A sold-out city? The fight to save Dublin’s nightlife

In the US (and a lesser degree in other countries), the advent of the car in the 20th century (and especially after WWII) meant that the "good life" became defined as moving out of the cities (where housing was generally in apartment blocks or row houses) to the new suburbs where detached houses with their own yards were the norm. Cities were viewed as places where one might work, but if you were middle class or above, you returned to your suburban home at night. But over the last couple of decades people (particularly people born in the 1970s or later) began to see the advantage of living somewhere where you didn't need to drive everywhere and shopping, restaurants, and bars were just a short walk away.

There's nothing at all stopping Dublin from being much more dense than it is, and there's no need whatsoever to build high to do it.

Huge gains could be made by bringing more 'above the shop' units into use. Vacancy and dereliction are massive issues, both in the city centre and further out - tackling that through vacant site levies or compulsory purchase orders would be huge. Regulating the abuse of AirBnB could bring a few thousand rental units in the city back into long-term use practically overnight.

As far as building new stock goes, everything is too expensive because land is too expensive. Development land around the city has been stockpiled and hoarded for decades, creating artificial scarcity and driving up prices. It's basically impossible to make a profit on reasonably dense, reasonably priced, two or three bed apartment schemes in Dublin. The SCSI and PII have good reports on this if you want to look them up. It's nearly always more profitable (and easier) to just sit on the land rather than actually develop it. The reason all the nightclubs are being replaced by hotels is a result of this: hotels are a lot more commercially viable than almost any other form of development right now. (Hotel beds in Dublin had over 90% occupancy rates last summer - they're bursting and demand is massive.)

The majority of new residential building happens in the outer suburbs and commuter belt, from Lucan to Navan. Just 31 (!!!) new homes were built in Dublin 1 (the very centre of the city) in 2018.

Apartments made up just 13% of new builds in the state last year. The apartments we do build are, on average, smaller, darker, less well serviced, and more expensive than almost any other European city. The apartments built between 1995 and 2008 are riddled with issues, from fire safety to damp to electrics. I think that accounts for a lot of Irish people's apparent antipathy towards apartment living, much more than any nonsense about an inherent desire for a semi-d with a garden.

Rents are expensive because of an increase in the numbers renting (doubled in last decade); because the rent-certainty regulation is weak or non-existent; because tenure security does not exist; because build-to-rent is expensive to develop; because REITs and larger commercial landlords are soaking up all supply and charging as much as they can. Take your pick. It's a mess.

Sorry to go on, but I just finished a six-month deep dive on the reasons behind the housing crisis in Dublin and there is just so much misinformation out there, it's frustrating.

P.S. In case anyone wants to hear more, I made a four-episode podcast series about this, the final episode of which just went up today:

www.dublininquirer.com/2019/02/27/supply-demand-a-podcast-about-dublin-s-housing-crisis-episode-4

The owners are so huge they can't be bothered to care about hundred dollar bills lying on the sidewalk.

Thus speculation haha. Especially if you can pass laws in your favor or the like I think this is the train of thought most of them have. If it didn't bring some kind of profit why would they do it? The only reason to not rent it out is if they think they will make more profit by holding out. The alternative is that they just hate their own money and want to burn it so that's how I come to this conclusion. By process of elimination.

Well it depends on where you are. Some places have different laws no idea about Dublin but some places protect renters from having the price spike up too quickly and have fixed rates once a contract is signed.

Edit: I of course have a subjective opinion on this from my point of view and where I am from the laws are heavily in favor of tenants so it is next to impossible to throw people out or hike up the price once an apartment is rented out.

I suppose it does make some sense if we are talking about 'dirty' money trying to safeguard their wealth from some form of confiscation. So they don't care about the price tag, they just want to safeguard as much of their wealth in a jurisdiction with strong property rights. They are happy if they don't lose more than 90%.

Still, it seems very irrational and thus unsustainable.