This is a companion to the previous post which looked at changes in the homeownership rates in the 1991 and 2022 censuses. Here we look at more recent changes in the tenure status for households headed by an Irish or UK national using figures kindly provided by the CSO. From Census 2016 to Census 2022 the number of households enumerated headed by an Irish or UK national increased by 83,293, or 5.5 percent.  In 2022, these were 87 percent of the total households enumerated (and 89 percent of households where the citizenship of the reference person was provided, i.e. excluding “not stated ..read more

The census is a key source of reliable information on population and households in Ireland.  One important indicator taken from the census is on households’ tenure status: split between different types of owners and renters.  Since the publication of the census results on housing there has been considerable focus on the decline of Ireland’s homeownership rate relative to its peak in 1991. In the 1991 Census, there were 808,385 households enumerated as owner-occupiers from a total number of permanent households of 1,019,723.  That gives a homeownership rate of 79.3 per cent.  ..read more

Housing problems are complex but usually can be distilled back to a shortage of housing relative to demand. For those looking, it can be difficult to find somewhere to live, particularly for renters.  More housing makes it easier to find somewhere to live, though sometimes this is in dispute.  Earlier in the week we had a opinion piece that focused on prospective homeowners with a broad focus on price and a limited view on supply. On Price The piece sets out findings of research undertaken by the Bank of England: For every 1 per cent increase in lending rates, the researchers of Thr ..read more

One feature  of how the inequality of disposable income is determined in Ireland has been the recent decline the in the inequality of market income. Market income is typically defined as including wages, rents, dividends, interest and typically certain pension income such as from private and occupational pensions. Here is the OECD’s estimate of the gini coefficient for market income in Ireland since 2012 (chart crime incoming): In the OECD’s dataset, the figure for the latest year, 2021, corresponds to the household survey undertaken for SILC2022.  The reference year for income in t ..read more

Using the results of Census 2022, the CSO estimated that Ireland’s population in April 2023 of young adults aged 25 to 34 was 645,000.  If we go back five years to 2018, using Census 2016 as the benchmark, the CSO estimate that the population then of young adults aged 20 to 29 (the same cohort) was 575,000.  Between 2018 and 2023 the population of this cohort grew by 60,000, or a little over 10 per cent. Using the CSO’s estimates of the population by single year of age we can get the population of this group back to 1998 (when the youngest, now 25, would have been born).  After ..read more

Back in October, the CSO produced a publication to mark 50 years of Ireland and the EU.  Included in this was a series of annual average house prices from 1970 to 2019.  The values in the table are charted below and they show the average annual house price rising from €6,700 in 1970 (when converted to euro) to €295,700 in 2019. The chart takes all the values as published by the CSO with the additional values for 2020 to 2022 taken from the CSO’s databank. The series closely follows other nominal house price series for Ireland (such as Fred’s) except for 2010 to 2015, with the chart ..read more

The latest mortgage arrears statistics from the Central Bank provide an update for the end of September (Q3) 2023. They show there continues to be a trickle of repossessions. During the third quarter of 2023, there were ten court-ordered repossessions and ten abandonments/voluntary surrenders of primary dwelling houses.  During 2023, court-ordered repossessions have been occurring at a rate of around one per week. We are now also provided with a more complete breakdown of repossession activity.  The number of repossessions shown above can be broken down into those carried out by ban ..read more

For almost a decade now, the year-to-date revenues from Corporation Tax have exceeded the equivalent amount from the previous year (with early 2020 being the only minor exception).  We can see below that the 2023 year-to-date figure for October has dipped below the 2022 line.  The €15.7 billion collected so far in 2023 is €0.4 billion (3%) below the amount collected to October 2022. We can also see that this is a reversal of the position seen only a few months ago. By July, 2023 was running nearly €2 billion ahead of 2022 (€10.9 billion versus €9.0 billion).  The reversal since ..read more

A couple of indicators during the week show that the number of first-time buyers (FTBs) continues to rise. First, the volume of market transactions tagged as FTBs in the CSO’s residential property price index.  This is updated monthly and the volume of transactions is shown here on a 12-month basis. There were 17,500 stamp duty filings tagged as FTBs made in the 12 months to the end of August.  Of these, 12,500 were for existing properties and 5,000 were for new properties.  The increase in the last year has been exclusively in existing properties.  The volume of FTB trans ..read more

A few weeks ago, the CSO published the Q2 2023 update of the non-financial institutional sector accounts. We will use those to check in on the status of the household sector for the first six months of this year (H1) and how it compares to last year and to 2008. First, the current account.  In the prevailing environment, it is important to note that the figures in the table below are in nominal terms, i.e. not inflation adjusted.  We will look at some of the aggregates in constant prices towards the end of the post. The start point of the current account here is Gross Domestic Produc ..read more