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

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

#101

Post by iguy »

KineticLensman wrote: post #99
iguy wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Commercial property often has really long leases, like 10-20 years. So one reason it may sit empty is that an investor thinks a slump will be short & doesn't want to be tied to a low-rent tenant. (Or doesn't want to break up a large space for small tenants, to wait for a large one... or because they are thinking of knocking it down & building housing, etc.) I'm dubious that people in real-estate can't understand loca…

> I'm dubious that people in real-estate can't understand local prices IIUC, it's not that they don't understand local prices, they instead don't care. At this scale the landlord's focus is investors in the property portfolio, not people who might actually use the property.

I get that the CEO doesn't know everything, but why doesn't bigger scale just mean more people below that? There must be someone who knows about each property, in or outside the company... there are agencies who hustle to rent out student flats, every year. Why not here?

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

#102

Post by throwaway29319 »

secfirstmd wrote: post #68

As an aside. Great to see so many HN readers from Dublin. We should totally do a Meetup at some stage. Check my bio if you are interested!

Dublin has plenty of shitty meetups. I wonder if an HN one would be above or below the average.

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

#103

Post by iandioch »

anjc wrote: post #94
q3k wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They look good from the outside. It's when you actually want to use one that things go downhill: - Extremely rattly and loud. No idea why, but I assume it's because of the extra resonance created by the double-decker design. Any time the engine is idling, you're shaking with it, and you're likely to get a headache in the long term. Don't even get me started about how it leans and kips hitting tree branches on tight c…

This must be a route-dependent thing (e.g. Sandymount routes would have lots of students on them). My routes rarely/ever have trash or liquids on them, hit branches etc. Again re: seats and engine....these are the same seats and engines used in Germany and England also. Still, I prefer the trains to buses in Dublin.

I would think Sandymount routes would have few students on them, considering the price of living in that part of the city. What's more, blaming the problem on students/young people (ie. me and my peers) seems short sighted.

I have lived near Ballymun/Glasnevin for years (where there are indeed students), and would consider the problem similarly widespread everywhere I've seen in the city.

I think the mentioned problem of the choke point in the city centre was the important one for me; it's impossible to get from where I live to more or less anywhere else on the Northside without a half hour's bus to O'Connell, a change, and then a 30 minute bus again in the other direction, even if where I am trying to go is just a 10-15 minute direct drive from where I started. Walking to my destination, no matter where it is, has almost always taken a similar amount of time as getting a bus, since I moved to Dublin.

All this said, there's new bus routes coming in, so we'll see if it changes. I'm leaving the city ASAP though.

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

#104

Post by secfirstmd »

throwaway29319 wrote: post #102
secfirstmd wrote: post #68

As an aside. Great to see so many HN readers from Dublin. We should totally do a Meetup at some stage. Check my bio if you are interested!

Dublin has plenty of shitty meetups. I wonder if an HN one would be above or below the average.

Fair point.

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

#105

Post by CalRobert »

CalRobert wrote: post #40
Macha wrote: post #2

Dublin has been having a bit of a boom (of which tech is a major driver) in the last decade, but this just feels like another symptom of the city which is not allowed to build denser or to sprawl with the result being anything less profitable in terms of land value is getting pushed out of the city (including many families who have lived their behind) while rents reach some of the highest levels in Europe

Indeed. If you like ~60% of SF rents with ~39% of SF pay it's the city for you. I still like it here, but I have a flat that I got crazy cheap in 2013 and is rent controlled (incidentally, a horrifically stupid policy enacted _especially_ badly here, making the housing crisis even worse). I also just got a remote job and bought a house in Offaly. I used to encourage people to come to Dublin because it offered better…

Eh, I meant ~30%. 39% would be rather specific.

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

#106

Post by CalRobert »

q3k wrote: post #72
JansjoFromIkea wrote: post #52

The reason I didn't even consider Dublin over London or another major European had little to do with the rent prices as it had to do public transportation. Being dependent on mainly in Dublin means you'll likely want to restrict yourself to areas which can get you to your workplace with zero connections (and everyone else who works in your general area will probably feel the same). Being an especially wet country (no…

I've lived in Dublin for two and a half years years. I like to tell about its public transport to people who complain they have it bad in their city (not that it's an excuse, it's just extremely entertaining to see their reaction): - There's one suburban train service (DART) that kinda goes through the centre and then just takes you to suburbs. It's like an S-Bahn except it doesn't stop anywhere useful in the city it…

Everything you wrote is correct. And yet it's vastly superior to what I had living in LA.

BTW, if you want to help improve bike infra please consider asking your employer to support https://dublin.cyclingworks.org/ - we're trying to pressure Shane Ross to take cycling seriously.

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

#107

Post by lucideer »

iguy wrote: post #95
lucideer wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure what metric you're using to come up with 3%? Vacancy rate in the state is 12%, or 9% excluding holiday homes (not sure what the figures are for Dublin, but they're way above 3%).

Someone was quoting 40000 but I don't know the source. A 9% vacancy rate indeed sound very high, especially for a hot market... wait does "state" here mean the entire country? So that may include a lot of dying villages where nobody wants to live? Would be interesting to see accurate numbers of Dublin.

State is country, so Dublin would be quite different yes (though still unlikely to be too many points off).

40,000 was my figure, but the population isn't that high; 40,000 is a lot more than 3%—back of a napkin math would put it closer to the 12% gross mark, but I'm pretty sure there are real figures available as that figure came from AIRO who analyse/republish CSO[0] data

[0] https://cso.ie/

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

#108

Post by kd0amg »

narrator wrote: post #23

Tech workers move into a city and drive up rents. They complain about lack of density driving rents up. Meanwhile, New York and Chicago are not really tech hubs, even though they have dense downtowns. Hong Kong should be the center of the tech universe with all that density, but alas it is not. Maybe the thing that makes tech workers want to live and work somewhere is lack of density?

Maybe the thing that makes tech workers want to live and work somewhere is lack of density?

The vast majority of non-dense areas have much less of a tech scene than New York and Chicao. I would expect that what draws tech workers is career opportunity more than high or low density and that density is more driven by how municipal government responds to the changing local job market.

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

#109

Post by iguy »

lucideer wrote: post #107
iguy wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Someone was quoting 40000 but I don't know the source. A 9% vacancy rate indeed sound very high, especially for a hot market... wait does "state" here mean the entire country? So that may include a lot of dying villages where nobody wants to live? Would be interesting to see accurate numbers of Dublin.

State is country, so Dublin would be quite different yes (though still unlikely to be too many points off). 40,000 was my figure, but the population isn't that high; 40,000 is a lot more than 3%—back of a napkin math would put it closer to the 12% gross mark, but I'm pretty sure there are real figures available as that figure came from AIRO who analyse/republish CSO[0] data [0] https://cso.ie/

OK, thanks... probably I just added noise on this thread!

Did not get to digging through CSO data... but probably a better idea than googling & finding only people counting advertised apartments as a measure.

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

#110

Post by maxxxxx »

iguy wrote: post #100
throwaway29319 wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not only that, but every empty apartment contributes to pushing up the prices by being empty. Then, when the prices hit peak value in a decade or two the investors might sell and keeping the apartment empty was more effective than renting it.

But you can have an agency manage it for you, for about 10-15%, in any city. Keeping it empty long-term means leaving on the table an amount of money comparable to the mortgage. You could fill it and buy another one! If they both appreciate, all the better.

Aren't a lot of these real estate investments about safely parking money and not about chasing profit?
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