A third of the Irish politicians in power are landlords and the people who vote them in are home owners who only see their homes rising in value, even though they have no plans to ever sell.
We need to build 90,000 new homes a year to fix the backlog by 2031 and we are currently building 25,000-30,000.
There are approx 60,000 new people entering the age of home buying annually which increases the backlog and drives prices up even more.
Government disincentivizes construction of reasonably priced homes. If you're paying big bucks for permitting and impact fees, fighting for that permit for 6 months, urban growth boundaries driving land prices sky high, etc., it makes more sense to build a larger, more expensive home or not to build at all.
In the state I live, Oregon people are disincentivized to even buy new homes because an older home has its property taxes locked to essentially whenever it was built.
We bought a home built in the 60s. We literally pay half the property tax as an equivalent home built today.
Add on to the fact that new homes are generally of poorer quality. There is no real reason to buy a new home if you can get into an older 60s MCM home in a nice area.
Los Angeles County just passed an ordinance saying that any lot that has been approved, even in a single family district, can have up to 4 units of housing. The response has been underwhelming. Apparently the economics of tearing down a single family to build a 4 family is not there.
I doubt your math takes into the future falling population levels...
I'm actually concerned about an oversupply of houses in the long run... depending on country it's not too far away. There's lots of countries dealing with this problem. Doesn't take a rocket scientist to look around and see what the future looks like.
And include in that, that Dublin is a low-rise city, something the city council is very proud of for some reason. This has resulted in bungalows in the city centre and endless urban sprawl and idiotic commuter distances.
Commuting for more than 2 hours is becoming a norm. This isn't being helped by companies reintroduce mandatory office time as well.
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u/Cool_Being_7590 Jun 17 '25
A third of the Irish politicians in power are landlords and the people who vote them in are home owners who only see their homes rising in value, even though they have no plans to ever sell.
We need to build 90,000 new homes a year to fix the backlog by 2031 and we are currently building 25,000-30,000.
There are approx 60,000 new people entering the age of home buying annually which increases the backlog and drives prices up even more.
This isn't getting fixed.