or nothing will happen because they did that whole thing about "corporations are people," so all they would have to do is reorganise how they're registered. maybe not even that.
"Blackstone shares fell 5.6 per cent on Wednesday. Invitation Homes, a specialist investor in single-family homes formerly owned by Blackstone, declined 6 per cent after dropping as much as 9 per cent following Trump’s post.
Builders FirstSource, which supplies building products, fell 5.6 per cent, while American Homes 4 Rent, a real estate investment trust, lost 4.3 per cent."
You could do it, but I'm not sure it would have the impact people think. Indeed for it to have a significant impact you'd need to define family home as basically any home - institutions are mostly out to purchase apartments built to Buy-to-Let standards.
You'd also need to define institution as including the state and it's organs (broadly defined) as most institutional purchases are the state in the form of universities and AHBs.
Well isn't the point that they remain a tiny fraction at a time where we know that these institutions are moving towards buying up larger shares of housing stock all over the world?
That's the impact, to stop the thing from happening. It's a step towards decommifying housing.
So your entire argument here is based on conflating state bodies with predatory foreign imperialism because they're both "institutions', despite the discussion obviously referring to the latter.
This entire thread is derailed because OP said "institutions" too broadly.
Not at all. My argument is merely that institutional buyers are mostly state bodies, and so banning non-state ones will have a limited impact on the market.
So you're admitting that your argument is based on a bad faith "well ackshually" interpretation of OP's question and then making futher baseless claims on top of it.
Again, obviously OP means foreign investment REITs etc. and whether the (unfounded claim of the) impact of future pillage being banned will have "limited impact" or not, is irrelevant. It's a matter of principle, and then the question becomes whether they should be CPO'd to return the stock to the citizens.
Not sure what is bad faith in acknowledging (as I did) that yes the state could do this, but that it would have less impact than people might imagine.
The impact of a policy decision is never irrelevant.
I'm not sure what baseless claims you think I've made. Tbh I don't care either, this is one of the more pathetic interactions I've had on this website.
First of all, America isn't doing this - it was a tweet from someone with a long track record of making stuff up with zero details of how it would be implemented.
Secondly the devil is in the details. It sounds good as a soundbite but how do you define family home, how do you define institution, how do you even define buy for that matter. Should we ban new apartment blocks from getting built because they were dependent on institutional money buying them to get built? Where are students and other young people who don't want to be tied down to a mortgage going to live if there is nobody offering accommodation for rent anymore? Are there any examples where this has been done and it has been a success?
Simple one liner solutions to deep and complex problems that are faced the world over rarely produce the outcome you expect.
He also said he’d bomb Iran if the regime killed civilians. They’d shot dozens if not hundreds of them before he made that tweet and they’ve killed thousands since. Nada
90% of institutional buyers in Ireland is councils and AHB. I personally think yes they should be banned from buying family homes on the private market as people shouldnt be competing vs the state for housing but you can see the argument as to why they do.
For new homes, it's about 65% according to CSO data. In comparison, financial institutions and real estate firms bought about 13%. The State or AHBs are far and away the biggest non-household buyer on the market. That sector bought well over half the amount of new homes that owner-occupiers did in 2024.
It says Irish registered companies and institutions accounted for €4.8 billion (95.1%) of the total €5.0 billion spent by non-households on residential dwelling purchases in 2024.
but that includes everything from every category.
Note on NACE Sectors.The combined grouping of NACE sectors O, P, and Q is a broad grouping. It includes transactions involving state or semi-state agencies, such as those made by Local Authorities and Approved Housing Bodies. However, it also covers all other transactions of residential properties made by public institutions, as well as purchases and sales made by private companies within the Education and Health sectors. Additional information on the purchases made by NACE sector O, and the grouped NACE sector P/Q can be found in Table 3. NACE sector U: Extra-Territorial relates to any entity which has an address outside of Ireland. More detail can be found about these transactions in the next section entitled Transactions by Foreign Companies and Institutions.
Look at Table 2A for a breakdown of non-household buyers:
Non-household entities belonging to the combined sector of Public Administration/Education/Human Health & Social Work (NACE sectors O, P, Q) purchased 6,557 residential dwellings with a total value of €2.6 billion in 2024, which was more than was purchased by any other NACE sector. Purchases of dwellings by entities in the Financial & Insurance sector (NACE sector K), which includes banks, trusts, funds, holding companies etc., were the second largest. A total of 1,889 dwellings were purchased by the Financial & Insurance sector (NACE sector K), with a value of €746.0 million (See Figure 2, Table 2, and Table 2A).
Note, that's figures for all housing transactions, mine were for new homes only, which can be queried in the HPA02 dataset:
It’s not there in 2A. Copy and paste or share the calculation?
There is no breakout of the figure for LA’s and AHB’s from the O/P/Q category.
This category might also include Tulsa; apartments for Ukrainian refugees; apartments for IPAS, private accommodation for those in education or health sectors…
There is no breakout of the figure for LA’s and AHB’s from the O/P/Q category.
There isn't, which is why I said about 65%. All of those examples are or include the State as a buyer, if they even count as open market transactions. Even AHBs aren't public organisations, but it's their use of public money that lumps them in with above.
If you want to suggest that wholly private health or education institutions using private funds make up more than a tiny part of the buyers in that sector, it's not invalid, but it's highly unlikely. We know how large the government's capital spending on housing is. It was about €6bn last year.
The biggest competitor regular buyers face on the housing market is the State, by a long way.
I kinda agree, the problem is the stock is terrible.
The councils , (along with housing cooperatives , ngos , corpo landlords) , should have urban apartment stock, but most stuff out there is single unit housing, to which in a perfect scenario, should just be buy-to-live for families and not rental in anyway. Yet, they need any stock atm to rent out to the most needy and hopfully, with under market value rents, dent the extortion of current private rents
You'd be a real mug to work in this country, pay taxes so your government can use your taxes to bid against you on houses, and give those houses to those who don't work.
Funds have basically stopped buying in Ireland due to rent pressure zones. When people get gazumped it’s normally the state doing so to buy social housing
They haven’t gone away, they have just pivoted: nursing homes; communal living; residential; renewables; social housing…
https://vimeo.com/513425103?fl=pl&fe=sh
Housing needs to be de-financialised - that is the only way to end the Housing Crisis and should be the main aim of any government who actually cares.
What this means is intentionally making housing a bad investment, so that homes are only treated as a human right instead of as an investment opportunity.
Banning institutions and non-citizens resident outside the state from buying homes can help: Canada already does this to an extent, and so does Denmark (non-resident non-EU citizens are banned from buying property) and Spain is planning on doing the same.
Airbnbs must also be banned entirely. Barcelona tried to regulate them for about 10 years now, and it didn't work so they have decided to ban all Airbnbs by 2028. The fact that our government is now just starting what was proven to fail in Barcelona 10 years ago shows how unserious they are.
We also must introduce strict rent controls (we have some of the weakest in Europe and our FFG government recently decided to water them down even more) and further tax and limit ownership of multiple properties (Catalonia in Spain has recently announced plans to do this in order to limit it at as close to 1 home per person/family as possible in order to discourage profiteering).
The government must also weaken property rights so that we can introduce a 'use it or lose it' policy to stop dereliction, vacancy, and speculation. If properties have no proven owner or are long-term derelict, government must be able to introduce an easy compulsory purchase order, and if they are short-term derelict or vacant, a CPO must be possible at below market rates (a CPO at market rates just encourages speculation and profiteering).
Any reduction in for-profit supply as housing becomes an unprofitable industry must be matched with an increase in non-profit supply from public housing, but also importantly housing co-ops - something that has been almost entirely ignored in Ireland so far. We used to have a similar system before housing was financialised, with the use of building societies.
You are missing one key part here. Who is building the homes? Land needs to be made available and whoever / whatever is building them needs to be funded somehow.
In Ireland laws regulating who can buy houses aren’t going to happen without constitutional amendment. My right to own as many houses as I want is constitutionally protected. Or a current example is should the IRFU be banned from buying up havelock square as houses there come on the market? Or the GAA from buying up houses around Croke Park?
Trump asked congress for legislation on this, that means he doesn’t want it to happen. Things he cares about he signs an “executive order” and waves it for the camera...
Even if congress did pass legislation it won’t get past the “money is speech, corporations are people” ideologues on the US Supreme Court
Yes, and we should tax the bejesus out of anything beyond a primary residence. The ability to own a home should be seen as a right, not a luxury, IMHO.
Granted, Trump says a lot of things and is most certainly not going to follow through on this one...
Are couples barred from being defined as a family? What if they want children but can't have them? What if they don't have a child but their grandmother lives with them?
Why? Renting is already significantly more expensive than buying which is massively perverse. Any measure to move supply from
The rental market to the buying market is a subsidy of the rich funded by the poor.
Not to mention that the reduced overall demand might reduce construction rates making it even worse for people renting while reducing the benefits for homebuyers.
People should be free to buy and sell things that are legal to buy and sell whether as individuals or in larger organisations, as long as those organisations are legally considered constituted and act legally. Even thinking about this is a distraction from the only way the problem will actually be solved, increasing supply.
They should be banned from buying family homes, yes.
But as with everything Trump says - there's always a motive. This is something he will not actually follow through with, I promise you. He is profiting off of these statements.
Only residents and Irish nationals should be allowed to buy homes. Also should be a cap on the number of houses/apartments any person or entity can own(unless they are the one who built them). Ive always been a free market capitalist minded person but considering im living with my gf with her mother and we are 35 and both working full time im now sick of that ideology
The excuse the government sells is they are providing a service as landlords. The reality is people on low incomes are competing against international funds. A healthy middle ground is limiting institutional investment to new residential buildings that they construct. It'll never happen as long as FFG are in power. They are corrupt as the day is long. Lobbyists run this country.
No. For everyone who supports this populist nonsense, are you willing to benefit owner-occupiers at the expense of the poorest renters? That's what similar policy did in the Netherlands:
Yea a million times over, it is the single most important that can be done in the area of housing regulation.
I'd add a bit of nuance though, for example banks and construction companies and so on may need to come into ownership in some situations, but this can go with a law that requires the bank to sell them to a person who was not already a landlord within, say, 6 months; if they haven't, it must be sold at auction for whatever they can get.
The point should be that no institutions should be acquiring single family homes for the purpose of renting them or just sitting on them.
Yes. And a more changes too, possibly including constitutional ones. We need to stop thinking of housing being a key part of our economy or our personal wealth. I am lucky enough to own one outright so, on paper, I have a decent net worth but I am never selling it and will always need a place to live so if its value halves it does not impact me.
He’s not going to implement it. He’s doing it to make shares nose dive so he can buy them cheap and then sell them later.
The grift that keeps on grifting... Yesterday it was defence stocks
Either that or he will be given a nice campaign contribution by the like of Blackrock, State Street and Vanguard.
or nothing will happen because they did that whole thing about "corporations are people," so all they would have to do is reorganise how they're registered. maybe not even that.
The markets seem to believe he will:
"Blackstone shares fell 5.6 per cent on Wednesday. Invitation Homes, a specialist investor in single-family homes formerly owned by Blackstone, declined 6 per cent after dropping as much as 9 per cent following Trump’s post.
Builders FirstSource, which supplies building products, fell 5.6 per cent, while American Homes 4 Rent, a real estate investment trust, lost 4.3 per cent."
The markets also priced in Tesla’s full self driving claims in 2017.
Did you skip over the second sentence in that comment?
Yes, they are not families.
YES!
Yes absolutely!
You could do it, but I'm not sure it would have the impact people think. Indeed for it to have a significant impact you'd need to define family home as basically any home - institutions are mostly out to purchase apartments built to Buy-to-Let standards.
You'd also need to define institution as including the state and it's organs (broadly defined) as most institutional purchases are the state in the form of universities and AHBs.
Why would the definition have to include state bodies? That makes no sense.
"For it to have a significant impact". Institutional landlords are a fraction of institutional purchases, the bulk are organs of the State.
Well isn't the point that they remain a tiny fraction at a time where we know that these institutions are moving towards buying up larger shares of housing stock all over the world? That's the impact, to stop the thing from happening. It's a step towards decommifying housing.
I mean they're buying less here than they were, not more.
Which is pretty sensible given that the market here is so dysfunctional that it is no longer a good idea to invest your capital in it.
Do you have any basis for any of these wild claims?
My view is based on the number of homes bought by institutions and organs of the state.
So your entire argument here is based on conflating state bodies with predatory foreign imperialism because they're both "institutions', despite the discussion obviously referring to the latter.
This entire thread is derailed because OP said "institutions" too broadly.
Not at all. My argument is merely that institutional buyers are mostly state bodies, and so banning non-state ones will have a limited impact on the market.
So you're admitting that your argument is based on a bad faith "well ackshually" interpretation of OP's question and then making futher baseless claims on top of it.
Again, obviously OP means foreign investment REITs etc. and whether the (unfounded claim of the) impact of future pillage being banned will have "limited impact" or not, is irrelevant. It's a matter of principle, and then the question becomes whether they should be CPO'd to return the stock to the citizens.
Not sure what is bad faith in acknowledging (as I did) that yes the state could do this, but that it would have less impact than people might imagine.
The impact of a policy decision is never irrelevant.
I'm not sure what baseless claims you think I've made. Tbh I don't care either, this is one of the more pathetic interactions I've had on this website.
Trump probably means institutions like public housing bodies and charities.
That guy always has an angle.
First of all, America isn't doing this - it was a tweet from someone with a long track record of making stuff up with zero details of how it would be implemented.
Secondly the devil is in the details. It sounds good as a soundbite but how do you define family home, how do you define institution, how do you even define buy for that matter. Should we ban new apartment blocks from getting built because they were dependent on institutional money buying them to get built? Where are students and other young people who don't want to be tied down to a mortgage going to live if there is nobody offering accommodation for rent anymore? Are there any examples where this has been done and it has been a success?
Simple one liner solutions to deep and complex problems that are faced the world over rarely produce the outcome you expect.
He also said he’d bomb Iran if the regime killed civilians. They’d shot dozens if not hundreds of them before he made that tweet and they’ve killed thousands since. Nada
Yes German institutions buy here cos it's illegal in Germany.
Never heard a good argument for why they should be.
90% of institutional buyers in Ireland is councils and AHB. I personally think yes they should be banned from buying family homes on the private market as people shouldnt be competing vs the state for housing but you can see the argument as to why they do.
Have you a citation on that 90%? I’ve seen it popping up but nothing linked
For new homes, it's about 65% according to CSO data. In comparison, financial institutions and real estate firms bought about 13%. The State or AHBs are far and away the biggest non-household buyer on the market. That sector bought well over half the amount of new homes that owner-occupiers did in 2024.
https://www.cso.ie/en/releasesandpublications/ep/p-rptnh/residentialpropertytransactionsbynon-households2024/
Where does it say that in the CSO link?
It says Irish registered companies and institutions accounted for €4.8 billion (95.1%) of the total €5.0 billion spent by non-households on residential dwelling purchases in 2024.
but that includes everything from every category.
Note on NACE Sectors.The combined grouping of NACE sectors O, P, and Q is a broad grouping. It includes transactions involving state or semi-state agencies, such as those made by Local Authorities and Approved Housing Bodies. However, it also covers all other transactions of residential properties made by public institutions, as well as purchases and sales made by private companies within the Education and Health sectors. Additional information on the purchases made by NACE sector O, and the grouped NACE sector P/Q can be found in Table 3. NACE sector U: Extra-Territorial relates to any entity which has an address outside of Ireland. More detail can be found about these transactions in the next section entitled Transactions by Foreign Companies and Institutions.
Look at Table 2A for a breakdown of non-household buyers:
Note, that's figures for all housing transactions, mine were for new homes only, which can be queried in the HPA02 dataset:
https://www.cso.ie/en/releasesandpublications/ep/p-rptnh/residentialpropertytransactionsbynon-households2024/data/
It’s not there in 2A. Copy and paste or share the calculation? There is no breakout of the figure for LA’s and AHB’s from the O/P/Q category.
This category might also include Tulsa; apartments for Ukrainian refugees; apartments for IPAS, private accommodation for those in education or health sectors…
There isn't, which is why I said about 65%. All of those examples are or include the State as a buyer, if they even count as open market transactions. Even AHBs aren't public organisations, but it's their use of public money that lumps them in with above.
If you want to suggest that wholly private health or education institutions using private funds make up more than a tiny part of the buyers in that sector, it's not invalid, but it's highly unlikely. We know how large the government's capital spending on housing is. It was about €6bn last year.
The biggest competitor regular buyers face on the housing market is the State, by a long way.
I’m not saying that you are not correct, it’s just the quality of CSO data that maddens me.
.... christ , never have a seen a worse take
90%? Evidence. Also , 90% house buying to do what? Hmmmm couldn't be social housing or under market rents , no? Sure its something nefarious
That doesn’t help first time home buyers
First time home buyers and social housing recipients are two totally different groups of people
I kinda agree, the problem is the stock is terrible.
The councils , (along with housing cooperatives , ngos , corpo landlords) , should have urban apartment stock, but most stuff out there is single unit housing, to which in a perfect scenario, should just be buy-to-live for families and not rental in anyway. Yet, they need any stock atm to rent out to the most needy and hopfully, with under market value rents, dent the extortion of current private rents
You'd be a real mug to work in this country, pay taxes so your government can use your taxes to bid against you on houses, and give those houses to those who don't work.
AgAin WhErE thE PrOoF?
99% in social housing dont work then? Only ones i know living in them do work
What’s AHB? And do you have any reputable sources for that statistic?
Approved Housing Bodies.
Funds have basically stopped buying in Ireland due to rent pressure zones. When people get gazumped it’s normally the state doing so to buy social housing
They haven’t gone away, they have just pivoted: nursing homes; communal living; residential; renewables; social housing… https://vimeo.com/513425103?fl=pl&fe=sh
https://www.bartrawealthadvisors.com/investing-in-ireland/
https://www.bartrawealthadvisors.com/why-ireland-and-why-invest-in-the-iip-a-fireside-chat-with-bartra-ceo-and-valued-client-sally-yeh/
I cannot see that from your links.
Housing needs to be de-financialised - that is the only way to end the Housing Crisis and should be the main aim of any government who actually cares.
What this means is intentionally making housing a bad investment, so that homes are only treated as a human right instead of as an investment opportunity.
Banning institutions and non-citizens resident outside the state from buying homes can help: Canada already does this to an extent, and so does Denmark (non-resident non-EU citizens are banned from buying property) and Spain is planning on doing the same.
Airbnbs must also be banned entirely. Barcelona tried to regulate them for about 10 years now, and it didn't work so they have decided to ban all Airbnbs by 2028. The fact that our government is now just starting what was proven to fail in Barcelona 10 years ago shows how unserious they are.
We also must introduce strict rent controls (we have some of the weakest in Europe and our FFG government recently decided to water them down even more) and further tax and limit ownership of multiple properties (Catalonia in Spain has recently announced plans to do this in order to limit it at as close to 1 home per person/family as possible in order to discourage profiteering).
The government must also weaken property rights so that we can introduce a 'use it or lose it' policy to stop dereliction, vacancy, and speculation. If properties have no proven owner or are long-term derelict, government must be able to introduce an easy compulsory purchase order, and if they are short-term derelict or vacant, a CPO must be possible at below market rates (a CPO at market rates just encourages speculation and profiteering).
Any reduction in for-profit supply as housing becomes an unprofitable industry must be matched with an increase in non-profit supply from public housing, but also importantly housing co-ops - something that has been almost entirely ignored in Ireland so far. We used to have a similar system before housing was financialised, with the use of building societies.
You are missing one key part here. Who is building the homes? Land needs to be made available and whoever / whatever is building them needs to be funded somehow.
In Ireland laws regulating who can buy houses aren’t going to happen without constitutional amendment. My right to own as many houses as I want is constitutionally protected. Or a current example is should the IRFU be banned from buying up havelock square as houses there come on the market? Or the GAA from buying up houses around Croke Park?
Trump asked congress for legislation on this, that means he doesn’t want it to happen. Things he cares about he signs an “executive order” and waves it for the camera...
Even if congress did pass legislation it won’t get past the “money is speech, corporations are people” ideologues on the US Supreme Court
Yes, and we should tax the bejesus out of anything beyond a primary residence. The ability to own a home should be seen as a right, not a luxury, IMHO.
Granted, Trump says a lot of things and is most certainly not going to follow through on this one...
The primary institution buying homes is the State
How do you define "family home"?
Are couples barred from being defined as a family? What if they want children but can't have them? What if they don't have a child but their grandmother lives with them?
This is not a sensible discussion.
Why? Renting is already significantly more expensive than buying which is massively perverse. Any measure to move supply from The rental market to the buying market is a subsidy of the rich funded by the poor.
Not to mention that the reduced overall demand might reduce construction rates making it even worse for people renting while reducing the benefits for homebuyers.
Obviously
Yes.
What good reason would they have for it being allowed inthe dfirst place?!
Social housing mostly
People should be free to buy and sell things that are legal to buy and sell whether as individuals or in larger organisations, as long as those organisations are legally considered constituted and act legally. Even thinking about this is a distraction from the only way the problem will actually be solved, increasing supply.
but u have yo remebr this is the same president that kidnapped a president of another country so theres always a catch
legally cant be implanted here constitutionally also thats not what trump is doing
What counts as an institution and where do you draw the line
YES!!!!!
Obviously
Unless it's local government buying social housing, HELL YES!
Yes.
Yes. The real question is why do we allow corporate landlords, or corporations altogether, to exist?
Yes and ban Air Bob's too - houses should be homes only
They should be banned from buying family homes, yes.
But as with everything Trump says - there's always a motive. This is something he will not actually follow through with, I promise you. He is profiting off of these statements.
Only residents and Irish nationals should be allowed to buy homes. Also should be a cap on the number of houses/apartments any person or entity can own(unless they are the one who built them). Ive always been a free market capitalist minded person but considering im living with my gf with her mother and we are 35 and both working full time im now sick of that ideology
If they don't fill a social function, yes.
The excuse the government sells is they are providing a service as landlords. The reality is people on low incomes are competing against international funds. A healthy middle ground is limiting institutional investment to new residential buildings that they construct. It'll never happen as long as FFG are in power. They are corrupt as the day is long. Lobbyists run this country.
I actually like this compromise
I wonder if a similar compromise can be introduced for Rent Pressure Zones. Something like if you’ve built the building yourself you’re exempt
No, it changes absolutely nothing
Worse than that, it can negatively affect the least well-off renters.
No. For everyone who supports this populist nonsense, are you willing to benefit owner-occupiers at the expense of the poorest renters? That's what similar policy did in the Netherlands:
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4480261
Yea a million times over, it is the single most important that can be done in the area of housing regulation.
I'd add a bit of nuance though, for example banks and construction companies and so on may need to come into ownership in some situations, but this can go with a law that requires the bank to sell them to a person who was not already a landlord within, say, 6 months; if they haven't, it must be sold at auction for whatever they can get.
The point should be that no institutions should be acquiring single family homes for the purpose of renting them or just sitting on them.
Absolutely
Yes. And a more changes too, possibly including constitutional ones. We need to stop thinking of housing being a key part of our economy or our personal wealth. I am lucky enough to own one outright so, on paper, I have a decent net worth but I am never selling it and will always need a place to live so if its value halves it does not impact me.