Sir, – When the average house price is 10 times the average salary, you have to question the argument that prices are too low to make it worth developing sites. So why is so little being built?
Developers are business people trying to maximise profits. They are not charities. If prices are rising, why would they develop a site now?
It makes sense to sit on their land bank, as the lack of supply created by their refusal to develop will raise prices further, increasing the value of their asset into the future.
Only a government, the supposed defenders of the people against powerful vested interests, can influence this. But successive governments have failed to do so.
The result is that developers control the location and rate of development, prices rise, people are forced to borrow more or are shut out of the market and the city develops on an ad hoc basis without proper planning.
Developers profit from the burden of high mortgages on others, and their increased coffers allow them to influence government.
The one glimmer of hope is that the Central Bank has imposed modest limits on borrowing, which of course has been criticised by developers and politicians.
If this Government of “reform” wanted real reform, it would implemented the Kenny recommendations of 1974 which would allow a government to buy land at a price equal to 1.25 times its agricultural value and develop it in a planned way, with fully regulated building controls to ensure the standard of build and energy efficiency are adequate. At the very least, they should severely tax undeveloped rezoned land. But even this, this Government failed to do when introducing the property tax.
The Government has the power to solve the housing crisis. But who controls the Government? – Yours, etc,
PETER ENNIS,
Dublin 8.