For many young people like me in Ireland, the countryside is seen as an escape route.
Everyone knows at this stage that big cities like Dublin are jaw-droppingly expensive from an accommodation perspective. And if you ever want to own your home and start a family (which many of us do), then you’re faced with three basic options:
Thankfully, option 3 is becoming a lot more tenable for young people in recent years, particularly with the advent of remote working and not necessarily having to be right next to your office all the time. So even if you have a job in Dublin, you can live in Offaly or Tipperary, and benefit from the low prices without being stuck for work opportunities. Or at least that’s the idea.
Anecdotally on a personal level, I’m 25 and my wife is 24, and we absolutely plan to move to somewhere rural to start our family. And many of our peers are thinking along the same lines. Some have already bought homes out in the sticks, and they’re happy out.
But will this plan be practical for long? Will rural house prices stay affordable, or are they set to go the way of the cities in terms of skyrocketing price? Well, according to one report, things may be on a bad trajectory.
As reported by the Independent this week:
“Middle and low earners will be priced out of living in regional towns by 2028”
The article reads:
Now while 2028 might sound like a far-off futuristic date akin to Bladerunner, remember that’s only 5 years away now. So if this report is accurate, then house prices near small rural towns could be out of reach for most people in the very near future.
Of course the explanation for why this is happening is not going to be summed up in a single pithy one-line answer. There are all kinds of factors that contribute to house prices. But when it comes to rural house prices particularly, a huge part of the problem is overly-onerous planning regulations.
As previously explained by Independent Wexford TD Verona Murphy:
"A STALINIST POLICY" – Wexford TD Verona Murphy blasts new rural planning rules, claiming they will force rural people into "urbanised ghettos." #gripthttps://t.co/ycsauCiuMv pic.twitter.com/KgobIcism9
— gript (@griptmedia) April 9, 2021
She went on to explain how planning permission is only really given for high-density urban dwellings, even in rural towns, so everyone ends up packed together like sardines. This is the vision that planning regulators apparently have for rural Ireland.
This is pure speculation on my part, but one wonders does that have anything to do with the green climate agenda. Because of course if everyone is packed in on top of each other in a town, then they don’t have to drive as far as if they lived in some cottage out in the middle of nowhere. So it seems plausible that central planners in Dublin want the whole countryside to be packed as closely together as possible.
In the same vein, Independent Offaly TD Carol Nolan previously hit out at An Bord Pleanála for its agonisingly slow planning and appeals process, which she said left people in a state limbo unable to build their homes. She said that the problem showed a “dysfunction” at the heart of Irish planning law.
And we know that rural planning rules are stricter now than they were in years past.
Rural planning rules now ‘more stringent’ than in years past https://t.co/dOmp4wPBIG
— The Irish Times (@IrishTimes) January 13, 2023
So fundamentally, rural house prices are rising because there aren’t enough houses to keep up with demand. And there aren’t enough houses, because planning authorities are over-regulating the market, and only allowing certain types of houses to be built in certain areas – all because of some long-term social engineering goal they have to make towns and cities to their liking ideologically.
This also explains why if you wander around in some places like Donegal, as I did recently, you’ll see streets full of unused derelict buildings that people could live in theoretically, but which are sitting idle and dilapidated. Which is actually amazing, because the demand for housing is so high – in theory, it should be a great financial opportunity to build houses.
In a normal market economy, where there’s a scarce resource that everyone wants, some shrewd entrepreneur swoops in to reap the rewards of that situation. And yet in Ireland, people would rather let buildings rot by the hundreds than actually turn them into a house. Because by putting so many regulatory hurdles in place, we’ve succeeded in making the construction of new homes an enormous pain in the ass and actually not worth it.
When you think about any market economy, a guy selling whose job is to sell houses wants to sell one to you – obviously. And he can only do that if he sets the price at a level you can actually pay.
If Cadbury’s could sell Cream Eggs for a million quid each, they’d happily do so. But nobody would pay a million euro for a Cream Egg, and if they set their price that high, then the company would go out of business. So instead they have to set it at a level that you are willing to pay.
And similarly, when it comes to housing, the producers and the consumers want to make a deal here. The developer doesn’t get any money by hoarding houses to himself like a hobgoblin. He gets money by selling or renting the house to someone like you or me. And that’s only possible if he sets the price to an affordable level.
So the developer has built a house. You want to buy a house. You both agree on a price. And you’re just about to shake hands and make the deal, when suddenly in comes An Bord Pléanala or the County Council slapping your hands away and saying “Hold on! I don’t like where this is, or the type of housing that you two have decided on. Here’s a list of requirements as to how it should be.”
And so by adding in loads of artificial conditions, they end up inflating the price so much that you can no longer afford it, and say “Actually, nevermind. We don’t have a deal.” And so the housing crisis continues unabated.
And these policies have serious consequences, as France is now finding out the hard way.
The French public are freaking out about President Macron’s decision to increase the pension age due to that country’s demographic crisis.
But Ireland has a demographic crisis as well. And the only way to avert that crisis without mass immigration is to increase the pension age, which nobody wants to do, or have more young people working to provide for pensions and things of that nature. And young people like my wife and I aren’t going to stay in Ireland if they can’t afford a home.
People can’t start families, and produce more Irish taxpayers, if they’re locked out of the housing market. And without families, we end up with the social catastrophe seen in the streets of Paris today.
The government needs to get real about housing in this country, and learn a thing or two about supply and demand, before the proverbial really hits the fan.