About seven years ago I was lucky enough to buy my own apartment in Dublin. As a normal Irish person who didn’t come from any generational wealth, with a job that was around the average industrial wage, it felt like quite the achievement. However, I had things on my side. Rents were high but not at the level they are in 2024. Also, as a single gay man with no plans to have children, I was happy to buy a one-bedroom apartment, a property type in least demand. It certainly wouldn’t suit an average couple, who make up most first-time buyers, who are looking to buy with the idea their new home will answer the needs of a growing family.
Still, I did graft for my apartment. I chose a career detour, taking sales roles rather than creative ones, because I knew I would need a standard job to realistically be considered for a mortgage. I sacrificed many holidays to keep my savings on track, for many years. However, the whole process was still near impossible and faltered near the finish line after failed bidding happened again and again. When I finally got the keys to my modest apartment, it felt like I was like the last passenger to get on a lifeboat while the Titanic was sinking.
I worry for Ireland. When property prices reach such levels that the standard garda and teacher cannot afford a reasonable home, we’ll end up with generation of workers who won’t invest in Irish society. Why bother?
I feel this sentiment from those younger than I. They have no path to wealth that doesn’t include some form of inheritance because the way the average person generates wealth for themselves has always been at its core home ownership. No wonder they aren’t seeking out careers in the way previous generations did. It’s time for some radical thinking; as they say, “madness is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result”, which I fear is exactly what our new government is going to do.
Here are my thoughts as an elder millennial – formerly employed, now a business owner; previously in the public sector, now in the private – who spent 17 years in cities, but now lives in rural Kenmare, Co Kerry:
Houses need to stop being prioritised as investments over homes by the Government. It’s not that houses can’t be investments, but the balance has gone so far off course, we need to take radical steps. Putting money in renters’ hands, through tax breaks, the housing assistance payment (Hap), or help-to-buy schemes is disastrous. It just means landlords and sellers put up prices, ultimately made richer by taxpayers. As I see it, the only thing that will work to address rents and house prices is to tackle them directly.
As a potential buyer, I was bidding on properties against people I wasn’t sure even existed or were serious about actually purchasing them. Perhaps I was competing with ghosts. This allows for throwaway bidding that inflates houses far beyond any asking price
I think we should cap the rent you can earn per month in any bedroom, let’s say €600 (be that regular rent, or even rent from Airbnb). A two-bed house is €1,200, three-bed €1,800, etc. This figure, of course, needs to be debated. Ultimately, what we need to do is make it undesirable for vulture funds to buy Irish property. What about those renting expensive houses in posh areas, shouldn’t they get more? I disagree. Right now it is the perennial renters who feel hopeless who need care, not the already rich. Bottom line, if you want to invest, try the stock market.
[ Love and the housing crisis: Living together because the rent is too highOpens in new window ]
My husband and I recently travelled to friends near Benbulben; we passed through many rural towns between Kerry and Sligo, beautiful, with all the classic Irish architecture that has been captured in iconic films. However, they all seem abandoned. Empty shop fronts. Boarded-up windows. No traffic. We all know towns like this. It explains the more than 150,000 vacant homes statistic that exists in Ireland. However, if Covid did anything, it opened the option of remote/flexible working, but you won’t lure any remote workers to a town that seems abandoned.
I think we need to bring back the idea of a model village. Kenmare, where I live, has attracted many remote workers in recent years, because it has the amenities that have drawn them to it. Nice coffee shops, a supermarket, a good school, restaurants, etc. Young families in need of homes could repopulate these towns if investment happens and the Government offered tax breaks to business owners to be entrepreneurial, including pausing rates, etc. I think the Government should try some test cases around the country, in conjunction with the private sector, asking, “What makes a modern town desirable?”, building exactly that, and people will come.
When I walk around Kenmare, and when I’ve walked around Dublin city centre, I am keenly aware of how few people are living above shops. How is it that in Paris, a large majority of citizens live over places of business and yet here, whole streets, such as Henry Street in Kenmare, or Camden Street in Dublin, house only a fraction of the people they could?
What it comes down to, when I’ve asked builder friends, is regulation and costs. The Government needs to address both; the current solution of ignoring ghost city/town centres and expanding suburbia is not the solution. People living above shops keep a street alive. If we simplified regulation, made it deeply painful through taxes to leave properties vacant and offered potential developers loans that can be paid back through a percentage of rental income, or some other financial incentive, maybe we could resurrect all these empty properties in prime locations.
We can’t just do for the next five years what we’ve done for the past 10 years, allowing unscrupulous forces to make a quick buck
Finally, we need to regulate the wild west that is some estate agents and bidding. I have friends who have bought properties across Europe and what we have happening in Ireland is not fit for purpose. As a potential buyer, I was bidding on properties against people I wasn’t sure even existed or were serious about actually purchasing them. Perhaps I was competing with ghosts. This allows for throwaway bidding that inflates houses far beyond any asking price.
Because of this, asking prices in this country are complete fiction in a way they aren’t across Europe. In Amsterdam, if you place a bid on a property, you must pay a deposit as part of the bid, and you lose the deposit should you pull out without good reason.
Also, I think everyone wishing to buy a property should be obliged to create a seller profile on a national database, backed up with paperwork, and be allowed to bid only if they meet key criteria.
I know what I write above are just ideas I have reflected on and discussed with friends; none of us are graduates of economics. These ideas aren’t all the solution. I’m sure there are many other ideas out there. We need some radical thinking.
We can’t just do for the next five years what we’ve done for the past 10 years, allowing unscrupulous forces to make a quick buck. Every time we do this, the “cheque” eventually arrives and it is the taxpayer ultimately paying it.
I fear that what is happening now will blow up in our faces, as it did in 2008. I worry that our property problem will be solved in a brutal way, with a recession so severe, hundreds of thousands of people will emigrate, as they did before.
Worse still, I think we need to be more fearful of the long-term existential outcomes of all this. Couples who cannot feel safe, who cannot make a permanent home, don’t have children. Where does that leave Ireland? We all think this situation is at crisis point right now, but I worry the real disaster lies ahead of us.
