Housing … May 5, 2021
Posted by irishelectionliterature in Uncategorized.trackback
Prime Time had a report last night on First Time Buyers being gazumped by investors
Darragh O’Brien had earlier launched his Affordable Housing Bill (although affordable for who was a question many were asking) Housing is such a massive issue ….. even such an easy win like taxing investment funds buying housing, never mind banning them buying in bulk as an emergency measure seems beyond our Government.
Estates being boxed off for Multinational funds looks so bad on so many levels.
It’s such an open goal for the opposition it’s incredible. Then today Labour announced they would bring forward Darragh O’Briens 2019 Bill, word for word, restricting the percentage of housing that a fund could buy in an estate.
It’s just such a huge mess. Massive rents, house prices high, supply low and a whole generation struggling with it it.
You’d wonder what they can do in their time in government to alleviate the housing problem.. Thing is, you’d wonder do elements care more about existing home owners and a fear that house prices may fall than all those impacted by the current housing crisis.
The Cedar Lounge Revolution 
” The purchase of completed housing estates by global institutional investment funds is “unacceptable”, the Taoiseach has said.
“First of all, may I state unequivocally that the purchase by institutional investors of completed housing estates is unacceptable and not consistent with government policy.”
https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/republic-of-ireland/investment-funds-buying-complete-housing-estates-unacceptable-taoiseach-40390544.html
Interesting commentary by Martin but will the government do anything about it?
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In most of the cases , bar appartment blocks , it appears that the fund buys the remainder of the houses after the first phase is sold out. Very few buy whole housing estates.
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” SOLUTIONS TO THE issue of global investment funds buying up entire estates to be placed on the rental market can be found in the tax code, Sinn Féin housing spokesperson Eoin Ó Broin has said…
Ó Broin told reporters, “This isn’t a new phenomenon — it’s been happening for a number of years.”
“The solutions to this are really within the tax code. These investment firms don’t pay Capital Gains Tax, they don’t pay corporation tax and they don’t pay any tax on their rent roll.
“What they’re doing is they’re going in, buying at high prices, charging high rent and then using that to flip the properties after a short period of time and to not pay any Capital Gains Tax.”
“Our problem at the minute is short term, high yield vulture funds have been incentivised by government policy — tax breaks that have been in place for a decade.”
https://www.thejournal.ie/private-rented-sector-investors-5427795-May2021/
” But the truth is the investor purchase of housing in Ireland on a major scale is actually Government policy and has been for the last decade.
The Government does not actually want you to be able to buy or rent an affordable home. They have created an unaffordable housing system that is focused on delivering housing as an investment asset, not a home….
This is why you can’t afford to rent or buy a home. Because, for the last decade, Government has done everything possible to inflate house prices and rents, in order to attract in the global property investment funds and to recover the profitability and balance sheets of the banks.
The Government should be honest about this and stop pretending otherwise. For over a decade it has prioritised the interests of property, finance, developer, investor, landlords over those who are looking to get an affordable home.”
https://www.thejournal.ie/readme/ireland-investment-housing-5428746-May2021/
Martin is being deceitful as his government acts in the interests of parasites and predators.
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The single biggest issue that sent voters towards SF at the last election. And with the mild reaction of the coalition parties, and Labour’s performative response, it’s likely to do the same again at the next election!
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Big time. O’Broin is such an excellent communicator and generally wipes the floor with FF public reps. FF are tied to housing now too for the next while.
It’s in a way ironic that it was building housing on a mass scale in the 30’s to the 60″s, that in part made FF what it was…. where it will be the refusal to actually build public housing now that could kill it.
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Even the narrow political logic of protecting house prices to protect their perceived voter base will surely fail in the long run, when older homeowners see their grown children unable to buy anything adequate.
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” Mr Varadkar warned colleagues that the housing issue would “come back with a vengeance” as the pandemic subsides and would be a major issue at the next election.
But he defended the role of investment funds in the wake of revelations of them buying up large numbers of houses in some new estates. He claimed that a lot of developments wouldn’t happen if it wasn’t for investment funds willing to fund their construction and buy properties once they are completed.”
https://www.independent.ie/irish-news/politics/they-are-gunning-for-himhousing-minister-criticised-at-fine-gael-meeting-as-leo-varadkar-defends-investment-funds-40391705.html
“As a free-trade, pro-enterprise and pro-competition champion, we tended to adopt similar positions and similar opt-outs to the U.K.,” said Varadkar, who noted that both nations “look west to America” as much as they look east to Europe.”
https://www.politico.eu/article/leo-varadkar-ireland-brexit-europe-united-kingdom-ally/
Perhaps the right-wing, regressive economic philosophy of the ruling parties has something to do with the housing crisis.
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” An outright ban on vulture funds is being considered as the Government scrambles to block international investors from buying thousands of family homes…..
Sinn Féin president Mary-Lou McDonald accused the Government of allowing a “policy to incentivise and to support these private funds to buy up housing, right across the State”:
“They also charge some of the highest rents in the State and they pay no tax on that,” Ms McDonald told the Dáil.
There is no mystery as to why these funds are here outbidding ordinary buyers because they are being advantaged by the State.”
https://www.irishexaminer.com/news/politics/arid-40282538.html
” An outright ban on investment funds buying complete housing estates would be “wrong” and a “mistake”, the Dail has heard.
Tanaiste Leo Varadkar said it would be “ideologically extreme” to ban investment on certain types of housing…
On Thursday, Mr Varadkar was pressed in the Dail by Sinn Fein’s Pearse Doherty, who said the Government had not only “facilitated” but “incentivised” and “rolled out the red carpet” for investment funds.
Mr Boyd Barrett said the Tanaiste was acting as if the “rampage and plunder” by cuckoo funds and vulture funds was all just some “isolated incident or inadvertent mistake” that he was going to rectify.
He added that the terms “cuckoo funds” and “vulture funds” used to describe investment firms are “too polite” and that they should be all called “bloodsuckers”.
The Dun Laoghaire TD said the former finance minister Michael Noonan had, between 2013 and 2014, held 65 meetings with vulture funds where he had “invited them in to commence the rampage”.
He said the National Asset Management Agency sold off more than 40 billion euro worth of land and property assets to “these bloodsuckers and now they had moved on to buying new housing estates as well”.
https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/republic-of-ireland/outright-ban-on-investment-funds-buying-homes-a-mistake-says-varadkar-40394413.html
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Any attempt to interfere with the market is deemed ideologically extreme
but homelessness isn’t…
children ‘living’ in b+bs or hotels isn’t
Homeless people dying on the streets isn’t
Exorbitant rents aren’t…
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” Parties face either continuing to indulge ‘the market’ or taking ideological route ”
This is a sub headline in a piece in the IT. Its behind the paywall so i haven’t read the article.
Indulging the market is not taking the ideological route; the market exists, normal and natural, whilst critics of market solutions are being ideological.
https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/housing-gives-insight-into-ideological-compatibility-of-ff-and-fg-1.4557573?mode=sample&auth-failed=1&pw-origin=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.irishtimes.com%2Fopinion%2Fhousing-gives-insight-into-ideological-compatibility-of-ff-and-fg-1.4557573
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