> Even if I believed you that there wasn't a shortage 3 years ago, there has to be a shortage now by the most elementary logic
Or you could provide data. I don't live in Ireland, did they have a surplus before?
> So you have not offered any explanation.
I explained exactly how the scheme works, as well as providing the possible explanation of higher cohabitation rates. That's certainly what is happening in Southern California where I am actually familiar with the market. Based on a cursory Google search, it looks like Ireland is having some of the same...
> But it had “further potential to secure full market rent levels” subject to tapping into an exemption from the rules around rent increases, with one of the options being “through vacancies”, the advert said. If a property has been vacant for two years – or a year for a protected structure – then a landlord within a rent pressure zone can legally raise the rent by more than the rent-increase cap.
I'm not going to spend any more time on this. The evidence is pretty clear that landlords are playing games to drive up the rental market. There is no question that shifting demand patterns and decades of failure to deliver new housing are part of the equation as well, but those issues are solvable. The intractible problem of a landlord class are much more threatening and difficult to solve.
> Or you could provide data. I don't live in Ireland, did they have a surplus before?
Net migration has tracked higher than new dwellings for a number of years in all of these countries. See Canada for example where this has been a trend since 2016.
> The evidence is pretty clear that landlords are playing games to drive up the rental market.
This explanation makes no sense, it doesn't generalize outside of Ireland. You're talking about vacancies that are caused by a price ceiling on rent (which is a terrible regulation that always backfires) which doesn't exist in most other locations that are experiencing a rent crisis.
I chose an example of landlords playing games in Ireland. The only generalizable fact across the western world is low interest rates from 2007-2022 and the landlord class continuing to jack up rents every time they got more access to cheap money. That's the problem.
I think you misunderstand elementary economics here. The rental market is not a monopoly or oligopoly. Landlords can not exercise market power. It is a competitive market given the number of independent landlords and given their inability to coordinate in order to effect collusion.
> the landlord class continuing to jack up rents every time they got more access to cheap money
That's not true. As a case study, in Australia during the negative net migration during Covid, rents actually decreased. Rents only increased when net migration levels surged post-2022 to 2.5x the level of annual housing starts. Credit in Australia is actually more expensive now than back when rents were low in the 2010s.
https://tradingeconomics.com/australia/rent-inflation
Also, cheap credit does have one deflationary impact on rents, which is that it leads to more housing starts which addresses the shortage issue. If credit was expensive you'd have less housing, exacerbating the main cause of rent increases.
This link says rent inflation decreased, which just means inflation was lower. This is also just a graph and some numbers, so I'm not really sure why you linked it. It doesn't explain anything by itself.
> which is that it leads to more housing starts which addresses the shortage issue
We had 15 years of the cheapest money in the history of modern economics, why do we still have a shortage?
Negative rent inflation in 2020 means rents decreased in 2020.
I explained already why it's relevant. Rents went down when credit was the cheapest (refuting your hypothesis) and when net migration was the lowest (confirming my hypothesis that it's shortage related).
Then rents skyrocketed post-2022 when credit was expensive (refuting your hypothesis, again) and when net migration was at an all time high relative to housing starts (confirming my hypothesis, again).
You have no data that backs your hypothesis and you remain obstinate in the face of data that refutes it.
"We had 15 years of the cheapest money in the history of modern economics, why do we still have a shortage?"
Zoning regulations that prevent housing near cities. We also didn't have as bad of a shortage 4 years ago, the rental crisis got a lot worse post-2022 everywhere in the West as the net migration backlog from covid was processed and housing starts failed to keep up.
Or you could provide data. I don't live in Ireland, did they have a surplus before?
> So you have not offered any explanation.
I explained exactly how the scheme works, as well as providing the possible explanation of higher cohabitation rates. That's certainly what is happening in Southern California where I am actually familiar with the market. Based on a cursory Google search, it looks like Ireland is having some of the same...
https://dublininquirer.com/2022/11/02/increase-in-landlords-...
> But it had “further potential to secure full market rent levels” subject to tapping into an exemption from the rules around rent increases, with one of the options being “through vacancies”, the advert said. If a property has been vacant for two years – or a year for a protected structure – then a landlord within a rent pressure zone can legally raise the rent by more than the rent-increase cap.
I'm not going to spend any more time on this. The evidence is pretty clear that landlords are playing games to drive up the rental market. There is no question that shifting demand patterns and decades of failure to deliver new housing are part of the equation as well, but those issues are solvable. The intractible problem of a landlord class are much more threatening and difficult to solve.