Why Ireland's housing bubble burst

I can learn information when used as people usually use the term. The dictionary definition conveying how most people use the word is quite clear. It is just your usage that doesn't seem to communicate anything. Although I keep asking what it is you are trying to say in an effort to figure out what your non-standard usage is attempting to communicate, but perhaps it is not explainable. I do wonder if your usage's intent is as a scare word? Do you hope we are frightened when you say "shortage"?

> You could easily get a trinket at trivial cost if you wanted it

Yeah, okay, it's trivial compared to my means, but exceedingly expensive to other people. $1 is a substantial chunk of the typical yearly income in Niger, for example. They flat out can't afford a $1 trinket. That is a shortage by what you're telling us, surely?

If not, I take it that shortage only applies when people are as well off or more well off than you? But how can we know how well off you are? And what makes you the benchmark? Why not, say, Jeff Bezos?

> but having one is not important to you

Says who? I would say it is quite important to me. My quality of life is severely diminished not being able to afford a jet. If I want to fly, I have to, , rent space on a flight with other flightmates to get the cost down to something manageable, and even then it's still a substantial cost.

If that's not important, then buying a home isn't important either. You can equally find a group of housemates and rent a house. Everyone who wants a roof over their head can have one, even if it requires some compromise on comfort. Owning a home is not a necessity. In fact, historically, owning a home was quite unusual. Only in last ~75 years has it become 'normal'.

> The stuff you said earlier about government intervention, lotteries, etc.

I don't follow. How does that relate to "preventing" supply and demand? That is supply and demand.

The difference is that I am speaking economically, you are speaking socially. We already covered this quite some time ago. Both are linguistically valid, but the gap is in that it's not clear what meaningful information is obtained by taking the social perspective?

The best we've been able to come up with is that it comes from an emotional perspective, where "There is a shortage of housing" ≅ "I feel housing is too expensive." I can gain information about how you feel in that, but why would I want to know how you feel in the first place? It doesn't really tell me anything. I mean, why not say "Housing, it makes me feel tired"? Because nobody cares if you're tired, of course. And they equally don't care if you think it is too expensive.

> It affects rent too. Keeping a roof is getting unreasonably difficult.

Pack in the people as tight as a plane and you'll be fine. It "is not important", so they say...

> Fixing the price or using a lottery to allocate "is" supply and demand?

Broadly speaking, yes. When observing supply and demand, things like price fixing are all part of the conditions that make up the (in the case of price fixing) demand you are able to observe. Again, supply and demand isn't a thing that exists out in the world, it's observance of the world. As said earlier, you can even observe supply and demand play out in animal populations. It is not a human invention. It's a fundamental property of the universe, so to speak.

Perhaps I'm not interpreting you correctly, but trying to compare houses in history to houses today is like trying to compare modern jetliners to the Wright Flyer. Houses have changed dramatically.

For one, houses have more than doubled in size over the last 100 years. And while I don't have size data for the previous 100 years, to my eye the typical home from 200 years ago was probably half the size again. Those early homes were tiny – just one room – with an average of 7 children living in them! The bigger the house, the higher the cost.

Secondly, we have much higher building standards today. Build a home to 1800 standards and you could build it for a song. But you'll be in violation of all kinds of codes. Those standards are not free. Not even close. Even trying to build a home to a more normal size is a code violation in many jurisdictions.

> It feels like you're not attempting to understand what I'm saying, though

I'm just waiting for you to say it. When I asked you point blank what "shortage" added to a sentence, all I got back was "I have no more detail to give to my argument".

> That is the type of situation I am trying to refer to.

Got it. Yes, if price is able to rise then demand can adjust as the market needs. That is a normally functioning market. When price is not able to rise then something has broken down. That unique situation is deserving of unique identification – to have a word to describe it. What word do you suggest?

A normally functioning market doesn't mean you can get what you want, of course. "Normally functioning" is not in reference to quality of life, or ensuring that you have a roof over your head, or whatever, it just refers to behaviour matching a certain economic model.

Note this point I made.

If we assume that I earn 100k, and have no house. I have savings of 50k, and want to buy a house. I can buy a house of 450k, four times my income plus my savings.

If I (theoretical I, at least) cannot afford the median (i.e. 50% of properties sell for more than this price) price in basically half of Dublin (not a small, city centre area), despite being in the top 10% of income earners, then something seems off with the market.

Even if I have a house worth 300k somewhere else, and everything else remains the same, I won't be able to release all the equity in this house as I've probably only paid half the mortgage (being generous) so I have an extra 150k.

I still don't have enough money to buy the median house in these areas, despite both having a house to release equity from, and a top 10% household (note not individual) income.

This seems very strange to me, but then I live here and have spent a long time trying to understand what's happening in the irish property market.

> Again, if most people have 300k home assets,

Note that this would be a mortgage free house in most of Ireland, until recently at least.

> But, it raised everyone else's prices to 600k.

This won't raise the median price to 600k, it will take way more sales to shift the median (if we're talking about the mean then this is more likely).