I created https://www.howmuchrent.com last Friday to help bring this kind of transparency to Ireland, allowing people to submit their rents. Would love to get any HN feedback on the idea/website.
The rent in Ireland is insane for the quality you get. My GF and I are currently living in my parents house. Collectively we earn ~€200K. New homes are in limited supply. Existing homes are poor quality but demand has increased the prices dramatically. We were looking at a new development and they increased the price by €80K. For a lot of people owning a home is
becoming unrealistic.
We did a new build and the planners were a bunch of fossils who were horrified by the idea we didn't want a mouldy pile of concrete blocks. After we built it, the neighbours marveled at how warm a timber home could be - and beautiful.
We ended up moving to the Netherlands but remarkably there were so many homes for rent compared to Ireland it felt easy. I'm in a 5 bedroom house a 20 minute train ride from Amsterdam Centraal for about the price of a 4 bed semi-d in Tullamore. And I don't need a car here.
This seems like a global phenomenon. What is happening? Is this related to globalization? It feels wrong to blame any countries internal policies when it seems to be happening in every country simultaneously.
What's happening is people around the world parking their money in real estate.
In my corner of the world it got to a point where things like blocks of just studio apartments are built, which were all bought out back when the project was still a hole in the ground.
It's most pronounced in China, where over 70% of household wealth is in real estate, because everyone and their grandmother is investing.
The snarky part of me wants to comment that all those people are under 10, then, and should really be living in houses that were already otherwise occupied by older people, but I take your point.
The rate of immigration to developed countries far outpaces the rate of building new dwellings in developed countries. Net growth YoY for places like the US, Canada, UK, Australia all tell the same story. Several traditionally less-developed countries are also seeing the rural hinterlands drain and immense internal migration to urban areas.
We shut our borders suddenly and unexpectedly for two years, going from a long-run rate of over 1% net immigration to negative overnight. Meanwhile, we kept development approval and construction going largely unperturbed.
Our housing market responded with a two year long bull-run.
As convenient as it is to blame immigrants, I don't think it's true.
There were other factors at play. Many professionals transitioned to a permanent work-from-home arrangement, which caused a large interest in more affordable property outside of the major cities. Since things have gone back to the 'old normal' the rental prices in Sydney have gone absolutely insane. The average price for even mediocre apartments close to the city is around $1000 a week.
I would guess that corresponds with printing a lot of money for COVID, so everyone with capital stuck it into property since they couldn't wait to get out of cash and lots of businesses couldn't operate.
2 years can't make up for decades of being behind schedule. Throw in low interest rate and government's throwing money everywhere it'd be much more shocking if anything else happened.
Rents tell the supply demand story. Renting means you need somewhere to live. Buying can mean many things: need somewhere to live, investment. Also prices can go up due to constrained number of transactions. People ain’t selling factors.
Are you suggesting that immigration has had no effect on the price of dwellings in the developed world, and that two years of low immigration during a period of unprecedented economic slowdown and intense inflation was enough to prove that?
The biggest factors end up being about political incentives, and it's not happening in every city and country in the developed world, the majority of them end up with some level of one key dynamic:
People who already own property in an area tend to have relatively high political sway in that area, and have a vested interest in things that limit the new supply of housing. It may be explicitly because they want to keep the value of their property high, or because they want to "keep the character of the area" through things like limits on the number of floors new buildings can have, or open space requirements that require a certain amount of space be left open, or to limit multi-family dwellings.
Ultimately even the property owners are also paying the increased cost of living that comes from these things, but the fact that they're not directly connected and take place in the future (i.e., you don't get an invoice for the next decade of increased rent prices when you vote for a proposal to require that apartments be limited to 4 stories) means that the vast majority of people don't consider them.
People who don't yet own property are either people who already live in the area but who tend to have less sway than property owners (even assuming they know what policies to oppose), or people who are coming from outside the area and have had no prior influence on the politics there.
How effective this dynamic is at stopping new housing construction in a particular area (often because of how its laws are structured, but also because of the policy choices pushed by its local politicians) is one of the primary determinants of how much rents and housing prices in an area will rise.
On one end of the spectrum, you've got the Bay Area's huge number of patchwork municipalities, where interests are highly-entrenched, and where any meaningful reform would have to go through every individual municipality or come from the state level, and in which many of the politicians are themselves specifically anti-housing reform. On the other, you have more centralized city governments like Minneapolis with pro-reform politicians that can handle it at the city level (so there's only one war required to get meaningful reform). Minneapolis rents are actually decreasing because they passed housing reform. Often housing reform will merely stabilize rents (because prices also rise some due to inflation and economic growth increasing demand for land in the area, even if lots of housing is being built). Sometimes it can do enough to actually bring them down.
In a sane world where property owners can't hijack the local government, you'd expect prices to rise some with economic growth and inflation, but significant increases in demand would spur building more housing and increased density. And increased prices due to mild inflation and economic growth are fine -- wages will generally increase to compensate for that (and some of the increase comes from nicer housing being built as the economy grows). Hopefully the housing reform movement will continue bringing us toward that saner world.
re "....they want to "keep the character of the area" through things like limits on the number of floors new buildings can have, or open space requirements that require a certain amount of space be left open ......" People who do not own property also want this ( in my area - Australia )
For what it's worth, I've been crawling Daft (Ireland's main rental and buying site) for several years. If you click on a property you'll see nearby listing history for both rentals and purchases, including asking rents.
Zero availability would indicate either severe supply shortages due to an inability to build (zoning/regulatory problems a la some municipalities in the US? Something else?) or a price ceiling on rent, leading to an inability for the market to clear (with the equilibrium price being above the legal ceiling). Do you know which applies?
As an outsider, it would seem that Ireland has plenty of land on which to build, though the availability of building materials is another matter, and is something I can see Ireland being short on.
Ireland and the UK have the worst planning processes in the world leading to worse housing crises than even California. Having zoning would imply that it's legal to do something somewhere, which it basically isn't.
In particular the Irish think their island is full of "nature" (when it's actually open fields because the British deforested all of it) and become ecofascists when you suggest any of it could be a building. (Or just regular ones since they think you'll want to put African immigrants in the building. Someone suggested this on Twitter last week and I've never seen so many replies afraid of "Somalis".)
This is why more Irish live in America than in Ireland and the population is lower than it was in the 1800s.
> open fields because the British deforested all of it
Ah here. It's unfair to solely blame the Brits for that. By the 1600s less than 20% of the island was forested, down from 80% at the start of the neolithic period[1].
> This is why more Irish live in America than in Ireland
This is nonsense. Are you telling me there are over 5 million 1st generation Irish people living in America? Of course the number will be significanty greater if you include descendants
If you were born in Ireland then your grandchildren born in America are Irish citizens if they apply, aren't they?
Anyway, Americans consider themselves Irish/Korean/Iranian/etc down to 2nd or 3rd generation even if the original countries don't. (In fact, all white Americans think they're Irish even if they aren't because it lets them drink in more bars. That's also how America stole all the credit for inventing Halloween.)
The few million people that moved in the 1800-1980 era have a lot more to do with the prevalence of nth generation Irish descendants than people who have moved in the last two decades of property shortages
I've met thousands and I don't know a single Irish American that has expressed a serious desire to move back.
Don't get me wrong; I'm an Irish American and I'd love to live in Ireland. But I was born and raised in the US and would have to abandon all my friends to move there.
Yeah, it is pretty hard. Mine actually moved back to the UK but we have more immediate family there than usual. (Except for me since the tech industry isn't as good.)
Apparently Australia is actually the only country with net immigration from the US.
> Apparently Australia is actually the only country with net immigration from the US.
The E3 visas help with that. Otherwise as a tech worker you're generally stuck with either a H1B (which is a lottery) as a new hire, or L1B (which requires working for the company for a year) as an existing employee.
Not all of the allocated E3 visa slots get used though, so IIRC, there's been continued discussions on Irish citizens being offered the remainder for the last few years, but nothing concrete yet.
Are tech workers not eligible for EB-2/EB-3? I haven't gone through the process myself, but from a number of people I know I have, it seems pretty automatic for my EU citizen contacts to get US visas compared to the drama the process causes for Indians (my understanding is that this is due to many limits being per-country, but not considering population)
It's not really practical to move to the US on an EB-2/EB-3 green card since even at best its an 18 month process if you're not from one of the countries that reached its per country limit, so you're unlikely to find an employer to sponsor you to start a job so far in the future.
So usually what happens is you move over on an H-1B but those are subject to an annual cap for which you only have a 1/4 chance of being selected unless you work for a cap-exempt non-profit employer.
Employers will usually sponsor a green card after you start working for them.
Very hard to build, very hard to evict (you can be a horrible tenant for years and not get kicked out), very strict price controls (they carry over to the next renter), and lo and behold people decide being a landlord isn't worth the trouble. Property tax is low too so keeping places empty isn't as unappealing as elsewhere.
Yep, our construction sector still hasn't recovered since the crash. Combine that with some poor government policy, an increase in construction costs, as awkward planning rules (almost anybody can object to anything for almost any reason), and you have the shitshow we see today.
I emigrated earlier in the year to Denmark, so while the actual pastures are less green, the rental prospects that are much nicer. It took me almost no time at all to find a rental close to my new commute (I prefer remote work, but in this case I'm dealing with actual hardware, and so physical presence is genuinely beneficial and often necessary—I can still work remotely when I need to if I have a delivery, appointment, or something I can't miss but not worth taking a whole day of leave over; and... this stream of thought comment is straying rapidly off topic, so I'll cut it off here).
This is an intriguing project you've got here — clearly, there's utility in what you've built. I'd like to offer some constructive insights as a UI & UX designer.
Header: Consider refining the top nav. Placing the title/logo to the left and the notification icon alongside buttons on the top-right creates a sense of spatial balance. Shrinking the search field and centering it would not only economize space but also mitigate the initial impression that it's an intrusive advertisement.
Body: A slight reconfiguration can go a long way. Situate filters to the left and the map to the right to capitalize on users' muscle memory from interacting with similar interfaces. Use Inter (Google Fonts) for a cleaner look. If you want to avoid Google Fonts, just go with Verdana.
User Interaction: Your attempts to clarify map submissions suggest the current UX leaves room for improvement. A single, dedicated 'Submit Location' button leading to a streamlined modal or page can make the process more intuitive. It eliminates the need for repeated explanations scattered throughout the page.
Promotion: The 'Help Us Spread the Word' section risks being mistaken for an ad. Focus on optimizing the core experience; a compelling product naturally invites sharing.
Listing: Optimize space utilization in the list view. Presenting three cards side-by-side allows for easier scanning. Implementing a toggle for card and list views could be a user-friendly addition.
Overall, you've done commendable work. The key lies in fine-tuning the details to make the interface not just functional, but easier to use.
I get why though. I moved to Dublin from the US (from an expensive part of California) and I was shocked by the rent. It was more expensive than apartments I was paying for in the US, but Irish software wages are a fraction of what you’d get in the US.
I am a little surprised by this. Are you sure you were comparing similiar styles and areas. Looking around online Dublin looks to be 26% cheaper than San Francisco.
Rent for a single person is quite a bit lower and even rent for a family shows it to be lower but not by as much?
I just glanced at
https://livingcost.org/cost/dublin/san-francisco
so not sure how accurate those style calculators are and is the cause of my questioning your statement.
The conditions of some properties in Dublin are abominable. My friend paid $1000 a month for a 70sq foot room with no windows or ventilation, in a 3 bed house with a single bathroom. Most new grad's going in to SWE from a top university in the country would be making on average 38k annual after tax.
If you're irish, there's no point putting yourself through the misery of living in Dublin. You can just go live in London, or work remote and live anywhere in the EU.
It's 26% cheaper on rent than SF but half the gross salaries for software devs and higher taxes on that gross. Also, SF is possibly one the worst places on earth for affordability, alongside Manhattan, so it's rather alarming how close Dublin is to those prices these days.
Honestly, as a software dev you are better off in the US because you're going to be on the winning side of that income inequality.
Not a country, but the City of Santa Monica, California, keeps a registry of rents for all rent-controlled units. Landlords are required to report an initial tenancy, which sets the starting rent. Each year after that, the City tells the landlord what the "Maximum Allowed Rent" is. All the documents relating to each property are publicly available and the city publishes an annual report.
Not all cities with rent control keep such a registry. (e.g., Los Angeles doesn't keep a registry, but does tell landlords the maximum they can raise the rent each year.)
In NZ you can check market rents by area on the Tenancy Services website. These are broken down by property type and lower, medium, and upper values based on recent bond lodgements.
Great work! This will actually be something very helpful to a lot of people!
I am curious how you gathered so much user input in the short time this project has been alive ? Where did you prospect for more users to input ? and especially, how do you validate that the inputs are valid and not fake inputs and/or spams ?
Awesome work. A similar registry is being worked on in Canada by the Vivre en Ville non-profit organisation (it is currently only available for Ontario and Quebec residents) : https://rentalregistry.ca/en/bumper
Thank you. I added a legend to the map to make it clearer a few minutes ago, can't spot the error. If you still say the text error, let me know. Renamed "Share Your Rent" to "Add Your Rent" to avoid confusion too.
Map is buggy, especially filtering of included nodes within the map boundary when zoomed in and panning, causing nodes(pins) to appear/disappear randomly.
As a more minor nit; It is also a bit annoying that the initial view doesn't show all of Ireland, and it is not possible to zoom out enough fit it.
Hi OP! Question, it says "source: user / daft". What is 'daft'? Might want to add a info popup for non-Irish :)
Also, the site says "Rental Data supplied by Tenant" but I see user: 3, daft: 453. So... it's not real tenant info right? Most of it comes from rental listings?
This is a fantastic project and site. I 100% support it. It’d be awesome if we had more transparency in prices for many things. In fact I’m leaving my current job in a month or so and when I do I plan on sharing all of my compensation details and raise percentages the lot with all my colleagues. They should know and be able to benchmark their salaries against mine.
One feature that might be nice is being able to search by some metrics like square meters, number of room, bathrooms, etc and see aggregate stats on that. Median rent, high low etc.
Large scale landlords and would be tenants are both pretty familiar with the market. The only people not familiar with the market are mom and pop landlords who tend to not update rent with changing market conditions.
This increased transparency might cause them to raise rents because it'd be easier to do comps, and they wouldn't previously undercharging a tenant to make it harder to find a new tenant at a higher price.
It's not that hard to figure out what people are charging for a similar unit today, especially in a larger market where a high percentage of listings are online.
Some mom and pop landlords (including myself) prioritize for having sustainable, enjoyable tenants. The gold standard is a tenant who requires little upkeep, pays on time, and stays for a long time. I won't increase the rent on tenants who are easy to work with.
If a new prospective tenant asked why the price is going up, I'd explain that it's the going market rate, and they're welcome to find another place. I doubt transparency would change anything when listing prices are already public and rarely negotiable
If one was looking for such a landlord, what should they be looking for on the listing? Is there a common place where you might choose to list a rental that's not as frequently used by big players?
Ask your friends and extended family about it. Especially if you're looking for single bedroom apartment. You never know, X's grandfather can have a small appartement he doesn't want to put on the market because it's a hassle, or your cousins' family (the other one) can have the perfect appartement for 2 people, 2 minutes from the sea, 5 from the train station, and you just have to wait a year for it.
I don’t know how true this is anymore. Apps like Zillow, Apartments.com and the like make it very easy for even small-time landlords to figure out what the market is.
I honestly think Zillow IS a market inefficiency. It's bad enough that it can't be relied on at local scales, yet ubiquitous enough that I think it pushes the market around a bit and has made prices stickier than they should be. It overvalues poorly maintained houses and probably undervalues well-maintained ones. Not sure how much it really helps with price discovery...
I don't like how I have to guess which article the comments are in response to, is this dark pattern copied from amazon product reviews or what is the deal with HN these days?
Could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments and flamebait? You've unfortunately been doing it repeatedly. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for. You may not owe rampant capitalistic behaviour better, but you owe this community better if you're participating in it.
This overly simplifies things, especially in regards to Ireland's housing market, and ignores the fact that our construction sector is still yet to recover after the 2008 crash.
Housing as an investment, combined with piss-poor government policy, have certainly not helped things though.
