Meanwhile in China....

cells

antrobus wrote: »

You could equally well make the same argument about spending £200,000 on pot noodles.

exactly, demand is what creates things not some perceived finite quantity of currency that is "spent" and gone

antrobus wrote: »

And yet we have a shortage of homes in the UK. The 'demand' for housing of which you speak isn't creating that many.:)

its because in the UK the planning system works on quotas not on demand.

but lets take something else that does work on demand, say pot noodles, if i go out and buy 10 pots do you think that means someone else somewhere in this great nation of ours must do without 10 pots of their favourite noodles?

antrobus wrote: »

Yes we do. We have statistics from the Irish National Institute of Regional and Spatial Analysis and the Irish Central Staistics Office.

statistics is all good and well, the person looking at them might determine the complete wrong picture though through either misinterpreting the data or not knowing other factors that might be the driver rather than what they think. if data was as simple as look there you go you wouldn't have many well paid data analysts.

empty homes does not just mean empty homes. for example the UK supposedly has some 2/3rds of a million empty homes but it does not mean an excess of supply its actually more to do with churn of properties becoming dilapidated and being fixed

antrobus wrote: »

Which is why I prefer basing my conclusions on actual data from verifiable sources as opposed to taking any notice of Some Random Guy Off The Internet.

but your conclusions could well be very wrong because your analysis of the data misses out many factors

if your conclusion is that ireland has some empty homes and that must mean an over construction of homes that is a silly conclusion

• how do you explain the fact that house prices to wages are higher in ireland than in England/France/Germany
• or that house prices are going up 15% a year there now
• or that the average irish home costs more than french ones or german ones or ones in Birmingham or leeds or wales or yorkshire or....
• that they have fewer homes per capita than France/Germany

overall the most reasonable conclusion taking into account more than one simple data set is that ireland actually has a shortage of homes in some places and an excess in a very few local areas. Overall Ireland has no big excess of homes and this is almost 100% certain by the fact that the average irish house price is close to 200,000Euros much higher than the average french or german house price

cells

antrobus wrote: »

Why cite an article that is "about 9 months old"? Doesn't it occur to you that some media outlet or other might have published some more recent update on house prices in Ireland?:)

Residential property prices in Ireland increased nationwide by 0.5% in May and are 13.8% higher than they were a year ago, but fall slightly in Dublin. The latest data from the Central Statistics Office also show that prices are still some 37.5% lower than at the peak of the market in 2007.

http://www.propertywire.com/news/europe/ireland-real-estate-prices-2015063010688.html

(30 June 2015, and so only 2 days out of date.:))

so why are prices 13.8% higher than a year ago if ireland has so many homes they overbuilt that knocking them down and selling the rubble would be more profitable

also the average house price in ireland is higher than the average house price in 5 regions of england (NE NW Yorkshire EM WM).

antrobus

cells wrote: »

so why are prices 13.8% higher than a year ago if ireland has so many homes they overbuilt that knocking them down and selling the rubble would be more profitable

also the average house price in ireland is higher than the average house price in 5 regions of england (NE NW Yorkshire EM WM).

More to the point, why do you believe the Irish Central Satistics Office when they say that prices are 13.8% higher, but you don't believe them when they say that there are 290,000 or so empty homes?

cells

aitstrobus wrote: »

More to the point, why d tral Satistics Office when they say that prices are 13.8% higher, but you don't believe them when they say that there are 290,000 or so empty homes?

Can you post the empty homes link ill have a look too.

There are empty homes in all nations and places even in London there are empty homes

Clearly its difficult to both have an oversupply (excess empty homes) and high rents/prices which is what you seem to be suggesting is the case.

so there might be more than meets the eye on original inspection

Generali

An example of the fall-out of the building boom (and I make no apology for this being 3 years old)

http://www.independent.ie/business/irish/itll-take-us-43-years-to-fill-all-empty-houses-26863864.html

Deutsche Bank figures suggest that there are 289,451 empty houses in Ireland, including almost 60,000 vacant holiday homes. This represents a vacancy rate of 15 per cent. As the Deutsche Bank map shows, the empty properties are highly concentrated around the Atlantic coast with Kerry and Donegal particularly badly afflicted.

Something a bit more current which shows why prices are rising now and also quite nicely demonstrates my views on bubbles leading to the misallocation of resources:

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/cd20ea4a-09c4-11e5-a6a8-00144feabdc0.html

The main reason for the sharp rise is the lack of supply. The housing-boom years of the mid-2000s saw vast housing developments in small towns across Ireland. Many of them remain empty — so-called ghost estates — because demographic changes and a young population mean the demand for new housing is now centred on Dublin and its commuter belt.

So a price bubble for houses in small town Ireland led to houses being built in the 'wrong' place.

Don't be fooled by averages.

cells

Generali wrote: »

An example of the fall-out of the building boom (and I make no apology for this being 3 years old)

http://www.independent.ie/business/irish/itll-take-us-43-years-to-fill-all-empty-houses-26863864.html

Something a bit more current which shows why prices are rising now and also quite nicely demonstrates my views on bubbles leading to the misallocation of resources:

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/cd20ea4a-09c4-11e5-a6a8-00144feabdc0.html

So a price bubble for houses in small town Ireland led to houses being built in the 'wrong' place.

Don't be fooled by averages.

Its quite possible that there are local excesses but not a national one.

However the average house price is higher in Ireland than it is in France or Germany or even 7/11 regions of the UK so it suggests to me that the local excess areas are dwarfed by the local shortage areas

cells

The figure of 230k empty homes or ~11.5% of the stock (not including holiday homes) seems to be from the 2011 census

PS: in 1991, well before the "bubble" and the mass building the same census document says the vacancy rate was 9.1% and in 2002 the vacancy rate was 9.8% so it seems for a very long time before the "bubble" ireland has had high vacancy rates

There might be multiple reasons but i dont think we need to go into it. suffice to say it seems to be a long term feature!!!

like i said to you'all
data is data but understanding it is a skill



who do i invoice my 2 hours lost sleep too?

cells

more data

from 1926 to 1966 ireland build very few homes. only about 60,000 units over 4 whole decades that is amazing

compare that to modern times when they were building that many units in a single year!

only post 1966 did construction start to take off kicking into a higher gear every decade


this is such amazing data that I wonder what the hell happened during those 40 years of virtually no house building in ireland? was it against the law or some regulation or quota limit things to close to zero or maybe some economic depression for 40 years?

anyway the proof of what i have been saying is now down for everyone to see. they built close to zero homes for 40 years and then played catchup. they have had a lot of empty homes for quite a while now of ~10% since 1990-onwards its gone up a little since 2005 but not drastically so



http://www.cso.ie/en/media/csoie/census/documents/census2011profile4/Profile4_Statistical_Tables_and_Appendices_and_Form.pdf

cells

antrobus wrote: »

More to the point, why do you believe the Irish Central Satistics Office when they say that prices are 13.8% higher, but you don't believe them when they say that there are 290,000 or so empty homes?

oh dear antobus if only you had read the cencus document it was based on you would have seen that ireland seems to have had ~10% empty homes for at least 20+ years its a long term feature and not much at all to do with the building boom of 2000-2010

:rotfl::rotfl::rotfl:

purch

Doncha just love these threads when everyone is Googling like mad to try and find factoids to argue over, on subjects they didn't even know existed 5 minutes ago, and that nobody else cares about.

Such a good use of valuable time.:T