Cc @Bisto
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We can’t be far from a crash? There’s only so long auctioneers can lie about never being busier…
Won’t be a crash til 2021 and the supports are unwound.
There will be fuck all sold for rest of year.
Auctioneers are born to lie
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Start getting yer deposits together lads.
"The time to buy is when there’s blood in the streets "
Baron Labane1917 (1986)
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Continuing the discussion from With rent increasing is now the time to buy a house?:
So, an academic from UCD, an Architect, has seemingly come out to rubbish the above report issued by the SCSI, the body who represents the industry in construction who are cost managers and deal with tenders and construction costs.
I cant find her actual report, only this Irish Times article, so I am very interested to see is her cost comparison based entirely on tenders being received and the actual construction costs, or is she also including the land acquisition costs, fees, contributions etc which the previous report did include.
She is making this point based on social housing and councils buying the property, however the initial report by the SCSI was not based on providing social housing, but housing in general and highlighting how expensive it is for people to purchase a house. She’s happy to ridicule a report on costs, but not compare like for like.
“Where land is available, actual construction, de-risked from speculative markets and high-cost finance, is affordable, ” University College Dublin academic and housing expert Orla Hegarty, who obtained the figures, said.
Taking the site costs out of it is a handy qualification
Most housing commentators in the media are hugely biased towards either a full state solution or a fully private market solution. Disciples of Frank McDonald account for a large percentage
But sure thats the thing. If she bothered her hole reading the actual report, she will see that construction costs are at €180k (in a tendered situation) per housing unit, where her figures are showing the tendered rate per unit per house is €277k. Plus, she uses two local authorities for her report, but the SCSI one wasnt limited to specific councils or regions.
As @Biff_Egan points out, she has been a constant commentator on not using private developers to provide social housing to councils. The SCSI report was not geared that way but she tries manipulate it to shoehorn a point that doesnt need to be made.
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Academics and the real world are not comfortable bed fellows
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It’s why they mainly sleep under the bed.
+1 million.
Any review of Orla Hegarty recent tweets etc would suggest that she’s an academic with an agenda and this just fits in with that.
She’s an architect mate, the one thing you can be entirely certain of is that she knows absolutely fuck all about the cost if anything.
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I just find the article very odd to be honest. To come out and essential rubbish a continuous study on construction costs over the past 5 years, by basing her report on tenders of social housing received in two council areas on which she was not working on, so doesnt actually know what the final cost was other than the tender submission price (which as you know, means fuck all particularly in the new form of contract projects) is baffling. It’s like an argument someone would make on here, just take one specific view to contradict, and despite it being clearly wrong, and not at all relevant or comparable, but still shout it out to twist it into their long standing viewpoint.
However, this isnt the Irish Times nor UCD nor a publicly published (albeit debatable, Hi Ewan!) source, so why she would go so public and so loud on this with the Times is just odd to me. I’d like to see her report before completely rubbishing it, but on the face of it, it looks atrocious and really easy to rip apart. But I’m sure she’ll do the media rounds on Matt Cooper and where ever else over the next few days to prove her point.
What’s happening with the recent report from builders about subsidizing 1st time byrs with a bridging loan? Filed away in a big cabinet I suppose-
There’s lots of chatter about ideas to solve issues, but is anything being done? Are the 50k houses needed year on year being built … when we come out from behind covid this country is gonna be in an awful way on many fronts if we dont start addressing issues that were at crisis point as it was.
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it seems to me that a lot of the housing issues are being left by the government to be solved by Cluid or Respond with other large developers like Torca and Cairns to solve the social housing and general supply issue. The government have gone completely quiet on all issues since the election and the Covid 19 outbreak was a nice side step to avoid having to deal with issues. The IHBA, an off shoot of the CIF specifically for house building issues have put forward a number of suggestions and proposals and lobbied the government. As well as other construction bodies who have done similar and advised on other methods to stimulate house building and affordability for first time buyers and families. But when you have simpletons with no history in the sector being the main person in charge of the government decisions, you end up with what we have now, filed away in a big cabinet and leave it for another time to try fix it.
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That’s it, perhaps she’s seen the trough our contrarian health experts are feeding from and figures there is a role for a contrarian architect.
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