Yeah like anything, you take money out, where does it come back. The VAt is on the sale of houses, currently stands at 13%. The lobby group put forward a VAT rate of 9% as per what it is in Northern Ireland. It was a case of making it more affordable and palatable for a buyer. The cost of building a house exceeds the sale price, so therefore it is hindering the development of housing. So I suppose the logic being that by reducing the VAT rate, you would actually increase the developers building and increasing the quantity of housing. The VAT income on sales might not change much, however the increased construction would also be of benefit with VAT on goods and materials and increased labour and income revenue.
That is my own back of a fag box reasoning, but it is something that has been put forward as a proposal for implementation.
By all accounts taking on an apprentice is a bit of a pain in the hole though. Gone for large spells to college every year, paperwork etc. and then they fuck off to Australia or somehwere when they are qualified That’s what fellas in d’industry tell me anyway
That’s more or less all i’ve said about FG and Murphy but i get slaughtered for it by right wingers like @TheUlteriorMotive, @tallback and @carryharry — all we went is our paid ministers to be out there trying to get ahead and be seen. Most people know there’s no magic solution but just give us something…
rent is a bigger issue and FG have bent over backwards to protect their landlord chums
Very hard to understand why anyone in their 20s would spend that decade in ireland. Its not the same place it was, very little social life outside of dublin and a few places. Too expensive to rent there. Fomo on insta looking at the lads on bondi and Toronto island. People aren’t leaving out of lack of opportunity they just want to live amazeballs lives now
thing is, they are doing something. There has been a lot if social housing built and also put back on the market, but even though good work is being done, the magic homeless figure is still there and if Murphy or Leo even tried take some sort of kudos for doing a reasonable job, the social media mob would go spare over it. I dont think any other party would have made any better fist of it, their proposals are reasonable if a little on the short side. I think they could increase their projections, but maybe they are looking at a realistic promise rather than trying to do something they know is not achievable.
With regards to rent, I havent enough information to really make an informed comment. I know its not really a prerequisite on TFK to actually know anything as long as you pretend you’re an expert in it, but its not something I’ve been affected by nor see on a daily basis. I do think rent to buy schemes should be a means to mortgage and house purchases though if they can be accommodated.
It also bugs me that no matter what issue we have in this country, if anything comes up with any sort of foreign aid, whether it be immigration, refugees, direct provision, or foreign aid donations, it always comes back to “we need to sort out our own homeless first”. It never has to be one or the other and it bugs me seeing that sort of bullshit. Plus when people moan about those being housed in direct provision, they are in far worse housing situation than the majority of the 10,000 homeless people.
Hard to discuss one policy in isolation… good policies should all feed into bigger plan… Concentrate on Clustering in the regions … Get clusters keeping/moving people into regions and get people living outside of dublin…have good transport networks… Surely it’s easier to reach housing targets across ireland as opposed to concentrating on just cities where jobs are at present…
One of the factors in the current housing crisis was the hysteria about ghost estates a decade ago and the subsequent finding by the CSO in 2011 there were 290,000 vacant homes in the State of which 170,000 were houses and 60,000 were apartments. The rest were holiday homes.
The figures turned out to be a crock of shit but the prevailing narrative was set that yes we had a housing crisis, we had too many houses and what were we going to do with them all. Knock them? What sort of moron would plan to build dwellings in that environment?
That narrative didn’t change until 2014/2015 and it was only then that people realized that there was a market for housing again and started to build again. But as with all building in this country there is a 2-3 year lead in time with planning etc and developers and banks are more risk averse than before. Nevertheless I would predict that the housing crisis we are now in will work its way through in 2-3 years without much state intervention. In fact state intervention could fuck the whole thing up again.
Great read @Gman. Labour leading the way as you’d imagine. The silence from the likes of @Funtime@Rocko and @Little_Lord_Fauntleroy is deafening. Probably protesting on Rush main st.
As @anon61878697 has said, the cost of rent is a huge factor too. The state choosing to support landlords at the expense of building more houses or developing a public focused cost rental model has been a disaster.
There are vast tracts of state land available to build houses. Thornton Hall is an example of one such site. Now you could hand that over to a developer who will build apartments on top of each other, won’t build any surrounding amenities or facilities, won’t build a train station and will leave all that expense to the state. And it will be more unsuitable accommodation, forcing more people on to the M1 to commute and the bare minimum will be done to comply with planning.
Or the state can play a more direct role and develop a coherent development plan that uses public land and public infrastructure and requires a premium from developers for these assets but will allow them still earn their margin.
Example not housing related: The new tower that Johnny Ronan is building at Tara Street should have an obligation to improve the train station there. That station is at capacity, could badly use investment and is a key driver for the opportunity that exists there. He can build an enormous hotel because it’s at a train station but there was no obligation imposed on him to improve the station. Whatever about the rights and wrongs of that type of building on the quays (and the fact it has no residential element), it’s madness not to impose proper public obligations on developers. So the state will have to try and fund improvements for the adjoining station and the needed new trains will be further delayed.
Why can’t we simply make it prohibitively expensive to hoard land zoned for housing?
What’s being done to bring vacant units that need refurbishment back onto the market? Could we introduce time limited measures to assist owners refurbish them. Say three years, after which time the state CPOs them and does the job itself.
Why can’t the state simply build more houses? Madly enough, it is actually that simple. Borrowing money to fund building will probably never be cheaper.
Exactly. He has to give a few quid to the Luas but it’s a pittance in comparison to the opportunity he has.
Any of the new stations that were built in the boom time (e.g. Clongriffin) are pretty much half finished because the funding was there to put in the bare minimum and there’s no painting or landscaping and temporary entrances etc. Same way the developers left their estates unfinished because the regulations were weak and the enforcement was weaker still.
Similar to Eoghan Murphy getting praise on here for his vacant sites bill which is vague and unworkable and the councils can’t impose it. But he’s a reformer apparently. A reformer who can’t draft legislation unfortunately.
That’s what fellas in d’industry tell me anyway