this week justin trudeau announced over twitter that canada was going to ban foreign ownership
in canada for the next two years and tax existing vacant foreign-owned properties this
got a lot of reaction on twitter and a number of people were asking why the irish government
can't do the same if you think it's a good idea for the irish government to do the same please
share your comments and viewpoints below i'd love to know what you're thinking for those who don't
know me my name is shane fleming i'm trying to put a little bit more effort into my youtube videos
and get a little bit more creative with my videos sometimes the topics don't always allow me to be
overly creative but i am trying to learn all the time and put i'm putting more and more
effort into my videos so please give this video a thumbs up and don't forget to subscribe to the
channel so can one line tweets really solve the housing crisis or is there more to it
so let's explore canada's decision and see if such a decision would help ireland in any way
canada does face similar problems to ireland but to be honest the rest of the world is dealing with
rising house prices as well by all accounts canada's house prices rose twice as much as
ireland did in 2020. relatively speaking ireland's price increase has been relatively low compared
to other developed countries canada is facing a problem at the moment a lot of wealthy chinese
people are buying property in canada as a store of wealth they're also keeping these properties
vacant so therefore you can understand the reason why canada has made this decision but would this
decision have the same impact in ireland there are a lot of chinese people buying property in ireland
however they're buying it for a different reason they're buying it to gain access to a european
visa and to stay and live in ireland that said they're generally only able to buy properties that
or investments that are linked to social housing or social projects we don't have the ability to
keep these properties vacant so that is one key difference between ireland and canada the other
key difference is ireland is in the eu new zealand introduced a similar ban about three years ago
and they banned foreign ownership within the country it didn't quite have the desired
effects and prices have continued to rise in fact new zealand has had the large one the largest
price increases in home prices uh over the last few years last year alone the prices increased
by 25 percent compared to ireland where in the last 12 months or last uh june to june prices
have only increased by about six percent that is a far cry from new zealand's 25 percent who have
banned foreign investments new zealand couldn't ban all foreign ownership because they had trade
agreements with australia and singapore ireland is in the eu and there is free movement of people so
what would a foreign ban on ownership really mean realistically it'd be very difficult to ban anyone
from the eu to buy buying property in ireland on the corporate side annie reeds here in ireland are
actually set up and based in ireland so therefore they wouldn't be deemed to be foreign entities
most international funds that are buying property in ireland generally set up a company in ireland
or luxembourg which again is in the eu therefore i do not think any ban would have any major impact
and i think any policy to ban foreign ownership would pretty much be a political pr stunt
in terms of canada's taxing foreign owners of vacant properties would something like this work
in ireland irish reits have to be set up here in ireland therefore they wouldn't be seen as foreign
investment also looking at any of their recent shareholder reports from any of the reits they're
nearly at 96 percent a plus occupancy level so the vacancy levels are really low in any of the reit
funds there was a lot of uh news reports made by 12 months ago in regards to a number of
empty blocks which were held by investment funds around the docklands but probably quite common
at the time we were in lockdown it was a new building that they were generally referring to
i myself had personally experienced it with this with some of my clients where properties became
vacant in early 2021 we struggled to let them we had very few inquiries i think we probably
maybe got one or two inquiries a month in early 2021 with no genuine interest however all of
that changed in august of this year where we were getting multiple inquiries every single day and
properties have now started to uh lease within a week of going on the market so while there was a
huge amount of vacant properties in dublin during the lockdown i think that was seen as very much as
a short-term issue and creating attacks to tackle a short-term issue doesn't seem that it would be
that effective long-term and realistically would again being a pee or a stunt it's quite common all
over the world when these new apartment blocks come on stream for bill to rent that it takes a
number of months or even a year for them to be fully occupied it's not surprising at all that
these apartments sat vacant during the lockdown when there was restriction of movement of people
the same happened all over the world but demand is back now and those blocks are filling up quite
quickly i've helped many foreign buyers buy in ireland most of them are moving to ireland for
work and plan to raise a family in ireland others are more fortunate that they can afford to buy a
property for or an apartment for their kids who are attending royal college of surgeons or ucd
or trinity and plan to make ireland their home for the next five to eight years i would hate to think
that ireland would close off these options for foreigners many of which actually have distant
connections with ireland i would see it as very xenophobic it would be a complete shame and i
would think it would be complete cop-out to blame foreigners for the issues that ireland are facing
right now every story needs a villain but it is a shame to blame foreigners the real issue is that
we need a new planning system and a planning system that has targeted objectives in terms
of the numbers of approvals they give every year there is an obvious argument that houses should
be given to irish first and i understand that however believe it or not the system is actually
set up quite well for irish people already you have to be living in the country for a number of
years paying tax to benefit from the first time buyer scheme because it's based on tax clawbacks
also it's extremely difficult for anyone who's not a resident in ireland to get a mortgage from any
irish bank at the moment many sectors in ireland rely on inward investment i don't think it's in
ireland's best interest or long-term interest to put up barriers if ireland wants to ban foreign
ownership there might be a short-term price drop however i think the long-term consequences would
be far worse and put us in a far worse situation than we are in right now because we would lose a
huge amount of the investments that's required to get us out of the problem that we're in now
i'd love to know what your thoughts are on the topic so please put your comments below and
let me know what your viewpoint is either if you agree or disagree please share your viewpoints and
comments i'm happy to discuss in the comments also please give this video a thumbs up don't forget to
subscribe to the channel and there will be more related property videos somewhere up here as well