Comment by arp242 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by arp242 | Hacker News Reader

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I don't know about the United States, but in (parts of) Europe it is the case. "Nobody owns homes any more" is an exaggeration of course, but things are not alright in the housing market, in part because private corporations are buying up quite a large percentage of the housing stock to rent. I think in Ireland it's about half.

Like I said, I don't know about the US. It's a big place and you're probably taking too much of a "grand scheme of things" view here. Aside from geographical diversity, total % of home ownership doesn't change that fast – lots of older people already own homes, their children often inherit those homes. Houses aren't like hotdog sales and numbers change slowly.

What matters more is how much does an average 25 or 30 year old pay in housing costs? What hope does someone with a decent (but not exceptionally well-paid) job have of purchasing a house? A single % of home ownership across the entire population doesn't really capture that. Doubly so for such a large country as the US. I'm sure there are affordable homes out in the sticks, but also ... no jobs. That might work for the remote software dev, but not everyone is a software dev.

In Ireland the total housing ownership has fallen, but not dramatically. However, the reality for people not already having a home is quite bleak. Buying a house now is significantly more expensive than it was a decade or two ago, as is renting. I could buy an apartment on my own ten years ago with a salary that really wasn't all that great. I'd have no hope today. My rent today is about three and a half times what it was 15 years ago. There is a generation of working 20 and 30-year old who are still living at home because they can't really afford to move out.

> "Nobody owns homes any more" is an exaggeration of course, but things are not alright in the housing market, in part because private corporations are buying up quite a large percentage of the housing stock to rent. I think in Ireland it's about half.

This is a _really_ popular meme, but it's not true. About 50% of new homes are bought by owner-occupiers, about 25% by local authorities and approved housing bodies (https://www.citizensinformation.ie/en/housing/local-authorit...), 10% pension funds and institutions (these are the 'private corporations' you refer to), and the remainder are small landlords, holiday homes etc etc.

I think sometimes people see "50% of new homes are bought by owner occupiers" and read it to mean "and thus the other 50% are bought by evil corporations" (people also tend to forget about the 'new' bit; second-hand homes are much more likely to be bought by owner-occupiers, as REITs and pension funds largely don't want to touch them, and nor do approved housing bodies; local authorities do sometimes buy individual second-hand homes, usually from private landlords), but really the bulk of the remainder is social housing.

The ridiculous rents are driven by the fact that we're just not building enough homes. Not that we're not building a lot; we have one of the highest per capital rates of homebuilding in the OECD, but there was a period of 7 or 8 years where we built almost nothing, and that's a really hard gap to bridge.

Interesting! Would love to see a reference for your percentages

Up to 2023 in a slightly dodgy graphical representation here: https://housingireland.ie/composition-of-purchasers-of-new-h... (note that y axis is number of sales, but labels are percentage of sales!)

If sufficiently masochistic you can also wrestle it out of the CSO's horrible website for 2024, I think.

In Ireland, approximately 41% of young adults aged 18 to 34 live with their parents as of 2024. It was 32% in 2011. This is an economic abhorration that has stolen significant independent adult lifespan from an entire generation.

This is caused by an Irish cultural distaste for apartments - as they're generally not setup for modern living, are typified by poor soundproofing and insulation, and marred by fire insulation and other scandals - leading to a decreased stock. Include the Help-To-Buy scheme applicable only to new-build houses on greenfield estates, and the HAP social-welfare payment which set an artificial floor on rents for apartments, and its the case that the average apartment rent is 1.5-2x the cost of servicing the mortgage at a 90% LTV.

This results in an average rent in Dublin of €2,500, with Open-market rents in the capital rising at annual rate of 5.2%. The most recent median (50th percentile) salary is €43,221, which comes from a 2023 CSO report. That's a monthly net salary of €3,000 per person.

The National Asset Management Agency, set up in the recession to take on all the in-default property and babysit it till prices rose again, has a huge part to play. Combine this with a non-fit-for-purpose Planning and Appeals process, and you literally have builders suing the government for blocking developments.

As of November 1st 2024, there were just over 2,400 homes available to rent across the ENTIRE COUNTRY OF IRELAND, down 14 per cent on the same date a year previously and well below the 2015-2019 average of almost 4,400.

All of this laid the foundations for disaster. Now the increased materials and energy costs since Covid-19, combined with a relative collapse in our building sector prior, have meant that building apartments in Dublin has largely become commercially unfeasible, as construction costs are now higher than what buyers are willing to pay.

https://www.independent.ie/business/unviable-construction-st...

    > In Ireland, approximately 41% of young adults aged 18 to 34 live with their parents as of 2024.

This is wild. Can I safely assume that this is inversely correlated to marriage rates (and age of first child)? I assume that it looks like Italy. "Up next: Demographic crisis!"

> I think in Ireland it's about half.

It's about 1/3rd AFAIR.

I do agree that Ireland has experienced a massive change in house prices from 15 years ago, but 15 years ago was the bottom of a bust after the boom so potentially not the right comparison point.

I do mostly agree with your points, and it's really bad but it's important to contextualise some of those points.

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