Irish property values are set to increase rapidly in the coming years due to supply not being able to meet demand in the country.
As of now, Ireland is fourth place in the world for rapidly rising prices according to the recently published Knight Frank Global House Price Index for the first quarter of 2018. Ireland is only behind Hong Kong, Malta, and Iceland on the index.
According to The Irish Times, this trend of supply being overshadowed by demand is prevalent in about 86 percent of the 57 countries measured by the index. Hong Kong is expected to construct 96,000 or so apartments in the next few years to combat price growth and catch up with the increasing demand.
Amid this housing shortage, however, many young people across Ireland have been struggling to keep up with their quickly rising rents, often leaving them unable to afford basic living amenities.
iStock/Ireland's housing crisis is only getting more severe
The Irish housing market is currently insufficient in that only 14,446 properties were built last year, which is far from enough to meet the needs of a growing Ireland.
Housing prices going through the roof have left many young people unable to afford their living arrangements without skipping meals and making other extreme cut-backs.
The Irish Congress of Trade Unions gave out a survey to 1500 of its members under 34 years of age, which indicated that about half of workers are going without living essentials such as food, heating, and transport in order to afford their rent.
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Economist Philip O’Sullivan felt that housing “remains the biggest domestic issue in the economy [with a] significant disconnect between housing output and demand.”
O’Sullivan argues that it will take until 2021 or 2022 before Ireland’s supply rises to the demand, but until then prices will keep increasing. In the meantime, several new homes are being built for sale in Dublin, with 5,083 currently on the market, which is a 32 percent increase from last year.
The managing director for MyHome.ie argued that these rising prices have prompted many people to put their properties on the market for sale.
Is this indicative of a larger worldwide housing trend in your view?
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