Street Votes: A proposed response to Ireland's housing crisis
Disclaimer: I study the Irish housing market and have a buggy site for finding houses at <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.gaffologist.com&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.gaffologist.com&#x2F;</a><p>Interestingly Ireland has effectively no YIMBY party. The debate here reminds me of what I experienced in California 20 years ago. The left shrieks about &quot;evil developers&quot; and &quot;affordable housing&quot; and opposes new market-rate building. Meanwhile the right has mostly homeowners voting for them so they hardly have an incentive to allow more building.<p>It&#x27;s also a place where making a return through investment is horribly discouraged; ETF&#x27;s are kneecapped with a 41% tax on _unrealized_ gains, and capital gains tax is high (33%). Income taxes are also punishingly high - the top rate of tax (52%) kicks in under 100k, much lower than e.g. Germany.<p>But houses? Your primary residence is liable for only a laughably low property tax (a few hundred euro a year for most people) and you can sell it with no capital gains tax whatsoever, regardless of the gain. Even the US isn&#x27;t so generous!<p>Make a million quid in the market? The notions on you, we&#x27;ll be taking that thank you very much!<p>Have the gall to _work_ for it? Why we&#x27;ll just take €520k, thanks!<p>But you bought a house in 1992 and then shouted down all new development for the last 30 years and now can sell it for €1.5 million more than you paid? Why, that&#x27;s your HOME you can&#x27;t tax HOMES can you??<p>No wonder money all flows to homes.<p>Not to mention that the government takes money from taxpayers and funnels it in to new house prices via help to buy, AND takes money from taxpayers and uses it to _outbid those very same taxpayers_ by buying property off the private market to meet social housing quotas. (Social housing is fine but for fuck&#x27;s sake build your own, don&#x27;t shrink the already tiny private market)<p>Even better, mortgages are capped at only 4x your income and you need a 10% deposit, so you can pay 2500 a month in rent to someone like me, who bought a house in cash. Because we need to protect people from themselves, of course!<p>(I live in my house, I don&#x27;t rent it out, but you get the idea)<p>Incidentally I&#x27;m probably selling my house an hour from Dublin a bike ride from the train with gigabit fibre on 3.5 acres soon if anyone&#x27;s interested.