Plenty of people will happily live in a smaller, darker unit if the price is right

Irish Times

3 days ago

Anyone who has slogged through an Ikea store has paused to marvel at the brightly lit, magically configured, perfectly tiny apartments kitted out in its space-saving systems.
A friend currently suffocating in a bad relationship looks at the tiny space with longing. For her the words 'studio apartment' conjure up nirvana. It's about psychological freedom, not physical space, she says. She had a similar space while living abroad. But really it's about affordability. You might call it desperate; she calls it realistic.
As the angry exchanges over shrinking apartment sizes carried on, developers just hunkered down and waited. Apartments are not getting built. The many casualties of the inertia include my friend whose dreams are embodied in Ikea's perfectly formed, affordable studios. When she moves on as she must, she will join the 43 per cent of the population who are single and the quarter of all Irish adults who now live in one-person households. Those numbers are climbing and are replicated across the EU. People are no longer coupling up in the same numbers and birth rates are plunging worldwide. More than half the people on the housing list are single. Strange and disturbing as it may seem to a society long immersed in the language of the needs of 'hard-working families', single people cannot be shunted aside as an afterthought in a country that comes third in the ranking of under-occupied homes in the EU.
Over the years, a reluctance to recognise a trend was evident in planning strategies. Back in September 2007 – just as Ireland was beginning the slide into bankruptcy –
Dublin City Council
stipulated that the number of one-bedroom apartments in any new development should be reduced from 45 per cent to a maximum of just 20 per cent. Under current regulations, 50 per cent of the units in a development can be one-bedroom apartments but no more than a quarter can be studios, with a minimum floor size of 37 square metres. In Finland, a country often deemed to be the world's most successful at shrinking the housing and homeless problem, studio apartments average about 34sq m.
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But for those on the sharp end of this row, it is not just about apartment sizes; it's about whether the 'relaxing of restrictions' will make more homes of any size available and whether they will actually make that new supply affordable for single people.
We can indulge in circular discussions about the varying housing requirements of people at different phases in their lives and how desirable it would be for everyone to buy their forever apartment in their 20s in a 15-minute city, with room for a potential partner and maybe a few children. Obviously, as people couple up and have babies, they will need more floor space than a studio or one-bed apartment.
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Stuart Mathieson: Given the state of Dublin, the 15-minute city can't come quick enough
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But so-called starter homes exist for a reason. People first buy or rent what they can afford to get a roof over their heads. Growing careers and salaries may allow some to trade up for more space at some point. Others will trade a kitchen window and a few square metres for autonomy, security and location and make it a forever home.
But single people with hard-earned savings – or those like my friend who have some money in hand, but are nearing the end of their working lives – are stymied by relentless price rises, while trying to outbid couples with twice their borrowing power. In 2024, a first-time buyer of a new home got an average mortgage of almost €322,000, according to the Banking and Payments Federation.
To rent a modestly sized home in Dublin costs more than €2,000 a month. My friend did her time in bedsits and grimy flats in her 20s. But unlike her young offspring who share apartments and costs with several others, she cannot envisage sharing a space with strangers at her age.
For that house rental, a working couple pay €1,000 each. Three sharing might pay about €700 each. The single person pays in full in a market that has made her particularly dependent on scarce private rental housing.
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Living in a small apartment: 'It's claustrophobic ... you can't get away from each other'
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My friend has no choice but to put her faith in housing minister
James Browne
's promise to 'transform housing delivery in this country and activate the private sector'. He says the new measures should mean cuts of €50,000 to €100,000 in costs. He is 'prepared to take risks', he says. 'I think we have over-corrected from the crash and we have been way too cautious.'
It's not an original thought.
Leo Varadkar
regrets what he calls 'excessive caution at certain points' about big investment decisions such as housing.
But already construction industry figures are saying the savings will be much lower, at €30,000 at most. Or, if developers gain the raft of further concessions being demanded – zero VAT rating for example – the savings might even hit €40,000 or so. It brings us nowhere near €100,000.
Either way the true risk falls on my friend and all those of sufficient faith to accept the trade-off – a darker, smaller unit designed for one very tidy person in exchange for a home of her own at a price she can afford.
We've seen this movie before. The fear is that we will get the first part of the trade – ugly
Soviet blocks
of them – but not the second. Will there be a meaningful price difference between a studio and a one-bed to compensate for the sacrifice of space, light and a balcony (which can be a lifeline for a housebound person but apparently adds €15,000 to costs)? It certainly didn't happen in the buy-to-let developments. No one disputes that political risk is necessary amid inertia. Restrictions have been lifted in response to developers' demands, all of which will entail a cost to the taxpayer, remember, as well as home buyers. But what exactly are we all getting for this risk? Where are the reassurances, the detailed cost breakdowns?
Politicians and developers have diced with such risks and standards in the past when the culture was 'let 'er rip'. The fact they are permitted to do something means they probably will. In the current 'we were way too cautious' territory, who will hold them all to account? Where will the balance fall? We don't know. That's the risk.