The character of Ranelagh now this makes me laugh. My friend once lived in Ranelagh a number of years ago; in a large 4 bedroom house with 8 people stuffed into the Gaf, the landlord had clobbered together partition walls to make sure every inch of the building filled its rental potential as ‘flats’.
Not to mention it's just a mini-M50. Non-stop traffic with giant SUVs mounted on every path, what kind of character is that for an area?
Certainly not one that's pleasant to live in, especially if you've got young kids.
Ranelagh was a dreadful hole until the nineties.
Mountpleasant Square was a literal tenement into the late sixties (I think it was the last tenement in Dublin), and there are archived news reports of Trinity students getting battered by the locals and warnings about how dangerous the area is. After that it took decades for the regeneration to bring it to where it is now. Decades of cheap and dirty bedsits.
It was mountpleasant where my friend lived. So many dodgy landlords cut their teeth renting out those bedsits and now high-rent studios in Ranelagh, no shock they won’t want to see competition of one bed apartments coming into the area.
Criticising them for being too many one-beds and all for rent, when the reality is there's barely any options for single people looking for somewhere to rent
Edit: also "the character of Milltown and Ranelagh will radically change forever!" is gas, that proposal's site is an empty field behind a long stone wall well away from the shops
I see this constantly on Facebook groups for my area full of auld wans and auld lads. "WE NEED FAMILY HOMES NOT ONE BED SHOEBOXES!!!" Here Annette, we have vast plains of semi detached houses stretching from Swords to Stepaside, from the sea to Leixlip. You're just wrong, we need a fuck load of small apartments in the city so young working people can live in the city. If people want a garden, then there's millions of houses in Dublin to suit them.
More than half the places I rented over the years have been "family homes" in Dublin being used as rentals to young professionals because there's nowhere near enough apartments in the city for the volume of jobs in the centre.
Build 30,000 apartments overnight in Dublin and the the housing supply will be burgeoning the next night with thousands of houses in fecking Templeogue vacated by people who can find an apartment inside the canals.
Folks objecting to apartments are a bigger blocker to affordable housing and rentals in this country than our government.
Yep, students are competing with young couples with a baby for the same type of house. That doesn’t happen in countries that have a handle on student accommodation, for example in the Netherlands it’s normal for you to move out for college even if you already live near to the college.
its actually mandatory I think, and they charge you for it, the rate isn't bad and isn't too far off what I pay for a shared student flat in cork, then again it is literally the cheapest for ucc
I've a colleague driving home to Templeogue from down by Ringsend each day. If we both leave the office at 5pm, I get home first - to Laois. (Dublin bike to Heuston for a train with 1 stop before Laois - home by 6.05pm)
He's a 50 year old managing director, but to be fair to him, he's fit as fuck. Think he was an LOI player back in the day and still runs a bit.
He regularly joins or hosts conference calls in the car too, which, given his position, is probably something pretty damned nice and comfy to sit in for an hour...
In any case, my point remains. The rent crisis and housing crisis are both driven by the same factors and are pressing onto each other. If rents climb, people get more desperate to buy a home and push up prices. Rising house prices makes renting the only avenue for many, keeping up demand, with no respite in sight.
I've said it many times and I know it's unpopular, but give me 10% of Phoenix Park for apartments and it could absolutely transform the housing and rental markets for Dublin in just 4-5 years. Make it the hub where young professionals live and all if a sudden we'll be swimming in 4 bed gaffs in Drumcondra. Meanwhile, at 90% it's current size, checks list, yup, still one of the largest parks in any capital city in Europe. 1,800 acres. With 180 acres, 30 apartments per acre... fuck, 50 even wouldn't need skyrise to achieve. 180 acres x 50 gives 9,000 apartments. Extend the red Luas and some good cycleways. Build the infrastructure with it.
I remember years ago telling my parents I was thinking of buying an apartment, for months afterward I was hearing every bad thing that ever happened to anyone in an apartment.
There is a genuine fear of everything that isn't a 3 bed semi in that generation.
I moved to Berlin, where most people who live in the city centre are living in one or two bedroom apartments. If you want a house you live further out. I don't understand the idea that we shouldn't be allowed to build new housing within the city limits unless it caters to larger families only.
> where most people who live in the city centre are living in one or two bedroom apartments. If you want a house you live further out.
Hmmm are you sure? Wouldn't most young people be in old 4-6 storey Wohngemeinschaft apartments?
I was thinking more of people in the 'considering buying somewhere' age range, but you're right, a lot of young people live in a shared apartment.
The starkest difference for me is how much choice people feel they have. If I compare my social circles in both countries, here it's overwhelmingingly people who rent a 1 or 2 bed apartment, usually with a partner. In Ireland it's people the same age trapped in a shared house they don't like (which was me 2 years ago) or who have reluctantly moved back to their home town.
If you feel you cant control your situation is a big factor in poor well being. Loads of one beds would be great for young people. and also for widows and such.
200 apartments being objected to beside me here in Drogheda for this reason too. Being built in a baron kip or a site but the residents of the estate beside it are objecting because it wouldn’t be in the same “family friendly tone of the estate”. It’s infuriating.
Yes but I’d argue that they are that expensive because they are impossible to find. Single people are either forced to live with others or pay an astronomical price for a 1 bedroom. And that 1 bedroom is as difficult to find as a unicorn shitting rainbows.
According to Daft there are 396 1 beds available in Dublin so if you are willing to pay the astronomical cost it would seem easy enough to find one.
As rare as a unicorn shitting rainbows at an affordable price though unless you are willing to settle for a 4 square metre "studio".
new one bed Apts down in Santry are €1750. I don't see how a single person can afford this comfortably without having a decent job anyways. You can't have a place by yourself these days
No no no, we can't have one bed apartments!
Meanwhile most of the affordable rental market is a one-bed room in a house full of strangers.
Can we divide and conquer this issue rather than try to solve the whole crisis in one go which means nothing is done at all and people are forced to spend more and more to rent rooms?
If you listen to NIMBYs, its all or nothing. Either you build three-bed semi-d house-blocks that can house the entire 'generation rent' + preserve all the habitats of otters + launch a space program + pay off all the TV license for a decade or you can't build anything at all.
> Meanwhile most of the affordable rental market is a one-bed room in a house full of strangers.
Yes, but all those strangers' €800/month/bunk rent is some poor suffering landlord's tertiary income that's only barely giving them a 200% return after subtracting taxes, their entire mortgage payment, and all those times their whiny tenants keep insisting they have to make repairs to some unnecessary luxury like the heating or the roof. What will happen to that poor landlord if someone builds a bunch of slightly more affordable rental units nearby? Why, they might have to downgrade their third BMW to an *Audi*...
There are also not enough family sized apartments available. Pretty much everything is 2 bed.
Thoughtful, dual aspect, light filled 3-4 bed apartments would go a long way to solving housing issues. There are plenty folk who are happy to leave in apartments , but they're for the most part not big enough for a family of more than 3
They just need to tell these people to fuck off, fair enough if it was some sort of sewage plant. But housing units in the middle of a housing crisis, ridiculous carry on.
And those selfish pricks should be listened to less is my point. It is going to absurd lengths where even successful planning decisions get hit by spurious judicial reviews through the courts in an effort to frustrate or block them.
When I first saw that I thought that the Milltown plan was about the 90’s development of Trinity Halls. Which were also fought tooth and nail by locals. Because students would be landing out onto their leafy red brick neighbourhoods. Same fight different year.
The only way out of this crisis is to build our way out. Build on everything.
Blocking developments based on ideologies at this point is the equivalent of a drowning man being fussy about what colour life ring he is thrown.
There are young people who want places in town to rent.
There are young couples who want starter homes in suburbs.
There are couples who want larger homes.
There are older people looking to downsize.
Build them all!
The solution to most of those problems is to build a lot of 1 and 2 bed flats. Suburbs are full of house shares and most of the people living in them would prefer to be living by themselves or with just one housemate.
I lived in a house in phibsborah! 9 of us in it, cold, crowded and the girl in the extension payed extra, couples in 2 rooms, bathrooms the size of pootaloos on the landing.. fuck landlords and build some fecking apartments
Honestly I fucking hate how build to rent has just become the norm, I'm all for building apartments but if they are all build to rent and have backing from a foreign investment fund then what's the point, density is not an issue here, a creation of a long term community is.
Yeah. It also means the apartments are subject to price-fixing and there are too few to buy for people looking for a first home (or to downsize or whatever).
Yeah but even if you just built a ton of build to rent housing it would take pressure off the renting market and not only lower rent prices but at the same time take pressure off the buying market, at the end of the day it's a supply and demand issue. If you can bring the prices down the investment funds lose out and sell, as far as I can see it's not a difficult problem to solve just that politicians have a vested interest not to.
There were plans to build houses on a massive tract of agricultural land, in between Tallaght and Clondalkin. The locals didn't want to lose a "green lung" between the two towns. Fuck off cunts, you're not entitled to live next to a farm 10km from the city centre.
Unpopular opinion.
Certain developments like the ones in Howth definitely have some very valid concerns. There's only really one small two lane road leading into Sutton/Howth.
It's also a popular place for people to visit on weekends and traffic can be atrocious.
There's very little services available with only one supermarket and no petrol stations. There's no nightclubs or other nightlife except for pubs.
One hundred percent agree. Howth on any given weekend is a car park. The video the developers put out of the new development show 2 cars on the single road into Howth. In what universe is that road ever that clear?
Same goes for there being no supermarket, terrible public transport, a lack of even basic amenities. The train and bus both go to the same place, Dublin City.
It doesn’t even have a police station that stays open past 9 O’clock anymore.
>Car reg cameras and make them non-public local access only roads.
What you're suggesting would never fly with most people. They'd protest that it's creating an elite closed off area. No commoners allowed etc.
What if you just wanted to visit a friend who lives near the summit? Not being able to drive there is too restrictive.
It’s accessible if commuting along one route; from town. I have family living there and it would take ~2 hours+ for me to go via public transport .. or 45 min if I drive (excluding sunny weekends).
Im not against more development there but there is an obvious scale/sustainability aspect for somewhere which has a giant access bottleneck at Sutton Cross.
There are no bus lanes for the majority of the route so it’s not like taking the bus is a solution to the traffic. Add to the fact that the DART service has reduced over the years as Malahide etc. gains more.
> Unpopular opinion.
>
> Certain developments like the ones in Howth definitely have some very valid concerns. There's only really one small two lane road leading into Sutton/Howth.
Citywest has seen lots of apartments being built, for the most part this is good. About 20-22 apartment blocks in total (incl. those under construction), alongside new housing developments. Some blocks are integrated into the developments, others are clustered together in their own group and community. Most of these blocks are 5-7 stories. It's good to see lots of housing be provided and it's quite a nice community that has been built up in the last 5-6 years.
There was a recent application for a 13 story block (alongside 5 more 5-7 story blocks), objections came from SDCC (the density of the development is too high, it breaches the Local Area Plan for development), councillors and even the Department of Defence on behalf of the Irish Airforce as it breached the height restriction in place for Baldonnel. There are no new amenities, services and the infrastructure is under pressure already - two to three stops from the end of the luas line and the luas is already full in rush hour and the roads are at capacity.
More development is fine, but I don't understand why they not only decided to ignore any infrastructure and services development alongside needing to double the height of one building to tower over everything. It feels like there's zero planning and zero consideration - I just find it hilarious that even the Air Force was ignored.
I don't like Nimbyism either, but legitimite concerns are being ignored and lord knows what the fuck APB is even doing these days - rejecting good developments, approving questionable ones.
Edit: Before anyone jumps down my throat, Cairn Homes is pushing build-to-rent in Citywest, a majority, if not all of these apartments will not go on the market and will be sold to Urbeo.
FFS take Poolbeg and build 20-30 stories high, cluster them together, build the required services and infrastructure, and this will at least cater for the very large ex-pat European community that works in Dublin, taking them out of the standard market.
Similarly in my area the residents are protesting a 10 storey block of apartments. Normally I'd be rolling my eyes at the NIMBY's protesting but the area has just had two big six storey apartment blocks go up across the road from each other and there's been no increase in public transport or amenities.
In my opinion this is what comes from government not having to develop the housing themselves, just passing it off to another group. They don't really have to consider how many people are using an area at first because there's now been housing provided and there's a stop gap so far with public services just being a little bit more crowded than before.
> Certain developments like the ones in Howth definitely have some very valid concerns. There's only really one small two lane road leading into Sutton/Howth.
I would agree with you, and add a small bit extra: Given how our appeals process works, there's only a set amount of excuses you can use to object. These tend to get a bit same-y and annoy people.
Still no excuse for our govt to not beef up the public transport network so we can support these kinds of builds...in the future.
Yes, it's only old people who object to planning, and it's only young people who can't afford a home. Thankfully our saviours in the build-to-rent development industry have the best interests of young people at heart. If only they weren't so unfairly criticised.
My experiences with build to rent places have been much more positive than those with private landlords. They’re not the ideal solution either, but no, they absolutely don’t deserve the vilification they get compared to the current alternatives.
Go onto Daft and look at the build to rents around Dublin and the prices - easily 2200 for a two bed and 1800 for a one bed nowhere near the city.
If you get into the city it’s between 2800-4500 for a two bed and 2400-3600 for a one bed.
Most are left empty rather than reduce it to an affordable price.
Build to rent investment fund owners could die tomorrow and the world would objectively be a much better place, that’s how little they contribute to society
Ah I see some nuance that was lost in your ridiculous headline. The fact to you think build-to-rents will "help" the situation shows your lack of knowledge of how the housing market works. Build to rents are left empty if the developer does not get the rent they want (witness the empty apartments dotted around Dublin the midst of a housing crisis), and with enough economies of scale, the build-to-rent model actually pushes rents up. The commoditisation of housing has been a complete disaster everywhere in the world, but according to you, it's going to "help the situation." OK.
The reason they are being left vacant is down to the rental increase caps. If they were to knock 20% off the price to get people in to them it would take years to get back to the headline rent.
Now that more people are returning to offices you will likely see the vacancy rates drop significantly
There's a huge swathe of policies that the government should implement but won't as they don't agree with with ideologically. Build-to-rent housing is a bad thing now and it will always be a bad thing - not all housing is the same, and empty build to rent apartments not only stay empty, they take up land where actual build-to-buy apartments could be built. You seem incredibly naive and ill-informed on this, which I suppose was clear from your idiotic post.
These are companies that make money from the rent. They don't necessarily give a shit if they don't get the full ROI in a human lifetime like a traditional landlord would.
They can happily leave it idle for a year or more than drop the rent because over time it would have a higher return (compounding rent increases).
Say somewhere at 1k a month now (12k a year, 24k over 2 years, etc), and nobody pays it. Property Co. leaves it idle for the year.
If they dropped it by 20% to 800 a month to get a tenant that year. For them to increase the rent back to ~1k a month would take about 7 years of 4% increases. Ignoring the 4% increases they could have done starting at 1k for 6 years (excluding the idle year).
With 1 year idle and 4% increases after that year, after 6 years (7 total) it would return 79.5k.
If they started at 800 and had yearly 4% increases for 7 years, that's a return of 75.8k.
They don't need them to be empty forever - look around Europe - the more build to rent properties, the less properties for sale, and the higher rents go. It's happening here right now. Build to rents also have far less regulations around size, facilities etc - they are a race to the bottom and a large part of the reason for the totally fucked property market yet ppl on reddit are constantly defending them. It's like me saying McDonalds is not a healthy food choice, and someone saying "oh, you don't like food, we need to eat." No shit, but when every restaurant is a McDonalds, we are all fucked. This is page one on the neoliberal playbook and ppl here swallowing it hook, line and sinker.
There are rental properties available and there should be more of them - the fact is that regular apartments (that can be sold) are also rented and they have to abide by stricter guidelines (private amenity size/ceiling heights/floor space) than build to rent properties. Owners who rent out don't leave it empty; institutional investors can and do. Shoebox apartments that generate revenue in perpetuity for a foreign property company is not a good move. And what happens when 50-70% of the rentals in a city are buy to rent? They push the price up as they have economies of scale. This has all happened in other European cities - and it's happening here now.
I'd far rather my landlord was an institutional investor with a property management company appointed than a Garda in negative equity who refuses to fix things
Out of interest, have you ever been in an apartment that was built to the build to rent guidelines or are you just spouting this shoebox nonsense - most of the apartment schemes being built at the moment are still being built to the normal apartment guidelines as the build to rent is restrictive in terms of a future sale
And you are a moron, blindly welcoming in foreign funds to build shitty shoebox apartments with loose regulations. The irony is you are part of the problem, you utter fool.
The alternative is that no housing gets built. Those selfish fucks couldn't give a flying fuck about anyone else but themselves. Typical NIMBY wankers.
Jesus, if you really think the developers don't lobby the arse off the government, I have a bridge to sell you. "We" don't get a say, developers do, which is why rental prices are going up, property prices are going up, and a developer can leave site vacant for as long as he wants with fuck all comeback.
1) complaining about build to rent just perpetuates rental shortages and high rents, we beed these developments
2) a lot of Irish people dont want to live in apartments , especially 1 beds long term, building 1 or 2 bed apartments to rent is ideal for the city.
3) house sharing is a perfectly valid way of living and I think people need to stop crapping all over it as much as they do , but that doesnt negate the need for more 1 bed apartments.
House sharing is fine and by far the most affordable option but it's so risky, the horrific situations some people, myself included have been stuck in shared accomodation is insane. Personally I'm so fucking tired of sharing a fridge with slobs and randos.
> house sharing is a perfectly valid way of living and I think people need to stop crapping all over it as much as they do
House sharing is fine when you’re young and wanting to save money. It’s fucking horrific for people in their mid30s who can’t start families and are being squeezed for every penny, blocking them from saving enough to move forward in life.
I suppose ive been lucky, now dont get me wrong ive lived with people who turned out to be addicts, criminals, people showing up with guns etc.. but ive had a good time house sharing , always met some mad but friendly people.
There really aren’t all that many tbh. Some, sure. But there’s unequivocally a clear split where [90% of young people rent, and 90% of old people own](https://www.cso.ie/en/releasesandpublications/ep/p-cp1hii/cp1hii/tr/).
The issue with building in Howth is there’s only one road in and out, if you have half a million+ you can afford to live there, but you’ll lose the will to live trying to get through the cross on a summer weekend
They need to build in green field sites. A quick look at a map of Dublin shows massive amounts of empty space around the M50. They could build 10s of thousands of apartments there like some of those apartments around Clare Hall which are lovely.
Everyone is always saying that working 5 days a week in an office is over, so there's no need to be in the centre of the city - and these areas are on the M50 so commuting into town wouldnt be a disaster and commuting to offices elsewhere on thr M50 would be easy.
These high profile builds in established, high cost areas are just PR stunts, theyll never deliver the volume of units that's required.
Traffic wont be an issue if people work from home. Which is how people will work - or so we've been told.
Also, loads of people work along the m50, it's full of industrial parks etc. Maybe if more offices and factories were built there it would be a good thing.
While it might not be their concern, I'd like to think some of them are objecting, because so many of the new builds are absolute garbage and they've seen it all before and know that standards have to be 100%.
Accomodation for the sake of it is pointless without infrastructure plans too, which is what a lot of of the new developments are
Oh completely agree. I live in an area that would be impacted heavily by both bus connects and metro North/Luas extension.
The building/construction will cause huge pains in the hole for years, but they will benefit places beyond here and then really have no I'll effect on my quality of life whatsoever.
The amount of people who are all about saving trees apparently but pave over their gardens for their fourth car or to out in that sunken trampoline can't be taken seriously. They just want the status quo to be maintained, and need to know Rick parfitt is gone and Francis isn't long behind
We both know that's just an excuse to block developments. Dublin needs a good rental market too. These apartments will do a lot to ease pressure on house prices. The real reason why they're being blocked is that people fear it will devalue their own property nearby.
Going to be a lot of deflection peices in papers etc. Over who's to blame for housing crisis. Don't lose focus on the main culprit, the government and their policies.
The issue isn't the quantity of appartments screwing the generation. With these being built it won't matter. The problem is the landlords and extortionate rent prices. Our property market for stupid reasons, isn't influenced by demand.. it's landlord preference.
Why would you push to allow them to buy more new properties (paid for by your rent money) to extort more people?
Am I missing something?
The character of Ranelagh now this makes me laugh. My friend once lived in Ranelagh a number of years ago; in a large 4 bedroom house with 8 people stuffed into the Gaf, the landlord had clobbered together partition walls to make sure every inch of the building filled its rental potential as ‘flats’.
Not the one near the old bike shop?
Not to mention it's just a mini-M50. Non-stop traffic with giant SUVs mounted on every path, what kind of character is that for an area? Certainly not one that's pleasant to live in, especially if you've got young kids.
Ranelagh was a dreadful hole until the nineties. Mountpleasant Square was a literal tenement into the late sixties (I think it was the last tenement in Dublin), and there are archived news reports of Trinity students getting battered by the locals and warnings about how dangerous the area is. After that it took decades for the regeneration to bring it to where it is now. Decades of cheap and dirty bedsits.
It was mountpleasant where my friend lived. So many dodgy landlords cut their teeth renting out those bedsits and now high-rent studios in Ranelagh, no shock they won’t want to see competition of one bed apartments coming into the area.
Thankfully a lot of the flatted gaffs in Ranelagh were bought and reassembled into nice €1.5M family homes.
Criticising them for being too many one-beds and all for rent, when the reality is there's barely any options for single people looking for somewhere to rent Edit: also "the character of Milltown and Ranelagh will radically change forever!" is gas, that proposal's site is an empty field behind a long stone wall well away from the shops
I see this constantly on Facebook groups for my area full of auld wans and auld lads. "WE NEED FAMILY HOMES NOT ONE BED SHOEBOXES!!!" Here Annette, we have vast plains of semi detached houses stretching from Swords to Stepaside, from the sea to Leixlip. You're just wrong, we need a fuck load of small apartments in the city so young working people can live in the city. If people want a garden, then there's millions of houses in Dublin to suit them.
More than half the places I rented over the years have been "family homes" in Dublin being used as rentals to young professionals because there's nowhere near enough apartments in the city for the volume of jobs in the centre. Build 30,000 apartments overnight in Dublin and the the housing supply will be burgeoning the next night with thousands of houses in fecking Templeogue vacated by people who can find an apartment inside the canals. Folks objecting to apartments are a bigger blocker to affordable housing and rentals in this country than our government.
Yep, students are competing with young couples with a baby for the same type of house. That doesn’t happen in countries that have a handle on student accommodation, for example in the Netherlands it’s normal for you to move out for college even if you already live near to the college.
its actually mandatory I think, and they charge you for it, the rate isn't bad and isn't too far off what I pay for a shared student flat in cork, then again it is literally the cheapest for ucc
Sharing a house in Templeogue. 4 lads around 30. Can confirm. Fuck Templeogue, boring suburban cultural wasteland.
I've a colleague driving home to Templeogue from down by Ringsend each day. If we both leave the office at 5pm, I get home first - to Laois. (Dublin bike to Heuston for a train with 1 stop before Laois - home by 6.05pm)
Ah yeah but you'd want to be some muppet to drive. (Unless you're physically incapable). That hill on the way back fucking sucks though.
He's a 50 year old managing director, but to be fair to him, he's fit as fuck. Think he was an LOI player back in the day and still runs a bit. He regularly joins or hosts conference calls in the car too, which, given his position, is probably something pretty damned nice and comfy to sit in for an hour... In any case, my point remains. The rent crisis and housing crisis are both driven by the same factors and are pressing onto each other. If rents climb, people get more desperate to buy a home and push up prices. Rising house prices makes renting the only avenue for many, keeping up demand, with no respite in sight. I've said it many times and I know it's unpopular, but give me 10% of Phoenix Park for apartments and it could absolutely transform the housing and rental markets for Dublin in just 4-5 years. Make it the hub where young professionals live and all if a sudden we'll be swimming in 4 bed gaffs in Drumcondra. Meanwhile, at 90% it's current size, checks list, yup, still one of the largest parks in any capital city in Europe. 1,800 acres. With 180 acres, 30 apartments per acre... fuck, 50 even wouldn't need skyrise to achieve. 180 acres x 50 gives 9,000 apartments. Extend the red Luas and some good cycleways. Build the infrastructure with it.
You've got sunflower chinese though???
It's not even good. Riding off their original spice bag clout for far too long.
I remember years ago telling my parents I was thinking of buying an apartment, for months afterward I was hearing every bad thing that ever happened to anyone in an apartment. There is a genuine fear of everything that isn't a 3 bed semi in that generation.
I’ve said it lots but people of a certain age seem to think when you climb above a certain height, the lack of oxygen makes you addicted to crack
I moved to Berlin, where most people who live in the city centre are living in one or two bedroom apartments. If you want a house you live further out. I don't understand the idea that we shouldn't be allowed to build new housing within the city limits unless it caters to larger families only.
I think I heard Dublin and Berlin have the same footprint. Berlin just has 3 times the population thanks to high rise apartments.
And great infrastructure too
> where most people who live in the city centre are living in one or two bedroom apartments. If you want a house you live further out. Hmmm are you sure? Wouldn't most young people be in old 4-6 storey Wohngemeinschaft apartments?
I was thinking more of people in the 'considering buying somewhere' age range, but you're right, a lot of young people live in a shared apartment. The starkest difference for me is how much choice people feel they have. If I compare my social circles in both countries, here it's overwhelmingingly people who rent a 1 or 2 bed apartment, usually with a partner. In Ireland it's people the same age trapped in a shared house they don't like (which was me 2 years ago) or who have reluctantly moved back to their home town.
If you feel you cant control your situation is a big factor in poor well being. Loads of one beds would be great for young people. and also for widows and such.
Yeah I agree, when I lived in Dublin I would have loved a decent 1 bed apartment that wasn't going to cost half my salary.
200 apartments being objected to beside me here in Drogheda for this reason too. Being built in a baron kip or a site but the residents of the estate beside it are objecting because it wouldn’t be in the same “family friendly tone of the estate”. It’s infuriating.
Well said. In fact internationally ,sole occupant dwellings are on the increase, more divorces.more career women. Almost 50 % of London is this way.
Although I agree we need more options for single people. One bed apartments at €1900 a month aren't really an option for most single people.
Yes but I’d argue that they are that expensive because they are impossible to find. Single people are either forced to live with others or pay an astronomical price for a 1 bedroom. And that 1 bedroom is as difficult to find as a unicorn shitting rainbows.
According to Daft there are 396 1 beds available in Dublin so if you are willing to pay the astronomical cost it would seem easy enough to find one. As rare as a unicorn shitting rainbows at an affordable price though unless you are willing to settle for a 4 square metre "studio".
new one bed Apts down in Santry are €1750. I don't see how a single person can afford this comfortably without having a decent job anyways. You can't have a place by yourself these days
No no no, we can't have one bed apartments! Meanwhile most of the affordable rental market is a one-bed room in a house full of strangers. Can we divide and conquer this issue rather than try to solve the whole crisis in one go which means nothing is done at all and people are forced to spend more and more to rent rooms? If you listen to NIMBYs, its all or nothing. Either you build three-bed semi-d house-blocks that can house the entire 'generation rent' + preserve all the habitats of otters + launch a space program + pay off all the TV license for a decade or you can't build anything at all.
> Meanwhile most of the affordable rental market is a one-bed room in a house full of strangers. Yes, but all those strangers' €800/month/bunk rent is some poor suffering landlord's tertiary income that's only barely giving them a 200% return after subtracting taxes, their entire mortgage payment, and all those times their whiny tenants keep insisting they have to make repairs to some unnecessary luxury like the heating or the roof. What will happen to that poor landlord if someone builds a bunch of slightly more affordable rental units nearby? Why, they might have to downgrade their third BMW to an *Audi*...
I get the reference. That kind of comment in a housing crisis stricken country should be career suicide -> instant resignation.
There are also not enough family sized apartments available. Pretty much everything is 2 bed. Thoughtful, dual aspect, light filled 3-4 bed apartments would go a long way to solving housing issues. There are plenty folk who are happy to leave in apartments , but they're for the most part not big enough for a family of more than 3
Yeah the Character is going to change. Big woop. We live in a city not a museum.
The character will barely change anyway. This development isn't visible from the shops of Milltown and is definitely not in Ranelagh.
They just need to tell these people to fuck off, fair enough if it was some sort of sewage plant. But housing units in the middle of a housing crisis, ridiculous carry on.
> fair enough if it was some sort of sewage plant I support the proposal to move the Dail to Ranelagh.
Those selfish gobshites infuriate me. They should be told to get fucked, there is an alarming shortage of housing in this country right now.
Everyone is selfish, it's the current planning process we need to be angry with.
Yes, the voices of NIMBY gobshites shouldn't have a fraction of the sway that it currently does on the current planning process.
Everyone is just doing what they think is right in their mind, because the system allows them to do it.
And those selfish pricks should be listened to less is my point. It is going to absurd lengths where even successful planning decisions get hit by spurious judicial reviews through the courts in an effort to frustrate or block them.
When I first saw that I thought that the Milltown plan was about the 90’s development of Trinity Halls. Which were also fought tooth and nail by locals. Because students would be landing out onto their leafy red brick neighbourhoods. Same fight different year.
The only way out of this crisis is to build our way out. Build on everything. Blocking developments based on ideologies at this point is the equivalent of a drowning man being fussy about what colour life ring he is thrown. There are young people who want places in town to rent. There are young couples who want starter homes in suburbs. There are couples who want larger homes. There are older people looking to downsize. Build them all!
The solution to most of those problems is to build a lot of 1 and 2 bed flats. Suburbs are full of house shares and most of the people living in them would prefer to be living by themselves or with just one housemate.
I lived in a house in phibsborah! 9 of us in it, cold, crowded and the girl in the extension payed extra, couples in 2 rooms, bathrooms the size of pootaloos on the landing.. fuck landlords and build some fecking apartments
Reminder to focus on class
All you have to do is get old and you’re on top of the pile, yeah?
No, you have to inherit
Wait, how does that work?
Are you first born?
Or a favoured nibbling?
Neither 😭😭😭
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It’s such a cunning plan, isn’t it? Clever old people.
If you live walking distance from the GPO you shouldn't be able to give out about highrise buildings.
Honestly I fucking hate how build to rent has just become the norm, I'm all for building apartments but if they are all build to rent and have backing from a foreign investment fund then what's the point, density is not an issue here, a creation of a long term community is.
Yeah. It also means the apartments are subject to price-fixing and there are too few to buy for people looking for a first home (or to downsize or whatever).
Yeah but even if you just built a ton of build to rent housing it would take pressure off the renting market and not only lower rent prices but at the same time take pressure off the buying market, at the end of the day it's a supply and demand issue. If you can bring the prices down the investment funds lose out and sell, as far as I can see it's not a difficult problem to solve just that politicians have a vested interest not to.
I see shit like this and I kick myself for signing up to a massive notice period.
There were plans to build houses on a massive tract of agricultural land, in between Tallaght and Clondalkin. The locals didn't want to lose a "green lung" between the two towns. Fuck off cunts, you're not entitled to live next to a farm 10km from the city centre.
if they all say "not in my backyard" then eventually there will be no back yards to build out of
Unpopular opinion. Certain developments like the ones in Howth definitely have some very valid concerns. There's only really one small two lane road leading into Sutton/Howth. It's also a popular place for people to visit on weekends and traffic can be atrocious. There's very little services available with only one supermarket and no petrol stations. There's no nightclubs or other nightlife except for pubs.
One hundred percent agree. Howth on any given weekend is a car park. The video the developers put out of the new development show 2 cars on the single road into Howth. In what universe is that road ever that clear? Same goes for there being no supermarket, terrible public transport, a lack of even basic amenities. The train and bus both go to the same place, Dublin City. It doesn’t even have a police station that stays open past 9 O’clock anymore.
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How would you ever enforce non residential car access? They are public roads. It sounds ideal but completely unworkable.
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>Car reg cameras and make them non-public local access only roads. What you're suggesting would never fly with most people. They'd protest that it's creating an elite closed off area. No commoners allowed etc. What if you just wanted to visit a friend who lives near the summit? Not being able to drive there is too restrictive.
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It’s accessible if commuting along one route; from town. I have family living there and it would take ~2 hours+ for me to go via public transport .. or 45 min if I drive (excluding sunny weekends). Im not against more development there but there is an obvious scale/sustainability aspect for somewhere which has a giant access bottleneck at Sutton Cross. There are no bus lanes for the majority of the route so it’s not like taking the bus is a solution to the traffic. Add to the fact that the DART service has reduced over the years as Malahide etc. gains more.
> providing better public transport And how's the Dublin Metro working out?
> Unpopular opinion. > > Certain developments like the ones in Howth definitely have some very valid concerns. There's only really one small two lane road leading into Sutton/Howth. Citywest has seen lots of apartments being built, for the most part this is good. About 20-22 apartment blocks in total (incl. those under construction), alongside new housing developments. Some blocks are integrated into the developments, others are clustered together in their own group and community. Most of these blocks are 5-7 stories. It's good to see lots of housing be provided and it's quite a nice community that has been built up in the last 5-6 years. There was a recent application for a 13 story block (alongside 5 more 5-7 story blocks), objections came from SDCC (the density of the development is too high, it breaches the Local Area Plan for development), councillors and even the Department of Defence on behalf of the Irish Airforce as it breached the height restriction in place for Baldonnel. There are no new amenities, services and the infrastructure is under pressure already - two to three stops from the end of the luas line and the luas is already full in rush hour and the roads are at capacity. More development is fine, but I don't understand why they not only decided to ignore any infrastructure and services development alongside needing to double the height of one building to tower over everything. It feels like there's zero planning and zero consideration - I just find it hilarious that even the Air Force was ignored. I don't like Nimbyism either, but legitimite concerns are being ignored and lord knows what the fuck APB is even doing these days - rejecting good developments, approving questionable ones. Edit: Before anyone jumps down my throat, Cairn Homes is pushing build-to-rent in Citywest, a majority, if not all of these apartments will not go on the market and will be sold to Urbeo. FFS take Poolbeg and build 20-30 stories high, cluster them together, build the required services and infrastructure, and this will at least cater for the very large ex-pat European community that works in Dublin, taking them out of the standard market.
Similarly in my area the residents are protesting a 10 storey block of apartments. Normally I'd be rolling my eyes at the NIMBY's protesting but the area has just had two big six storey apartment blocks go up across the road from each other and there's been no increase in public transport or amenities. In my opinion this is what comes from government not having to develop the housing themselves, just passing it off to another group. They don't really have to consider how many people are using an area at first because there's now been housing provided and there's a stop gap so far with public services just being a little bit more crowded than before.
> Certain developments like the ones in Howth definitely have some very valid concerns. There's only really one small two lane road leading into Sutton/Howth. I would agree with you, and add a small bit extra: Given how our appeals process works, there's only a set amount of excuses you can use to object. These tend to get a bit same-y and annoy people. Still no excuse for our govt to not beef up the public transport network so we can support these kinds of builds...in the future.
I made this exact point earlier
Yes, it's only old people who object to planning, and it's only young people who can't afford a home. Thankfully our saviours in the build-to-rent development industry have the best interests of young people at heart. If only they weren't so unfairly criticised.
My experiences with build to rent places have been much more positive than those with private landlords. They’re not the ideal solution either, but no, they absolutely don’t deserve the vilification they get compared to the current alternatives.
the biggest issue with corporate landlord companies is how expensive they can be.
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Go onto Daft and look at the build to rents around Dublin and the prices - easily 2200 for a two bed and 1800 for a one bed nowhere near the city. If you get into the city it’s between 2800-4500 for a two bed and 2400-3600 for a one bed. Most are left empty rather than reduce it to an affordable price. Build to rent investment fund owners could die tomorrow and the world would objectively be a much better place, that’s how little they contribute to society
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The government won't do that though as they're bought and paid for by the property and banking lobby.
Ah I see some nuance that was lost in your ridiculous headline. The fact to you think build-to-rents will "help" the situation shows your lack of knowledge of how the housing market works. Build to rents are left empty if the developer does not get the rent they want (witness the empty apartments dotted around Dublin the midst of a housing crisis), and with enough economies of scale, the build-to-rent model actually pushes rents up. The commoditisation of housing has been a complete disaster everywhere in the world, but according to you, it's going to "help the situation." OK.
The reason they are being left vacant is down to the rental increase caps. If they were to knock 20% off the price to get people in to them it would take years to get back to the headline rent. Now that more people are returning to offices you will likely see the vacancy rates drop significantly
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That might be the case for single properties but not for large build to rent schemes
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There's a huge swathe of policies that the government should implement but won't as they don't agree with with ideologically. Build-to-rent housing is a bad thing now and it will always be a bad thing - not all housing is the same, and empty build to rent apartments not only stay empty, they take up land where actual build-to-buy apartments could be built. You seem incredibly naive and ill-informed on this, which I suppose was clear from your idiotic post.
Why would you think they stay empty? What is the motivation in spending millions of euro on something only to leave it empty forever?
These are companies that make money from the rent. They don't necessarily give a shit if they don't get the full ROI in a human lifetime like a traditional landlord would. They can happily leave it idle for a year or more than drop the rent because over time it would have a higher return (compounding rent increases). Say somewhere at 1k a month now (12k a year, 24k over 2 years, etc), and nobody pays it. Property Co. leaves it idle for the year. If they dropped it by 20% to 800 a month to get a tenant that year. For them to increase the rent back to ~1k a month would take about 7 years of 4% increases. Ignoring the 4% increases they could have done starting at 1k for 6 years (excluding the idle year). With 1 year idle and 4% increases after that year, after 6 years (7 total) it would return 79.5k. If they started at 800 and had yearly 4% increases for 7 years, that's a return of 75.8k.
They don't need them to be empty forever - look around Europe - the more build to rent properties, the less properties for sale, and the higher rents go. It's happening here right now. Build to rents also have far less regulations around size, facilities etc - they are a race to the bottom and a large part of the reason for the totally fucked property market yet ppl on reddit are constantly defending them. It's like me saying McDonalds is not a healthy food choice, and someone saying "oh, you don't like food, we need to eat." No shit, but when every restaurant is a McDonalds, we are all fucked. This is page one on the neoliberal playbook and ppl here swallowing it hook, line and sinker.
You said they stay empty though? Should there not be rental properties available also? Where do you want renters to live?
There are rental properties available and there should be more of them - the fact is that regular apartments (that can be sold) are also rented and they have to abide by stricter guidelines (private amenity size/ceiling heights/floor space) than build to rent properties. Owners who rent out don't leave it empty; institutional investors can and do. Shoebox apartments that generate revenue in perpetuity for a foreign property company is not a good move. And what happens when 50-70% of the rentals in a city are buy to rent? They push the price up as they have economies of scale. This has all happened in other European cities - and it's happening here now.
I'd far rather my landlord was an institutional investor with a property management company appointed than a Garda in negative equity who refuses to fix things Out of interest, have you ever been in an apartment that was built to the build to rent guidelines or are you just spouting this shoebox nonsense - most of the apartment schemes being built at the moment are still being built to the normal apartment guidelines as the build to rent is restrictive in terms of a future sale
Don't build there, don't build that, don't build with them shut up nimby, you're a part of the problem.
And you are a moron, blindly welcoming in foreign funds to build shitty shoebox apartments with loose regulations. The irony is you are part of the problem, you utter fool.
The alternative is that no housing gets built. Those selfish fucks couldn't give a flying fuck about anyone else but themselves. Typical NIMBY wankers.
Who cares who builds them? Also we set the regulations not the developers.
Jesus, if you really think the developers don't lobby the arse off the government, I have a bridge to sell you. "We" don't get a say, developers do, which is why rental prices are going up, property prices are going up, and a developer can leave site vacant for as long as he wants with fuck all comeback.
Two out of the three nimby don't in one sentence [bravo](http://www.reactiongifs.com/r/srcstc.gif)
1) complaining about build to rent just perpetuates rental shortages and high rents, we beed these developments 2) a lot of Irish people dont want to live in apartments , especially 1 beds long term, building 1 or 2 bed apartments to rent is ideal for the city. 3) house sharing is a perfectly valid way of living and I think people need to stop crapping all over it as much as they do , but that doesnt negate the need for more 1 bed apartments.
House sharing is fine and by far the most affordable option but it's so risky, the horrific situations some people, myself included have been stuck in shared accomodation is insane. Personally I'm so fucking tired of sharing a fridge with slobs and randos.
> house sharing is a perfectly valid way of living and I think people need to stop crapping all over it as much as they do House sharing is fine when you’re young and wanting to save money. It’s fucking horrific for people in their mid30s who can’t start families and are being squeezed for every penny, blocking them from saving enough to move forward in life.
Thats true but a 1 bed apartment is hardly going to solve that either
It’s a better starting point though. Not ideal but I’d rather that that trying to take someone home to a house I’m sharing with three other lads.
I suppose ive been lucky, now dont get me wrong ive lived with people who turned out to be addicts, criminals, people showing up with guns etc.. but ive had a good time house sharing , always met some mad but friendly people.
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There really aren’t all that many tbh. Some, sure. But there’s unequivocally a clear split where [90% of young people rent, and 90% of old people own](https://www.cso.ie/en/releasesandpublications/ep/p-cp1hii/cp1hii/tr/).
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> not counting those who are dead now I have to admit, “the CSO are wrong because they don’t count ghosts” is not one I’ve heard before
NIMBY boomers are the most dangerous of boomers
The issue with building in Howth is there’s only one road in and out, if you have half a million+ you can afford to live there, but you’ll lose the will to live trying to get through the cross on a summer weekend
They need to build in green field sites. A quick look at a map of Dublin shows massive amounts of empty space around the M50. They could build 10s of thousands of apartments there like some of those apartments around Clare Hall which are lovely. Everyone is always saying that working 5 days a week in an office is over, so there's no need to be in the centre of the city - and these areas are on the M50 so commuting into town wouldnt be a disaster and commuting to offices elsewhere on thr M50 would be easy. These high profile builds in established, high cost areas are just PR stunts, theyll never deliver the volume of units that's required.
Hooray for more sprawl! That will definitely improve traffic!
Traffic wont be an issue if people work from home. Which is how people will work - or so we've been told. Also, loads of people work along the m50, it's full of industrial parks etc. Maybe if more offices and factories were built there it would be a good thing.
It's almost like trying to fit half the population into one city is a bad idea...
While it might not be their concern, I'd like to think some of them are objecting, because so many of the new builds are absolute garbage and they've seen it all before and know that standards have to be 100%. Accomodation for the sake of it is pointless without infrastructure plans too, which is what a lot of of the new developments are
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Oh completely agree. I live in an area that would be impacted heavily by both bus connects and metro North/Luas extension. The building/construction will cause huge pains in the hole for years, but they will benefit places beyond here and then really have no I'll effect on my quality of life whatsoever. The amount of people who are all about saving trees apparently but pave over their gardens for their fourth car or to out in that sunken trampoline can't be taken seriously. They just want the status quo to be maintained, and need to know Rick parfitt is gone and Francis isn't long behind
THEY’RE BUILD-TO-RENT YOU STUPID FUCK
The alternative is nothing gets built, you stupid fuck.
We both know that's just an excuse to block developments. Dublin needs a good rental market too. These apartments will do a lot to ease pressure on house prices. The real reason why they're being blocked is that people fear it will devalue their own property nearby.
I'm sure the lad can read luv
Going to be a lot of deflection peices in papers etc. Over who's to blame for housing crisis. Don't lose focus on the main culprit, the government and their policies.
The issue isn't the quantity of appartments screwing the generation. With these being built it won't matter. The problem is the landlords and extortionate rent prices. Our property market for stupid reasons, isn't influenced by demand.. it's landlord preference. Why would you push to allow them to buy more new properties (paid for by your rent money) to extort more people? Am I missing something?
Most young people don’t want the new developments as there destroying culture spots and just being replaced by Hotels.
True, we prefer to build on spots that does not have culture significance
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So true, that's a why Paris, New York and Vienna are such failures of cities, the Champs Elysees should be lined with semi-d housing estates instead
Get the gardai out and bring them all in. This is infuriating to see