Hattip to the smoking man with the smoking gun. 🙂
From the best damned website in Ireland, The Property Pin:
The CSO compiles statistics on how much rent people pay. (PDF Link) The past few months they’ve been showing it going up consistently. “Rat smell” says the people of ThePropertyPin.
When I asked where they got thier figures for rent I was told form several sources including estate agents. Estate Agents are, it would seem, thier primary source!!
They do not ask tenents what they are paying as this would proove difficult when tenents move on. They do not do like for like monthly questionaires of tenents, ( eg tenent in 3 bed semi in a particular estate in Dublin and then use the same estate again in the following months).
I just called the CSO Cork office. Told me the same thing. EA’s and Local Authorities (for Council rents) are their only sources. They don’t go next nor near tenants!
Richard Delevan already covered the fact the Irish Times don’t trust prices from Estate Agents/Auctioneers anymore. So rental is the same now?
On Tuesday the number of properties to rent on Daft hit 12,000 for the first time. May 07 was 5000, so thats 140% increase. Have a look at the number of properties available for rental explode (via Daft Watch):
Watch those rental properties plummet with the Rental Price Drop Forum. I love it. Not the dropping, the idea of such a forum.
So there you go.
Migrant workers are a huge source of rental income. Assuming former immigrants to Ireland, who came to work in construction, are now becoming emigrants from Ireland (as is happening in the UK at the moment) then there will be far more rental properties on the market… hence the jump recorded by Daft.
Two things happen now. On one end the increased availability of rental property isn’t a bad thing as many potential buyers may now be putting off purchasing and choosing to rent instead. However at the same time enough of an increase will mean more competition forcing prices down.
As prices go down people who bought properties to rent will now have a harder time covering the huge mortgages they took out to buy the properties in the first place… they may even have a hard time finding tenants so they’ll have to think about selling.
As more and more former rental properties come on the market we’ll see the price of housing drop even further. Hurrah.
It’s funny really – the migrants were coming here to build houses to satisfy a demand that they were adding significant weight to. Now that demand has peaked and construction has slowed they’re leaving, meaning all those houses they build and occupied are going to start flooding the market.
Any major shift in migration figures would mean a huge drop in both rental prices and purchase prices – all at a time when the market is naturally slowing or even reversing.
I wonder, is knowingly filing false returns to the CSO illegal or do they use different collection methods for this rental data?
The CSO Data Protocol statement (http://www.cso.ie/aboutus/data_protocol/introduction.htm) has a striking statement
“The credibility and reputation of the CSO depends on maximising the value and utility of the data available to it, while at the same time protecting the confidentiality of the individual persons and businesses supplying the data.”
No mention of this credibility and reputation being at the mercy of individuals and businesses supplying accurate data. If it is proven that their methodology in collecting this data does not reflect reality on the ground then how reliable are the rest of the metrics they publish? Credibility and reputation are key to the CSO, I’m surprised they would be so lax (but then, this is Ireland)
Say anything in support of the government, who wish for a growing economy, that’s the CSO motto.
Remember CSO is Cork Statistics Office, There are lies, and then Statistics.
The EAs are sailing very close to the wind. They should now be investigated by the competition authority for a cartel like manipulation of the market through dissemination of misleading price information.