‘Vast amounts’ of land available for housing

Firstly, apologies to anyone drawn in by the promise of that title/subject line. It is certainly not the view of Lotus Investment Group that there are “vast amounts” of land available for immediate development, however, this is exactly what was announced at a housing conference in Dublin earlier this week. While we agree that there is plenty of unused and underused land within the boundaries of the two canals and in the Greater Dublin Area, to quantify it as “vast” is misleading and, frankly, unhelpful in the midst of the current housing crisis.

One crucial point that was made refers to the role the State must play in ‘unlocking’ lands suitable for development. Specifically, we know that close to half of all residential-zoned land in Dublin is owned or controlled by Government, generally this is through local authorities or NAMA. One suggestion is that these lands are capable of hosting 70,000 homes, however, this has been refuted by many industry commentators and DCC has stated that 95 of its 120 available hectares is already in the development pipeline. But rather than get bogged down with the figures, we need to start asking the question ‘If it is this simple, what’s stopping development taking place?’ . Are local authorities sitting on lands in the hope that they will be able to ramp up construction activity themselves, despite every indicator pointing to this as a non-runner?

Social housing was, without question, the priority of almost all State housing initiatives in recent years. Somehow, affordable housing appears to be falling by the wayside, included in name only. It does not benefit the industry, or indeed the wider economy, that private housing is currently out of reach for low and middle-income earners. Let’s tease this out; if average earners can afford an average house price of €245,000,yet the average price paid by a first-time buyer in Dublin is €370,000, then there is an opportunity to deliver private housing into the middle/affordable housing market. Without access to suitable sites, this is unlikely to be viable for private developers, however, using State land, this could  likely be developed in joint partnership with private developers. This model has been used in the past for social housing and will be used for private housing under the new Home Building Finance Ireland, or HBFI, but it is still unclear whether the private housing delivered will fall under so-called ‘affordable’ criteria. It will be interesting to watch this unfold.

Perhaps we ought to have mentioned earlier that the above conference organisers are campaigning for housing to be enshrined in the Constitution. This is a huge point of discussion for another day and it is one that we expect will be controversial.  As always, we would be interested to hear from you on this.

Ian Lawlor
086 3625482

Director / Business Development
Lotus Investment Group