If landlords are exiting the market, why are the levels of home ownership in decline?

Brendan Burgess

Founder
Messages
54,768
I am trying to get my head around this.

There are four main categories of housing

Home ownership
Private rental
Social housing
Long term vacant properties

So these four must add up to 100%? (Homelessness is another category but it's tiny in comparison to the others.)

We are told that landlords are leaving the market. Which is correct. But the institutional landlords are entering the market, so while a lot of properties are being sold, far more are being rented by a few institutional landlords.

I suspect that the percentage of social housing has increased as well.

Brendan
 
Brendan Burgess said:
But the institutional landlords are entering the market, so while a lot of properties are being sold, far more are being rented by a few institutional landlords.
Click to expand...
Hi Brendan, what is that 'far more' assertion based on?

If we take Q3 notices to terminate last year at close to 5,000 from the RTB (which seem to be fairly reliable now that they have to be sent a notice for it to be valid), what does 'far more are being rented by a few institutional landlords' mean in the context of those?

That many are bought by institutional landlords (ILs) and that the amount of the others sold to owner occupiers/lost to the rental market are replaced by new build units etc. from ILs, and we also have units added to the rental market over and above that by the ILs (to maintain the rental market % of the overall market)?

Does anyone have figures for the new rentals added by ILs by quarter?
 
Last edited:
No one has reliable figures for anything related to housing - the statistics are spread around multiple sources, based on derived sources (eg number of electical connections used for completions), incomplete info (vacant houses estimated by various bodies), etc etc
 

Hi Ronnie

Good point.

It's very hard to quantify.

I suspect that it's more. but I don't know. It's probably not "far more".

Brendan
 
The net outflow of landlords seems low relative to the numbers that are staying, so I wonder if it is central to the home ownership story at all.

Population growth has been extremely strong. Given the demographics involved and our busted housing supply, it's no surprise that home ownership would sag.

Overcrowding in the private rental sector has probably gotten a lot worse in recent years, even ignoring the issue of exiting landlords. So, there's a more intensive use of the potentially smaller pool of private rented stock. The 2016 census showed average occupancy levels going up and I think the soon to be released 2022 data will show more of the same.

It's difficult to access home ownership because of high prices and relatively tight credit standards. Despite this, the number of FTB purchases has risen strongly in recent years (16,612 FTBs in 2022). So, more people year-on-year are managing to build or buy and they will keep some upward pressure on home ownership rates. https://www.cso.ie/en/releasesandpu...ypriceindexdecember2022/additionalindicators/
 
Brendan Burgess said:
overcrowding in home ownership
Click to expand...
Its a definition that has moved significantly over the years.

I've seen 6 people in a 3 bed / 1 bath house defined as overcrowding in recent times.

Yet up to 2 decades ago, a family of 4 children & 2 adults in similar housing would not have been considered to be overcrowded. Siblings sharing a bedroom was not at all unusual.
 
Yes, demographics have played a big part in our housing problem but... The average number of people per household in 2022 was 2.75. In 1981 it was 3.68. In 1991 it was 3.34.
That means with a population of 5 million we need 460,000 more housing units to house the same number of people as we would have housed at 1991 occupancy levels. That's €130-€140 billion worth of property without housing a single net extra person.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Menu
Log in
Register