The leaders of all three Government parties usually limit their joint appearances for significant new decisions, or, more recently, drastic pandemic responses.
Home ownership rates among the so-called millennial generation have collapsed, and polls show those voters abandoning the Government parties. "They all want house prices to continue to rise and they materially benefit very significantly from it."As recently as 2006, the majority of people in their late 20s owned their own home. By the 2016 census, the equivalent age where more householders owned rather than rented was 35.How everything is different for today's first-time buyers
Housing supply is only just starting to pick up and keep pace with natural changes in demographics, according to Conall MacCoille, the Chief Economist at Davy, Ireland's largest stockbroker and wealth manager.Price inflation, according to Mr MacCoille’s most recent analysis, shows little sign of easing.That outlook, Dr Hearne believes, means the State should intervene to discourage price increases by reducing the number of potential buyers and limiting the demand for properties.
The State could also create a regulatory body to monitor house sales and prevent short-term"flipping" of properties. Some vendors, Dr Hearne argues, are listing houses and then re-listing them at much higher price just a few months later. "The number of households buying homes has more than doubled in the last decade, from below 22,000 per year in 2010-2011, to over 44,000 since 2016, so it's not obvious that people who are mortgage-ready are unable to find a place to buy."
"Any kind of artificial intervention that's there to push house prices down through some kind of diktat is going to be very difficult. It won't solve the problem.""The amount of people renting is falling. The amount of people who are buy-to-let investors who have a second property is falling." While the property industry itself would strongly resist measures to limit who can buy homes, Dr Aidan Regan, a political economist at UCD, reckons many homeowners would see the benefits.