Sir, – One of the features within the*The Irish Times* your residential property supplement that has been running since before the property crash of 2008 has been the "Take 5" slot. On August 25th, the five chosen properties were an 1850 French chateau in the Pyrenees region, set on two hectares and featuring 16 bedrooms; a three-storey villa in five apartments with swimming pool in Dubrovnik, Croatia; a large and impressive villa in Andalusia, Spain; and a restored five-bedroom farmhouse in Italy's Le Marche region. All these four wonderful properties were on offer for €695,000. The Irish offering with a similar price tag was a bungalow in Wicklow town.
The same supplement offers a house in Dalkey for €6.5 million, last offered for sale in 2001 for half that price, while a modest house in Ranelagh is now on the market for over €1 million.
Reading this news, it is not difficult to experience a certain feeling of déja vu and to ask if the "good times" of the early Noughties may be on the way back. – Yours, etc,
DERMOTT BARRETT,
Rathfarnham, Dublin 14.
Sir, – Your editorial on rent controls (August 24th) makes the same mistake as most Irish commentary on housing of assuming that there is some sensible reason for costs to be so high in the first place. There isn't. Housing should cost much less than it does.
It is only as a result of sustained government policy that housing costs so much in Ireland. High housing costs are popular with several key groups in Irish political life, and they have held the whip hand on this topic for decades. That sustained control of policy doesn’t mean that there’s actually a reason for housing to be so expensive. It’s just that expensive housing is popular.
The solutions are also simple and politically unpopular for the moment. But make no mistake, it’s official policy to keep housing expensive rather than anything really related to the cost of building a house. Have a land tax rather than development levies. Have a land tax rather than VAT on new houses. Undo the effective limitation on foreign banks entering the country. Encourage importation of pre-built housing. And so on.
Too many people benefit from expensive housing.
The negative social impacts of expensive housing are and were entirely predictable and have been for decades. But no-one in power cares yet. – Yours, etc,
HUGH SHEEHY,
Dublin 4.