{"id":186170,"date":"2025-12-11T06:13:07","date_gmt":"2025-12-11T06:13:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/186170\/"},"modified":"2025-12-11T06:13:07","modified_gmt":"2025-12-11T06:13:07","slug":"high-costs-high-rents-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/186170\/","title":{"rendered":"high costs, high rents \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">The <a href=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/business\/2025\/12\/09\/only-top-20-of-irish-earners-can-afford-to-rent-an-apartment-surveyors-say\/\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/business\/2025\/12\/09\/only-top-20-of-irish-earners-can-afford-to-rent-an-apartment-surveyors-say\/\">latest report from the Society of Chartered Surveyors of Ireland<\/a> (SCSI) on apartment costs here perfectly encapsulates the circular nature of Ireland\u2019s housing problem. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">The only way we\u2019ll get housing supply up to the 50,000 units-a-year mark, the Government\u2019s target rate, is to build higher-density housing, including apartments. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">But if the average cost of constructing a two-bedroom apartment ranges from \u20ac480,000 in suburban medium-rise schemes to \u20ac650,000 in an urban development, as the SCSI contends, there\u2019ll be few buyers and few renters. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">To afford these apartments, a first-time couple requires a combined salary of between \u20ac108,000 to \u20ac146,000.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">It also means the Government\u2019s Help to Buy and First Home schemes are unavailable because the sale prices of these units would be well above the \u20ac500,000 threshold required.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">All of which means that these apartment schemes require institutional investors to bulk-buy the units as PRS (private rental sector) investment for high-end, city-centre rent, which most of the population can\u2019t afford.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">PRS investment seems to be a central focus of Government policy.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">To enhance the viability of apartment projects, the Government has changed design standards, revamped rent controls and reduced VAT on new-build apartments.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">These measures do seem to be enticing more investment into the sector judging by the latest planning permissions data, which indicated a 50 per cent jump in permissions for apartments in the third quarter.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">But it remains to be seen if building high-cost apartments will do anything to square the affordability circle at the heart of the country\u2019s housing challenge.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">It\u2019s hard to keep applying the term crisis to the problem when it\u2019s been going on for the guts of 20 years and when the home ownership rate among those aged 25-39, once considered a prime homeowning age, has dwindled to such an extent.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">The declining rate of home ownership has created an oversubscribed rental market, which these new apartments will presumably feed, with rents seemingly on an inexorable path upwards. It\u2019s a vicious circle. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The latest report from the Society of Chartered Surveyors of Ireland (SCSI) on apartment costs here perfectly encapsulates&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":186171,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[100784,2127,100783,807,61,60,43,100782],"class_list":["post-186170","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-apartment-costs","tag-construction","tag-high-rents","tag-housing","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-news","tag-rental-sector"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186170","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=186170"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186170\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/186171"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=186170"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=186170"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=186170"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}