Why housing is so expensive today.

[David]

This redditor's statement couldn't be more accurate.

https://www.reddit.com/r/ireland/s/oKbOFciX1A

Why do all properties for sale on daft look like they were decorated and furnished by an old aunt

Perhaps that might explain why the average room advertised on Daft.ie looks as manky as it does:

▪︎Lino flooring, or ugly looking / cheap plastic orange floor boards.

▪︎Soul-destroying and hideous walls covered in Magnolia paint.

▪︎Furniture which was picked up for a few euros / for free at the local charity shop.

▪︎Some crappy pictures which were picked up cheap back in 1998 hanging on the walls.

▪Dirty and manky-looking curtains.

etc.

And to think so many people are spending half of their weekly paychecks just to live in these crimes against interior design. People from other European countries must be shocked by not only the price of Irish room rentals...but the sheer tackiness of what's on offer. But then again your average landlord is a thicko gombeen culchie in muddy wellies who believes you should at least be grateful as the nearest bus stop is only a 25 minute walk away.

 

[Mowl]

Those photos, but?

The depression that crashes down all around me when I recall having to live on the poxy little island. It's like they have everything set up to make you feel like you have to get the fuck out of there before it owns you and ruins your life. Imagine standing in a queue in the cold rain outside that gaff for three hours only for the cunt ahead of you to slap down the deposit cash and take the keys?

Imagine being so desperate that you might actually even consider taking it yourself if you could?

Then handing over rent cash money to the scumbag landlord every Friday night when he shows up stinking of ale?

How do you people COPE with this level of bullshit?

What the fuck is WRONG with you all?

 

[Mowl]

And to think so many people are spending half of their weekly paychecks just to live in these crimes against interior design. People from other European countries must be shocked by not only the price of Irish room rentals...but the sheer tackiness of what's on offer. But then again your average landlord is a thicko gombeen culchie in muddy wellies who believes you should at least be grateful as the nearest bus stop is only a 25 minute walk away.

I had a right gouging scumbag landlord when I lived in a bedsit on Belgrave Square North after first leaving home.

He was a fucking cunt who let himself in whenever he was in the house to make tea, and on one occasion I was in bed with a lady when the door opened and he stuck his head in. Later I got him good by using the landline in the hallway (the old A/B coin phones) as a pick-up for scheduled calls from Tokyo where my lady was working for three months. The operator calls and asks will I accept a reverse charge call? Fuck, yeah. We'd chat until someone else needed the phone and over the same period I ran up the electricity bill keeping the heat on 24/7, then when a room came up elsewhere I packed and left in the dead of night.

The phone bills must have been eye-watering, but the energy bills?

I'd stuck a sewing needle in through a tiny hole in the side of the meter so that I could stop the little wheel from turning for a few days.

A standard two-bar electric heater from the 1970/60s:



Regrets?

Fuck, no.

One way or another, every scumbag Irish landlord I dealt with got theirs in the end.

That's the only regret I could possibly have had: not screwing the pricks over.

Fuck 'em.

 

[David]

It doesn't help that most FFG / Independent TDs are landlords themselves. So there's little to no chance of the situation in Ireland ever been improved for renters. And even if new legislation came in tomorrow there'll be a few sneaky loopholes thrown in - as always.

Ireland is a gold mine for crooked, gombeen landlords...meanwhile young renters have barely enough left over for the bills after forking out close to €1,000 for a room, with a shared bathroom, in the arsehole of nowhere, accompanied by a two-hour commute each way to Dublin. You'd probably have a better quality of life in prison.

 

[Mowl]

It doesn't help that most FFG / Independent TDs are landlords themselves.

If it turned out to be the case that a Finnish politician was a landlord pulling stunts like your lot in Ireland do, the newspapers would have a fucking field day.

So there's little to no chance of the situation in Ireland ever been improved for renters.

One thing that'll start happening fairly soon (and now that you have legislation allowing for assisted suicide) lots of people in their sixties and seventies had better get some personal security lest their own brood start picking them off for a place to live.

'Ahh, yeah - she was sick and tired of being sick and tired - she's in a better place now, but...'

Which is of course a hole in the ground.

And even if new legislation came in tomorrow there'll be a few sneaky loopholes thrown in - as always.

Squatting.

Now there's a thing?

I lived in a legal squat in the red light district of Amsterdam for two years. It was number 19 on De Oudeschanns, nearby the jazz club Bim Huis. Excellent location, used to be a government protected merchant house that was left to ruin. One Ballyer head Thomas 'Chin' Kavanagh and an ex-American Air Force dude called Steven Hawkings (not the wheelchair lad) got together and made a case against the state for allowing the building to fall apart.

They won the case, got the use of the house for a fixed number of years with free electricity and running water, and it was party central pretty much every day.

This joint with the four apex rooftops, right over the canal:

Google Earth

earth.google.com

Great fun.

Ireland is a gold mine for crooked, gombeen landlords...meanwhile young renters have barely enough left over for the bills after forking out close to €1,000 for a room, with a shared bathroom, in the arsehole of nowhere, accompanied by a two-hour commute each way to Dublin. You'd probably have a better quality of life in prison.

Or a hole in the ground.

 

[David]

€1,500 a month for this bedroom, with shared bathroom. Oh yeah and don't forget to book your place for the 1st of May (I kid you not).

Cathal Brugha Street, Dublin 1 to share on Daft.ie

House share on Cathal Brugha Street, Dublin 1 is now on Daft.ie for From €1,000 to €1,500 per month

www.daft.ie

Book now for the summer semester 1st of May to the 31st of August.

---

The kitchen you'll be sharing with 7-8 other people.

---

 

[Mowl]

I can smell the damp in the kitchen and around that bedroom window. That filthy smell that pervades and soaks into everything: your clothes, the bed-sheets, the manky carpets. Again with the bed taking up the entire space? Why not a futon? They're half the price of a regular bed? Or simply buy some 4x4s and build a mezzanine in a few hours? Lift the mattress (dump the yoke under it) up about six feet off the ground, put the study table and chair under it, and any other necessary presses for smalls.

Built-in wardrobe designed for maximum storage of anything and everything but big enough for overcoats to hang clear of the floor.
The presses above the sink will be soaked permanently with damp: chip board is a poison in a living space. It absorbs everything and when it dries out in summer, the true nature of the rot becomes apparent in the vile smell off everything. Storing fresh foods like bread in those presses is asking for trouble. Buy a proper draining unit and put it inside the press directly above the sink: now you have drainage AND storage, with no need for additional press space to store the plates.

For contrast, here's an ad from the Heka apartment exchange site, Heka are the state/city council who provide housing to tenants like me.

This guy's looking for a place higher up than a ground floor apartment and is looking to exchange this one - fresh off the Heka page:



The price per month is €683, and this includes:

Everything you see in the apartment
Access to in-block sauna (private/lenkki)
Car parking spot
Internet
Cable TV
Hot/cold water
Laundry and drying rooms
Bike storage rooms
Cold storage locker (3-SqM)
Attic locker (2-SqM)

Nearby supermarket/shopping centre
Ski trails
Metro access very close
Several bus/tram lines
Quiet neighbourhood

Additional photos:



So for less than seven hundred per month, you can have all this. A separate bedroom, a large lounge with internet and cable TV points (also in bedroom) a fully fitted kitchen designed to make maximum use of space limiting clutter. Lots of light on both sides of the apartment - lounge overlooking the rear gardens and the the kitchen overlooking the front gardens. Central heating throughout as per (no bills). Courtyard services included, building maintenance and emergency janitorial services are in-house (the janitor lives within the block). Garbage disposal (all types).

Wi-fi throughout the building, but private supply within the apartment (100Mb) - two data points.

Dedicated car parking.

Carpet cleaning facilities in courtyard.

Kid's play areas, outdoor bicycle parking, ski and winter items storage on ground floor.

The only thing this apartment hasn't got is its own balcony. There'll be one on the sauna floor, the rooftop barbecue area, and laundry space. Private insurance policy is required (as standard) and the letting is from one single person looking to exchange with another single person. The deal can be overseen by Heka (in which case they renovate both addresses at no cost) or the tenants can strike a deal themselves and then notify Heka of the changes. In that case, Heka will not participate in any renovation works, it's up to the tenants. If a couple want the available apartment you see above, they can of course share it. In which case their rental fees will be €340 per month each with the only additional expense of electricity usage. My average energy bills (since the war in Ukraine and the surging cost of living everywhere) is now average €125 per three months.

The neighbourhood is in Siilitie, the apartment block overlooks the sea and marina, is located close to the metro (7/8 minutes to central station) and all amenities required within the local village. Nice beaches nearby, boat docking, full marina, nice forests, bird/wildlife reservation, and town hall (large wooden stately home type) available for rental for weddings/parties/etc. By bike it's around a twenty minute cycle into the city, bike lanes all the way in and out.

This is a settled neighbourhood, no active youth/children at play but has a few state-owned day-care centres for tots (0730-1430).

So, for a young couple, this address could set them up and help them save cash offside for home purchase later on. Depending on how long they stay at the address, they can access sales of homes within the Heka group: Heka often sell off apartments/blocks to private buyers after two or three decades of rental use. If the tenant has been living at the address they're buying, then the costs are reduced. Newbies/non Heka tenants will have to compete at current private market prices. Large buyers (investment groups, etc) are NOT allowed to buy up city-owned blocks. Strict rules keep council housing affordable for all. Pension funds and so on are excluded from buying up whole blocks.

So you have security, fixity of tenure, minimal annual price increases, and the guarantee that if anything goes wrong then it can be dealt with on the spot by your janitor or else within a day or two if it requires a team. Rental fees will deduct the time period of necessary works. If you're required to leave for the renovation, your costs are refunded (you can't book into a five star hotel) and small compensation (in deducted rent form usually) will be offered for your inconvenience.

Or you could stay in Dublin and be cold and damp, have fuck all money, hate your life, your home, and eventually yourself, and commit suicide before you turn forty. Develop an alcohol addiction, use drugs to alleviate the misery of life in Ireland, never see the sun shine, deal with skangers every passing day, get butt-fucked in rental fees to some scumbag culchie, see your rent double every six months, hate your neighbours, hate your housemates, and die very sad and miserable from some fungus you've been breathing in for the last six months from that fucking terrible window (that likely overlooks a piss-stinking lane-way where the junkies shoot up and the slappers give head) and now you have medical bills as well as rental fees you can't afford.

But hey: you make your bed and you lie in it.

I had to, and look at me now?

Then look at you.

Then look at me.

 

[David]

Excellent post. Would the physical condition of most Irish rentals even be legal up in the Nordic countries?

I remember you saying that you had a rural landlord once...a big ignorant gombeen culchie stinking of Smithwick's and cow shite. Thirty years later and nothing has changed - only that rents are now through the roof. Most Irish landlords are still big, ignorant, culchie, gombeen fuckers who help themselves in the front door without notice - despite this being illegal. Call the Gardai and they're clueless, e.g. 'it's a civil matter so there's not much we can do.'

It doesn't help that most FFG / Independent politicians are landlords themselves, so they've skin in the game and real reform of the private rental sector is not in their interests, e.g. rent control, minimum living standards etc. Irish rentals look third world in comparison to the Finnish apartment pictured above.

 

[Mowl]

Excellent post. Would the physical condition of most Irish rentals even be legal up in the Nordic countries?

Hell, no.

That shit would be shut down and the landlord hauled up.

I remember you saying that you had a rural landlord once...a big ignorant gombeen culchie stinking of Smithwick's and cow shite.

I've had more than one culchie landlord, but I've also had a scummy Dublin fucker with a kid with Down's Syndrome who thinks the world owes him something. He was the sort of cunt who would assess your rent based on how you lived. For example: when I first viewed the two-bed flat I ended up in for a few years, the sitting tenants weren't home - so he let me in with his key and told me that this flat would be up at the end of the week.

I should have known better but I took it - it was hard to find anywhere at all and that address was handy for the city. Being a musician, I can't live out in the country without a car, so I took it. Then I cleaned it up: fresh paint, fresh carpet throughout, refitted a decent kitchen by building the parts my self for best storage and efficiency, and threw out his used beds and other furniture. Next time he called by he saw what I did and said there was going to be a rent increase the following month. I asked the other tenants in the other flats and they knew nothing about it.

It was just me - having forked out time, effort, cost of materials, etc.

He was planning on charging me for the work and expense I went to to make the place livable.

I had that address on and off for around three years, then began subletting it for the same fees when I was out on the road.

In the end I got the cunt good: he tried to stiff me on the deposit and attacked my one evening outside the house when he was drunk. I didn't hit him back, I knew people were watching. Someone called the cops and they arrived soon after: first they grabbed me, but everyone who was watching told them it wasn't me, it was the cunt in the shiny suit with the pockets full of money. I gave a statement and they let him go, me too. Later on they sussed out his tax affairs and he got landed with a massive tax bill for non-declaration of rental fees on his private property. He owned three huge houses I knew of, all converted into poky little flats for maximum profit.

He's still at it, by the way.

Thirty years later and nothing has changed - only that rents are now through the roof. Most Irish landlords are still big, ignorant, culchie, gombeen fuckers who help themselves in the front door without notice - despite this being illegal. Call the Gardai and they're clueless, e.g. 'it's a civil matter so there's not much we can do.'

Fact: this year's rental increase from Heka, the Helsinki housing body, raised my rent to €800.75.

Just a few cents over the eight-hundred mark.

Which was how much I was paying in rent (ONLY) in 1998. That fee didn't include energy/electricity, I had to pay for heat to keep the damp at bay, and every time the cunt landlord called by he was mooching and looking to increase his rental fees. There you have it: almost thirty years ago, I was still paying more then I am today for far more in every possible way. Guys like him are lauded by the state too.

Mental.

It doesn't help that most FFG / Independent politicians are landlords themselves, so they've skin in the game and real reform of the private rental sector is not in their interests, e.g. rent control, minimum living standards etc. Irish rentals look third world in comparison to the Finnish apartment pictured above.

You guys have no idea how you're viewed from abroad, some people find it hilarious what you let them get away with.

I tend to agree with them.

Fuck Ireland - she's a fucking whore in heat for the petty cash.

Never again.

 

[Mowl]

Gas the height of the prices of your houses when you stop and read headlines like '30,000 without electricity due to Storm Kathleen'.

Over 30,000 without electricity and flights cancelled as Storm Kathleen hits Ireland

A Status Orange wind warning is in place for five counties, with a Yellow warning for the rest of the country.

www.thejournal.ie

You dopes have some of the world's most expensive housing yet every time it rains or the wind blows, everything collapses.

And you're dog-trained to roll over and play dead when it all falls apart - because it's windy.

You lot are some of the best-trained moneys on the entire planet. You let the mugs in Met Eireann dupe you by letting them name the weather, give it a character, a role to play so the dopey Irish can yell at it and blame everything on it when in fact it has fuck all to do with the weather and everything to do with the shoddy standards in your house-building model. Storm Kathleen? Why not just: 'the weather will be as uniformly shit today as t ever is so board up your windows and stock up on batteries of you don't have a diesel generator to hand..' ??

You make your bed and you lie in it, I guess.

 

[Lumpy Von Talbot]

Put a deliberate choke on supply into any market and the price of the commodity will rise. In Ireland's case it is the only way for senior civil servants to look richer than they actually are.

Anything else anyone wants to know?

 

[Mowl]

Put a deliberate choke on supply into any market and the price of the commodity will rise.

You mean more or less exactly like RTE?

In Ireland's case it is the only way for senior civil servants to look richer than they actually are.

That and leather elbow patches on their tailored silk jackets.

Anything else anyone wants to know?

How long?

How long must we sing this song?

 

[Lumpy Von Talbot]

Until the fat lady steps up, the Mowl. Otherwise as soon as the property funds detect there is a better yield in some other financial instrument than the superheated Irish property market. At which point they will exodus and dump an inordinate amount of residential property on the market all at the same time and the little people ('small landlords') will all start screaming as the house price they've borrowed against for the Mercedes, the school feels and the four holidays abroad starts to head south.

At that point bailout will be in the air.

 

[David]

Gombeen landlords must laugh to themselves when they see hundreds of people begging to be allowed rent their shithole properties at exorbitant prices.

---

 

[Lumpy Von Talbot]

Skin colour has nothing to do with it. Now that everyone in Ireland who matters is technically very rich because of their house price they need to inherit a new poor to wipe their arses for them when they are too old to do it themselves and they only want to pay minimum wage, a bit like hiring minimum wage workers in Dubai who all have to be attracted in from overseas.

And then spend the rest of their lives complaining about young Irish people emigrating and not staying in Ireland to wipe their arses for them. With a bit of luck they'll import some Spartacus by mistake who will go on a euthenasia spree.

I'd stay up late to watch that.

 

[Mowl]

2100 p/m

Until the fat lady steps up, the Mowl. Otherwise as soon as the property funds detect there is a better yield in some other financial instrument than the superheated Irish property market. At which point they will exodus and dump an inordinate amount of residential property on the market all at the same time and the little people ('small landlords') will all start screaming as the house price they've borrowed against for the Mercedes, the school feels and the four holidays abroad starts to head south.

At that point bailout will be in the air.

Y'know the way America's full of those mobile home neighbourhoods?

The Phoenix Park would house thousands of them, over by the Papal cross for example.

Gombeen landlords must laugh to themselves when they see hundreds of people begging to be allowed rent their shithole properties at exorbitant prices.

I thank the bejayzus fuck for getting out before I'd ever have to do that.

Has to be one of the most soul-destroying things lining up with dozens of immigrants to find a place to fucking live in your own city.

The upcoming euthanasia legislation is likely stalled by the fact that they know already that as soon as it's legal, the pensioners with start popping off this mortal coil at a rate not seen since The Great Hunger.

Fucked.

There's nothing unique to Ireland with new housing stock not matching demand because of forced, mass immigration. It's a symptom of the policy of white genocide

Most of the sad bastards living in tents are immigrants, Jambo.

A large number of Irish citizens living in tents (not in the city centre shanty towns) park their tents out the back garden of enighbourhoods like Ballyer, Tallaght, Clondalkin, etc. Those fuckers have it really bad because regardless of their access to a family kitchen and toilet, washing machine and drying machine, their family units are falling apart, being drained of all sense of fortitude and patience in dealing with this horrible situation.

Imagine having to ask your granny if you can pitch a tent out back?

Or convert her shed to fit the tent?

And still your government maintains an open-door policy to any and every vagabond from across the planet?

You wanna know why both Varadkar and Coveney are getting the fuck out?

To do a Bertie on it: 'it was fine when I left it..'

Sadly, your response to all that palaver is to post another telegram from some dopey 'nationalist' cunt in a Penney's jumper and bad haircut.

Skin colour has nothing to do with it. Now that everyone in Ireland who matters is technically very rich because of their house price they need to inherit a new poor to wipe their arses for them when they are too old to do it themselves and they only want to pay minimum wage, a bit like hiring minimum wage workers in Dubai who all have to be attracted in from overseas.

And then spend the rest of their lives complaining about young Irish people emigrating and not staying in Ireland to wipe their arses for them.

Zing!

It's like déjà vu: they did all this same shit in the late nineties through the noughties: one musician friend of mine had a Polish cleaning lady come twice a week.

In fairness, he lived like a pig - but still: Irish musicians with housekeepers?

 

[Lumpy Von Talbot]

Going to be great when the new Irish decide they want their own representative political party because they don't feel hugely welcome at the FG and FF Ard Fheis. The Crumlin JanjaWeed Liberation Front trouncing Fianna Fail at the polls.

Class.

 

[Lumpy Von Talbot]

Hopefully at the same time the seawater starts to flood the golf courses of Florida so Hank and Marvetta will be on the other channel being chased across the 11th green by massive alligators come to claim their new kingdom of the expanded Everglades from overweight huffing Republicans and their zonked children.

Back to Channel 64 from Dublin where some evangelical preacher holding a Bible with lots of crossed out bits in Biro is giving an acceptance speech while some very, very white elderly Johnjoes in the background are all having to stand there defeated with cheesy grins and wondering is it too late to head for Portugal.

I'm going to need a lot of crisps and Fanta.

 

[roc_abilly]

This thread has to be the biggest joke on Isle

Why housing is so expensive today.

Three pages, no answers

There are answers if you looked, Jambo.

But what you're looking for is the essence of populism. I.e. The simple answer to the cause and effect question.

But really causation is complex when you're dealing with social and economic systems, Jambo.

Incidentally, no algorithm has ever come near the human brain to work out causation - at least a well informed, well working brain, Jambo.

Not an empty, autistic "chess" brain like yours, Jambo.

Where do you even start.

Well let's start - what's happening now in our property market Jambo is a direct result or consequence of everything that has ever happened in our property market.

Yes, even of age old happenings like say the rezoning corruption in the period 1963-1971 that lead to an average of 530% speculative windfall profit on “serviced” land (undeveloped land which has the main services of water, sewerage and drainage close to it) across Dublin.

And of course happenings like the 1997-2007 Bertie bubble era when we intentionally overheated the economy with lower tax, and tax incentives, and refused to countenance counter-cyclical policies at the voting booths.

Not forgetting the SSIAs, and deregulation. The media stoking all the worst elements.

Then to stop an implosion we solicited the massive US private equity and venture capital funds, promising them advantages and giving them formal reassurances, if they would only come in and as Lenihan put it, "put a floor under the market".

And of course the immigrants were needed too, to play their part in all the above.

Where does it start and end, Jambo? How even do you ever square this circle, Jambo?

Well the wise men, say the indigenous natives of America, or other indigenous, might look up from their pipes and say to you, "look within you, my son".

What do you see there, Jambo?

A man-child who wants out of what he calls "the rat race"?

Hmmm.

And look over here - here are previous incarnations of those who have gravitated to the simple answers, just like you Jambo - these are incarnations from seventeen year ago. Listen to their excitement at getting out of the "rat race", Jambo:

Daft.ie : Sales : First Time Buyers

Are you there in that thread too, Jambo, seventeen years ago?

But you see there are exactly the people who today blame immigrants, the EU, the "Bankers", the "financial elites", the "Zionists", the "neocons", the "bilderbergers", the "faceless bureaucrats", the "Azov", etc, who all have somehow conspired against them.

And Jambo here's the most serious part - what will happen is that populists will come and give them the answers that they want to hear.

Now that's when "cause and effect" will really get going.

When the realisation will slowly make itself felt that all of our thoughts, our words, our deeds, have consequences, effects, in this life.

We ain't seen nothing yet.

 

[roc_abilly]

Like I said, it's all gatekeeping. You (try to) gatekeep and slander (white) nationalism with whatever lie takes your fancy.

I'd say it's quite the opposite of "gatekeepng", Jambo.

For I'd like you to take responsibility, for yourself, for the institutions, the politicians, the mores, that you actually may exercise control over, subject to an intelligent logic.

Rather than pointing outwards, to abstractions, imaginary things.

I would like you to see how you are being manipulated, and the futility of believing in abstractions like the "white race", that has become the central object of passionate nationalistic feeling for you, an abstraction that you have sunk your individuality into.

I want you to understand how the world actually works, its politics and economics, actual cause and effect, and pull you away from all that simplistic conspiracist thinking, your white supremacists, covid deniers, NWO and "globohomo" conspiracists, and all the rest.

I'd like you to stop subtituting slogans for thinking, and so passively watching all those videos every day that numb your faculties, that cynically target your emotions and preexisting resentments, grievances and insecurities.

I'd like you to get real, stop being so passive, non-productive, and see your way through these irrationalistic philosophies, racialist and antisemitic analyses, and conspiracist world-views.

"... The central belief of every moron is that he is the victim of a mysterious conspiracy against his common rights and true deserts…[he] ascribes all his failures to get on in the world, all of his congenital incapacity and damfoolishness, to the machinations of werewolves assembled in Wall Street, or some other such den of infamy.” (Mencken)

These things disenfrachise, disempower and render you easy pickings for evil, stupid men, Jambo.

So what's the opposite of "gatekeeper"?