House prices will moderate when building ramps up to 45,000 a year, Tánaiste claims

By Gráinne Ní Aodha, PA

House prices will begin to moderate when the number of homes being built each year increases to 45,000, Tánaiste Micheál Martin has said.

Prices should start to moderate at around 45,000 or 50,000 houses a year or by the year 2027 or 2028, the Fianna Fáil leader said on Tuesday.

He made the comments while canvassing at Sundrive Shopping Centre in Kimmage with Dublin South-Central candidate Catherine Ardagh.

Mr Martin was asked why house prices continued to rise at around 10 per cent a year despite a ramp up in supply over the term of government.

Mr Martin said supply had not risen far enough to respond to a rising population.

“There’s more and more people looking for housing in densely populated areas and where we need to be more successful in the future is in brownfield sites, in proving the viability of brownfield sites and in modern methods of construction to get houses built faster.”

He said economists all agree that supply is key to tackling the housing crisis, but the State had not reached a high enough point to bring down prices.

Asked at what point prices will start to come down, Mr Martin said: “Certainly 45,000/50,000 per annum.”

When asked if this would be by 2027 or 2028, he said “I would like to see prices moderating at least, yes.”

The latest figures from the Central Statistics Office showed house prices increased by 10 per cent in the 12 months to August.

The Government has defended its record on housing by arguing that it had ramped up supply, overseeing the construction of 125,000 new homes since entering power.

But opposition parties have blamed the government for house prices rising out of reach of young workers. The Social Democrats have calculated they have risen by some €85,000 euro since 2020.

Two schemes for first-time buyers which aim to make housing more affordable have also been criticised as inflationary by the opposition.

Fine Gael have said they would extend the Help to Buy scheme, which offers grants of up to €30,000 to buy a new-build home worth up to half a million euro, to €40,000.

It also pledged to expand the First Home scheme to second-hand homes, which sees the Government and bank pay up to 30 per cent of the cost of a first-time buyer’s home.

The coalition parties agreed targets to deliver an average of 50,500 homes per year over the period from 2025 – ultimately reaching approximately 60,000 in 2030.