Ireland considers rent controls

Graham_Devon

HappyMJ wrote: »

Those housing estates were built in places people did not want to live. Miles from anything. No schools, no health care and almost no facilities of any kind. The developers built the houses hoping services would be built by government later but as the government ran out of money and no one moved in the houses were surplus to requirements.

Rent controls won't work.

Seems at least some of them were on the outskirts of Dublin.

Though it seems many were in Longford, which appears to be in "the countryside".

However, while understanding that the homes are in places which people probably don't want to live, it seems absurd when you read this, to then read the article which prompted this thread.

The National Institute for Regional and Spatial Analysis at the National University of Ireland in Maynooth concluded in 2010 that there were more than 300,000 vacant new homes in Ireland, and 621 housing developments with more than 12 houses that were either unoccupied or not fully built.

300,000 vacant new homes.....and at the same times a chronic shortage of homes! Some of the homes in these estates look absolutely lovely.

Surely something creative can be done?

Though to be fair, reading further, it does state that some of these estates were built on bog land have since sunk into the ground.

Seems builders didn't care, and neither did investors back then.

michaels

Hmm - Not enough houses being built - I know, lets cap prices, that is bound to encourage more supply...I know it is no longer politically correct to suggest that sounds like Irish economics.

I have also just had a lightbulb moment re credit growth and housing supply (in aggregate) but don't want to admit it as Hamish has been banging on about it for ages and I didn't fully get it.

Graham_Devon

cells wrote: »

confirmation bias, nations are big its easy to find an example of anything to make your point.

It's not really confirmation bias, it's well known about.

Infact, if you go back to 2011, a member of this forum was suggesting the only way you can fix Ireland's house price problem is to demolish the huge oversupply of houses. That the only reason Ireland were seeing such a large house price crash was due to the building boom and a falling population.

For a while, it was a popular theme on here.

We can't really jump forward 4 years and pretend these discussions didn't exist as they can still be found.

cells

michaels wrote: »

I have also just had a lightbulb moment re credit growth and housing supply (in aggregate) but don't want to admit it as Hamish has been banging on about it for ages and I didn't fully get it.

Hamish is a bright chap and he is correct to highlight that finance is an important part of house building and buying. without mortgages most people cant buy so the rental stock would have to expand and fewer homes would be built.

In Turkey mortgages were hard to get and house building was about 400,000 a year. Then the government changed rules and regs and encouraged the banks to lend and the build rate rather rapidly increased towards 600,000 a year boosting ownership and the economy. However that country had no real quota limits

In the UK we are both quota and mortgage limited. More lax lending would help a bit and more quotas would help a lot more but BOTH are needed to increase build rates to double or tripple what is needed

Graham_Devon

cells wrote: »

Hamish is a bright chap and he is correct to highlight that finance is an important part of house building and buying. without mortgages most people cant buy so the rental stock would have to expand and fewer homes would be built.

And the higher prices go, the fewer who can get mortgages, unless of course you increase the risk again and again. Vicious circle.

In the UK we are both quota and mortgage limited. More lax lending would help a bit and more quotas would help a lot more but BOTH are needed to increase build rates to double or tripple what is needed

Presumably nothing could go wrong with "lax lending"?

cells

michaels wrote: »

Hmm - Not enough houses being built - I know, lets cap prices, that is bound to encourage more supply...I know it is no longer politically correct to suggest that sounds like Irish economics.

I have also just had a lightbulb moment re credit growth and housing supply (in aggregate) but don't want to admit it as Hamish has been banging on about it for ages and I didn't fully get it.

too bad i wasn't posting on this bit of the forum back then however I was elsewhere on the subject and my arguments now and then were the same

here is a post from 2013 from me on another forum

also note people are just starting to change their minds, wait another two-four years and people will be saying spain has a shortage of homes

http://www.creditcrunch.co.uk/index.php?/topic/12327-recovery-yay/?hl=ireland#entry197892

For my two pence

The economy pre 07 was sustainable and good. The yanks !!!!ed up the global banking system by selling mortgages to toothless homeless people on a non recourse basis. When the recession hit like all recessions it was exastibated by irrational panic and predictions of the four horsemen just read this website its all here.

The so calles housing bubble did not exist

Ireland built a lot of homes but....has fewer homes per head than France or Germany they were just trying to catch up in living standards from their much poorer past.

USA....like the uk.....could not have a housing bubble becuase its population is growing rapidly. With +30 to +40 million people per decade any over building would be sorted out in a matter of months.

Spain. She did have true housing boom and built too much. However like the uk like the usa spain is a rapidly growing country so all that is required is a small number of years to redress the small excess (has about 5% more homes per head than Germany)

The world. With the population heading towards 8 billion the world needs 4 billion homes to have a similar housing density as Germany yet the world only has about 1 billion proper homes so the world needs to build another 3 billion homes over the next 30 yeara. Or 100 million homes a year need to be built. All the Internet experts fail math. Its why the stupid calling China a housing bubble are so mistaken hina needs 700 million homes yet has fewer than half of that

What has happened over the last 5 years?
A recession caused by headless chickens running around. By a slow drawn out realisation that the world is not doed that all our machine slaves are still there and that we can demand and they will produce

cells

From 2012.......

no one told the bears, certainly i didnt hear it for the years i was a bear, that ireland was undergoing a massive population boom which warrented mass house building. Just last year the population increased by 1.65 million people (scaled to uk size). There was no misalocated capital because all those houses will be in use very shortly.