Housing - supply and demand

Sir, – Responding to my article (“Ireland has many housing problems. But lack of supply isn’t one of them”, Opinion & Analysis, June 27th), John Thompson (Letters, July 3rd) writes that “Census data is (sic) notoriously unreliable as a source of actual property vacancy figures, as the only criterion is that nobody is home on census night.” To paraphrase the late Daniel Moynihan, Mr Thompson is entitled to his own opinion, but he is not entitled to his own facts.

Further criteria, applied by CSO enumerators after multiple call-backs, are that vacant dwellings must not be holiday homes or properties whose usual occupants are temporarily absent.

Mr Thompson also asserts that “Official CSO vacancy figures are based on low or zero electricity consumption”.

Unlike the census, the alternative vacancy data he advocates, have no legislative basis. They derive from “new methods which are under development and/or data sources which may be incomplete…” and the CSO warns that “Particular care must be taken when interpreting the statistics in this release.” They are also less timely.

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While these are points of fact, I am happy to differ from Mr Thompson on matters of interpretation.

The old canard that Ireland’s average household size should be on a natural convergence path with the EU average is, in my opinion, a false premise.

Ireland has the EU’s highest proportion of children and teenagers and, since these tend not to form one-person households, Ireland should have a structurally higher average household size.

Moreover, while rising interest rates may have played a role in negative real house price inflation, they cannot explain why real rents are also falling.

If the housing market was truly undersupplied, would we not expect higher mortgage rates to redirect occupier demand from the sales market into a tight rental market, driving up rents?

Mr Thomson is right to highlight the hardships caused by unaffordable housing and homelessness. But to find lasting solutions to these problems, our national debate needs to be rooted in logic and the most robust data that are available. – Yours, etc,

DR JOHN McCARTNEY,

Dublin 18.