mistakes made on both …

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To buy, or not to buy, that is the question

The usual questions seem to float around Dublin every time I am out and about: is there life on Mars? Does my bum look big in this? Why hasn’t he called? Lately all these questions have been shoved aside in favour of “am I mad buying a house?”

It is obvious to the simplest of beings that property values have dropped significantly over the last year to 18 months. Is this a trend set to continue? If so until when? No one really knows.

The subject of house prices pervades every atmosphere in Ireland; the pub, the LUAS on a Monday morning, the DAIL bar… to mention just a few. It compounds my suspicion that Irish people are still obsessed by property. This is deeply rooted in the Irish psyche, which many believe is born out of 800 years of English occupation.

Irish people know they want to buy property, however consumer confidence is so fragile, that people are wary of making such a big financial commitment which …

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ECB cuts rates to 2.5% – tracker mortgage interest rates benefit.

Tracker mortgages are a mortgage that is tied to some form of base, be it the ECB base rate or the Euribor, in residential lending it tends to be the ECB in commercial it tends to be the Euribor. Today interest rates were reduced by a further 0.75% giving a new base rate of 2.5%, which is the lowest it has been since March of 2006,the Euribor is now at 3.743% and will see the base rate drop filter through in the coming days.

Commercial loans tend to follow the Euribor, specifically the 3 month money which banks actually tend to use to finance most of their operations. The way that banks operate is to sell long term but finance short term. This is where they create their margin and its based on the yield curve, part of the problem in the last 12 months was a yield curve inversion which made lending difficult and was a …

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