Housing crisis remains daunting despite hopeful data

Will the Government be able to meet its Housing for All target of 29,000 new-build homes this year, comprising 9,100 social homes, 5,500 affordable and cost-rental homes, and 14,400 for private renters and owners? Naturally, Minister for Housing Darragh O’Brien is confident and there is probably more cause for hope than there was at the start of the year.

After a difficult period, the pace of housing starts has risen in recent months, as the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI) highlighted in its Quarterly Economic Commentary this week, “a good leading indicator for a pickup in supply into the year ahead”. Meanwhile, cost pressures have eased somewhat with the Central Statistics Office’s (CSO) wholesale price index indicating monthly declines in the price of building and construction materials in two of the last three months.

On the social and affordable side of the equation, the pipeline looks reasonably healthy. The Housing Finance Agency (HFA), which this week published its 2022 annual report, said it has approved loans totalling €304 million in the first six months of the year, some 4.5 per cent ahead of last year. Its customers – approved housing bodies, local authorities and third-level institutions – borrowed some €1.2 billion in 2022. HFA chief executive Barry O’Leary believes the agency will at least match last year’s total and could achieve €1.5 billion in approvals this year.

Although economic twists and turns are bound to crop up, conditions would appear to be ripe for housing output to beat expectations this year. Yet scepticism abounds and the crisis remains a stubborn one. Despite the influx of supply over the past year, affordability is still the defining issue in the market with rents up a hefty 7.6 per cent across the State in the year to June, according to the Residential Tenancies Board this week.

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With inflation still eating away at earnings, rents continue to outpace incomes, partially a legacy of historic undersupply to the market, as Dr John McCartney argued in The Irish Times this week. This may account for the steep 20 per cent rise in mortgage approvals for first-time buyers in the year to May, noted by the Banking and Payments Federation Ireland on Tuesday. As people find themselves forking out more and more on rent, they are increasingly looking to start their arduous climb on to the property ladder, securing mortgage approval, in a lot of cases, without having even identified a property for purchase. Even if targets are met this year, the problem looks as daunting as ever.