Why are investment funds buying up Irish Property?

Large-scale private rented sector (PRS) investors, sometimes called vulture or cuckoo funds, have rapidly become a major force in the Irish property market over the last few years.

As recently as 2017, these funds were a minor and insignificant part of the housing market. However, these firms have spent more than €6 billion buying Irish homes, apartment buildings, and commercial properties over the last three and a half years.

The cuckoo funds show no sign of slowing down in 2021, as they have spent €1.5 billion so far this year, according to recent figures from estate agents and property adviser JLL. Most of these funds are backed by international investors, and have quickly become big players in the market, particularly investing in deals for new apartments in Dublin.

But what is driving this relatively new and rapidly growing force in the market?

Analysts say that an influx of cash in European markets, lack of yields in traditional assets including bonds, and the huge surge in housing demand and high rent prices in Ireland have combined to create a very lucrative …

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Construction slowing in new home development sector

With competition for loan approval building, home development companies are feeling the heat. This year has proved to be one of the most difficult for possible consumers to obtain loans, largely due to the uncertainty that Brexit brings to the table. Due to the lack of accessibility of funds when attempting to purchase a home, many homes have simply gone unfilled. 

Goodbody Stockbrokers, a  company that specializes in asset management and global investment funds, has taken a clear interest to the changes that are currently happening in the market. This company developed a house building tracker, which in turn showed that from April to June 2019 there was a sharp decline in the output of newly developed housing. 

This is largely due to the fact that without the high availability of loans, many homes simply are not getting sold. In the lower priced areas of the housing market, there is significant competition but any home that is priced at or above €500,000 has been struggling to get off the market. In general, this trend is showing that affordability is becoming …

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The new fast track planning law: will it help boost housing supply?

A new fast-track planning law officially came into effect last Friday. It was passed in December of 2016 as a part of The Planning and Development and Residential Tenancies Act. After months of delays in which officials debated over application fees, the law has now been officially be enacted.

The Planning and Development and Residential Tenancies Act 2016, introduced by former Minister for Housing Simon Coveney, introduced the idea of strategic housing developments. It was intended to provide greater stability for tenants and to help streamline the planning process. An important aspect of the Act is the new fast track planning procedures it introduced. The fast track planning procedure allows developers to bypass their local authority and apply directly to An Bórd Pleanála, an independent authority that previously only made decisions on appeals after plans have been rejected by local authorities. The Board was established by the Local Government Act of 1976, and now its responsibilities will expand to include taking and reviewing applications submitted through the …

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Newstalk: Pat Kenny & Karl Deeter on housing, dereliction and sites

Pat Kenny spoke to Karl Deeter about some of the huge, but unreported issues in the housing market, such as ‘who owns derelict sites and buildings’ and how regulations can sometimes make it difficult to provide quality housing at affordable prices.

This was an extended segment on something of great national importance that generally doesn’t get a lot of airtime so we were very pleased with Newstalk for the opportunity to work through it and to have the time to describe many of the nuances that would otherwise be overlooked.

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A developers side of the story.

I had an interesting conversation with a developer yesterday who’s company is closing, they would have been a mid-range development company, they built many buildings that we all recognise around Dublin but they are not in the ‘Big 10’.

We got to talking about banks, the public sector, developers and in doing so I asked how he felt about the way developers are portrayed of late, as being at the very root of the crisis and at fault for the course the country is on.

He said that his family had been in the development industry for three generations, they had built it up from the 70’s and put everything on the line in the 80’s to keep going, they took calculated risks but it was their neck they were risking, not the necks of others, and now that things have fallen apart they have lost everything and somehow most of the bankers have kept their jobs.

That is a fair point in many respects, the banks have yet to face up …

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