Speaker 2: 0:22

Though it is probably a rule that you shouldn't quote Churchill on a podcast, he did have a couple of zingers, but farther back you can look, the farther forward you are likely to see. This sentiment underscores the crucial role history plays in illuminating our path forward. It reminds us that those we'd experience provide us with a treasure trove of wisdom. Joining us today is a true luminary in the realm of property. With an extensive career spanning more than five decades, he has seen booms, busts, crises, incentives, regulations and multiple governments. Through it all, he somehow remains an optimist. His experience is unequaled in this industry and even after all these years, he still remembers details that I would forget ten minutes after they happened. Chatting with him was a privilege and a pleasure. Please enjoy this conversation with Ken MacDonald.

Speaker 1: 1:19

Thanks, rick, for the invitation. I really love talking about property. I could talk about it all day.

Speaker 2: 1:25

Well, look, we'll put that to the test. So today, so just like we'll kick right into it. Ken, when did you start? When did you get involved first?

Speaker 1: 1:36

Well, I trained in San Diego of Alberta State Agency, which is no longer there, and after two or three years out there it was owned by Jennings the builders. I really felt I wanted to get into town because the suburbs were pretty quiet. So I approached the late Ronald Hook who had a small insurance and auctioneering business in 25 Peer Street, one room there. We had a chat and we agreed to set up a new company and call it Hook and MacDonald. That was March 1967.

Speaker 2: 2:20

Yeah, it was very different back then.

Speaker 1: 2:23

Fifty-five years ago, yeah.

Speaker 2: 2:25

So March 1967, fifty-five years on the go and still young. What were things like back then? How did the property market work back then? Was it just buying and selling secondhand property? Was there a lot of new development going on, a lot of new houses getting built?

Speaker 1: 2:43

There wasn't much new development going on and there wasn't that many secondhand sales taking place either. So you had to generate activity. In our very first week the phones just weren't ringing. But then one person did ring a pilot. He said he needed to get a house near the airport. So we printed out about 300 leaflets and I went out and delivered them to all the areas out around the airport that he had an interest in. And the next day somebody rang up and said I'm interested in selling my house. So we got our first sale.

Speaker 2: 3:24

That was how he did it 300 leaflets.

Speaker 1: 3:27

Yeah, but I always had an interest in building land and builders and construction. My father was an engineer in Dublin as city council, Dublin Corporation as it was known as then and he used to bring me around to sites when he was inspecting foundations and that. So I really got a good appetite for the building industry. I started to look for land and I'd call up to Tallah, various parts of Tallah and Rad Michael and Shankel and call into farmers and chat to them and then ask them if they were ever going to sell their lands to Would they contact us? So we managed to sell quite a lot of land. That linked us up then with builders and developers.

Speaker 1: 4:23

Finbar Hollands then was starting to build apartments around Ballsbridge the late Finbar Holland and he was very innovative and he got us involved in selling apartments at Northbrook. We felt that apartments were the way forward for high density living. So that led us on to taking an interest in how to develop the apartment market in Dublin particularly and maybe further afield. We linked up with Dublin Corporation and we ran a number of conferences in Dublin Castle to generate interest in the urban reluge in Dublin City Centre. We linked up with Cosgraves. They agreed to buy a site in Gardner Street. They built 172 apartments there at Custom Hall.

Speaker 2: 5:28

When was that in Gardner Street?

Speaker 1: 5:29

That was in 1992. But even prior to that we were approached one day by an architect from the North of Ireland architect and developer, jared Hawke, and he said he had bought a site at Stokey for 27 apartments. So he asked us would we link up with his architect and give our input into what sort of apartments should be built on it? So Pilot View emerged, or the site emerged. We went out one Saturday and said we were taking booking deposits on a new development to be built at Pilot View in Docky at Bullock Harbour and just from the boot of the car. It was a fine day. We managed to sell most of the apartments off the plans.

Speaker 2: 6:23

So no advertising or.

Speaker 1: 6:25

Yeah. Then one day we were approached by the late Liam Carle and he said he was building a development at Ringsend, which wasn't the most fashionable part of Dublin at the time, but he Not like today.

Speaker 2: 6:44

Not like today yeah, funny how that has changed right. Ringsend used to be the kind of look down upon a little bit, and now it's the centre of the new wave economy.

Speaker 1: 6:55

Yeah. So he went to three agents and asked for proposals. Apparently the other two told him it was there, wouldn't be too optimistic about the sales, and we told him it was a fantastic site and it would fly. And so he appointed us and put. The surroundings weren't the most salubrious at the time. So we said we'd got a dust photograph of a boat going up outside it and with good lighting, and we got that photograph into the Irish Times property section on the. I think it was on a Wednesday that they came out. At that time we said we were in the ads, we said we were going to open for a viewing on the Thursday. But we got a call on the Wednesday from Liam Carle saying you better get down here quick because there's a big queue of people and they want to buy all the houses and apartments. So we rushed down to the site and started taking deposits and we sold out the whole development off the plans.

Speaker 2: 8:13

When exactly was that the?

Speaker 1: 8:15

1990s. I think I'll just have to check the date.

Speaker 2: 8:21

It was kind of amazing to me then, because there were apartments that were being built, you know, in the, in the, in the, and in the context of what we hear in the media today about all the shoebox apartments that allegedly are being built in Dublin, even though, yes, we all know in the industry that the biggest apartments in Europe but in the context, against that, these apartments that were built in the 1990s, particularly down the rings, and we're small- yeah, we're small, you know so why was there such demand at the time?

Speaker 2: 8:50

Was that just a case that there was so little being built? Or because they were so affordable and people, that's what people could afford, so they bought an apartment. Why is it so different than today? When you say, if you were to go down to that same area today and put up A block of apartments and try to sell them, you wouldn't have a queue of people. Individual purchase is outside it anymore. Yeah, so what do you think was going on in the 1990s that made that, made these things To create so much demand from people?

Speaker 1: 9:18

Well, there was a desire from people to buy property and Fisherman's Wharf was predominantly houses, but but Liam went on to build loads and loads of apartment developments but but the conditions were right for people to to buy a home. Also, there were a lot of people who wanted to rent properties, so there was, there was a market for for investors. At the time. The Prices were very cheap. When you look along the keys, we were selling at bachelor's walk Apartments for 40,000 Pounds each at the time at the time.

Speaker 2: 10:04

Was there a lot of social housing being being built at the time, because I know in the in the 1670s there was big social housing programs. In the 90s it seemed to maybe tail off a little bit.

Speaker 1: 10:14

They started tailoring it off in the in the 90s. All right, eric, the the social housing programs of the local authorities were hugely successful and the lack of Dublin Corporation were very proactive in providing a housing, and the biggest mistake since then has been in the termination of the building of social housing. That is one of the main reasons for the housing crisis today. And when we started out in business also, people couldn't get mortgages and there was only one lender in town and it was the Irish permanent and you had to deposit money with them for For about five years before they'd even consider giving you a mortgage. And. But then when the banks started lending and they started seeing the advantages of, say, apartment living, that opened up the market and it's a huge number of people got housed. But then there was a serious downturn in this in the 1970s and and just nothing was happened happening at the start of the 1980s and we we and others and Suggested to the government at the time Ray McSherry was the Minister for Finance and that they should introduce tax incentives for Development and it had to be a particular type of incentive that would make a difference, that would really attract investors.

Speaker 1: 12:07

So in the, in the finance bill in 1981 they introduced section 23, which was hugely successful. Overnight the market turned and thousands of people Entered the market and started buying apartments and it was a very, very successful incentive. The problem was the politicians got involved in it and the politicians wanted their their local area in Litrum or Claire or Johnny Gall to get in on the section 23 active Action and that it should never have been extended to those areas. It was an incentive that was really for For high density areas, that where there was a strong rental demand.

Speaker 2: 13:01

Yeah for regeneration Right. I'd like to say there was parts of the time that were almost in ruin exactly yeah.

Speaker 1: 13:08

So so I was so successful and I remember listening to gay burn on the radio in 1992. He was going through the papers and he said my god, they're building apartments in Gardner Street. In no go area. They're building apartments. What is the world going to? And anyhow, we we managed to get to her and it was Minister for Finance to cut the tape and we got a band on the street and the guards cut off the roads and we had a Great sale out of the apartments.

Speaker 2: 13:48

Street in the 1990s? Yeah, 1992.

Speaker 1: 13:53

Yeah, so that led to a huge thousands of apartments being built, mainly in South Dublin locations in Randall and red car and both bridge, doki and. But it's just an awful pity that they politicians wrecked the section 23 and they gave it a bad name, whereas if we had a the same Section 23 with the same incentives today, you'd have a massive house building or apartment building Program. It would solve so much of our homeless problems overnight and I don't.

Speaker 2: 14:38

I don't disagree with you, but just because of the age we live in, I have to ask this, otherwise will be accused of being a bias and a shill of the converted industry. Section 23 primarily Makes it a tractor for people to own the property, and so some would say that it's a support to pricing rather than Anything else. What do you say to people who claim that Irish people are different and they don't want to live in apartments, that they they might rent one for a little while, but ultimately they want to live in a three bedroom Semi or four bedroom semi or a detached house in some estate somewhere? What do you, what do you say to that? Because I I'm listening to this for since I started obviously a lot less years in this than you are that we're different here and that we're different than every other developed nation on earth. I not sense that we won't live in apartments. Do you think it's true or do you think it's just a?

Speaker 1: 15:33

No, I don't think it's true. There's a certain sector of the population who wouldn't be comfortable living in apartments, that they're much happier living in a house, even if that house has three or four empty bedrooms, and they still want their house. But the fact that 70% of our population are one, two or three person households means that the most suitable type of accommodation for them is an apartment, and it's also very suited to retired people. Unfortunately, we have a culture here at the moment of objecting to developments, even though the people who are objecting to them they're damaging the prospects, proper accommodation for their parents or their kids.

Speaker 1: 16:35

You have at the moment in Black Rock and Rahini and other locations at the moment, applications in for development of senior citizens' apartments and you have local residents objecting to them, which is just cracked.

Speaker 2: 16:53

Well, the objecting thing has become both, in my opinion, a sport and an industry, in the sense that people have been conditioned now to be opposed to construction and that's just been going on for years. And I have to. I don't want to be one of these people that criticize politicians. I know they have a hard job, but I have to lay some of the blame for that at their door. The fact that the local politicians pile on to planning applications objecting to them as a little bit of a sock to.

Speaker 2: 17:24

I'm here standing up for you in this area, when in reality it's just nonsense, dog whistle stuff to be opposed to development. All the people that live there, their houses were once built and they were once a planning application, they were once a green field and if we take this attitude that we're going to be opposed to everything, I mean that's just a dead end road for society in general. But on the other side, the industry of the objection is something that people don't often see right. We're exposed to it very much in the construction industry because we get to see the other side of it. There are a host of solicitors and planning consultants but mostly solicitors who are going around actively trying to create a business at a preventing development from happening and they've been allowed that space by the political system and by the legal system to effectively render the planning system to be completely halted. The effect that that has on costs we'll get on to that later but is absolutely immense. And the thing that I find just crazy is you've been at this so long.

Speaker 2: 18:30

The 90s Gardiner Street apartments were built back then. They provide a very low cost form of housing to a lot of people. The nurse, the guard, people like that could afford to live there in the city center. You would have no prospect of getting a lot of those planning consents today, even though they will comply with the development plan, you still wouldn't be able to do it.

Speaker 2: 18:49

So in the period that you've been involved in the property industry, you've really seen that turn around right Completely To the point where people were lining up to buy apartments where there was very little opposition to them being built. To now there's unbelievable opposition to them being built. People can't afford them because the cost of producing them is so high. And you have collectively a political system that are saying it's not our problem, it's your problem.

Speaker 1: 19:16

Yeah, yeah, I know it's so wrong. I mean they saw the case there recently where somebody from the South of Ireland objected to a particular development in Dublin here, a major development in Dublin, and there was no reason why their objections should have been even entertained and holding up that development for over a year. And then there was sort of an indication coming from the objector that maybe if there was a little bit of a compensation for them they would pull the objection.

Speaker 2: 20:01

Yeah, so it's called rocketeering in other parts.

Speaker 1: 20:04

Yeah, it is yeah. So once the development is in line with the local development plan under, the planners are happy with it. There shouldn't be any consideration of those objections.

Speaker 2: 20:20

We could spend all day talking about planning objections. I'm conscious I don't want to use up all your time, but I am curious to hear your view on how things have changed. So back to the 90s right, we're in Gardiner Street, cosgrove, put up that apartment block. You've got huge amount of sales. Your band is playing on the street, the people buying those apartments in the early 90s. What proportion of those were investors who were renting them out? Do you think? I mean, I know that it's a long time ago.

Speaker 1: 20:49

Well, we've done surveys on that and because we handled most of those developments, a lot of those apartment developments built at that stage were they were 77, 78% were small investors, and the role that the small investors played in the market was just so important because they were modernizing the stock of rental accommodation by buying these apartments and by letting them out to people who might have been saving to buy a house or whatever. They were all small investors. A lot of them were buying them for pension purposes or it was none of this regulatory regime that we have at the moment that has scared the daylights out of the small investors and is crippling the rental market.

Speaker 2: 21:54

Yeah, absolutely. And therein lies another little paradox of what's going on at the moment is that the role of institutional investors here in recent years has been castigated as some sort of toxic nightmare. Where they're coming in here and they've been referred to both sort of pejorative names cuckoo funds, vulture funds, whatever word they can come up with at the time. But that aside, why do you think that has shifted to the point where, okay, you had loads of small investors, but essentially all of an apartment block was rented out, right, Almost all?

Speaker 1: 22:29

of us.

Speaker 2: 22:30

And today all of an apartment block is rented out, but just by one landlord. There's not really any difference there, right? In terms of the impact on society. Both apartments are being rented out to somebody who wants to rent them and they're being provided. Why do you think, or when did you see that start to change? Like we didn't have any institutional investment in the 1990s?

Speaker 2: 22:51

right, there was no pension funds buying no large pension funds buying properties in bulk. That never happened. That started to happen when, around 2012, like in the aftermath of the crash.

Speaker 1: 23:03

Yeah, it was certainly you guys were the vanguard there.

Speaker 2: 23:07

You were the leaders on that.

Speaker 1: 23:08

Oh yeah, no, we were they. It really got going in 2015, 2016. I went a number of those pension funds and institutional investors and expressed interest in purchasing apartment blocks. So they are just replacing the small investors, which they're providing a fantastic service because they are providing seriously high quality accommodation with great community facilities, resident facilities. Why they've been misdescribed as a result of certain people views, flawed views about the role that they're fulfilling. Without having those investors that have built these, say, 16,000 or 17,000 homes in the last six or seven years, the rental market today would be even much worse than it currently is and the Irish state can't fund the entire housing program each year. The institutional investors play a hugely important part in funding part of the housing delivery program, but they're just part of the solution and it's totally wrong. I agree with you. It's totally wrong that they're being misdescribed.

Speaker 2: 24:44

And they're a very small part of the solution, right, because as it stands, I believe Irish is the largest land private landlord right they have about 4,000, 5,000, something like that units and they're constantly in the media whenever they have the results.

Speaker 2: 24:59

They're constantly being criticized as state's largest landlord.

Speaker 2: 25:02

In fact, I learned the other day that there's several affordable housing bodies have more than twice that number of units in their ownership. If we're going to have a rental sector in the country, is it not better to have people like IRIS, who, by all accounts, run a very good business, provide a very good service to their tenants, adhere to all the laws, have public scrutiny on them because they're so big, to make sure that they adhere to the laws? Or is it better to have 40,000 individual landlords where this is maybe their only property, where they are struggling financially to make it work because of the regulation, where one bad tenant and admittedly it's a small problem, but one bad tenant can ruin them by not paying their rent and refusing to leave the property, where their ability to respond to maintenance issues is reduced because they have just one property and they have another job? Or IRIS that have 24-hour call-out, huge amount of properties. One bad tenant's never going to sink them. 20 bad tenants isn't going to sink them allows them to produce, invest, grow, which is the better outcome, because there seems to be this schizophrenia where they're like we have to stop small landlords leaving the market, but we don't want big landlords.

Speaker 2: 26:17

Why can't we have both? Is there a reason why we can't have both? Do you think?

Speaker 1: 26:21

There's no sound reason. In some cases it's a very dishonest narrative that's out there from certain parties about them for ideological or political reasons. But they are fooling a lot of people who don't understand the role they're playing and in some cases some of those rates are being described as investors. But they're actually building. They're carrying on a building role. Look at Island Bridge and several hundred departments.

Speaker 2: 26:58

And that project was stalled for years until Kennedy Wilson came in and invested in it.

Speaker 1: 27:02

Kennedy Wilson stepped in. It was just an abandoned site and they have built it out and done a fantastic job on it. The quality of accommodation and services that are provided in those modern developments owned by institutions are just fantastic. It's far better to have the institutional investors who are delivering and owning those properties than, as you say, a multitude of small investors who are just piling out of the sector anyhow.

Speaker 2: 27:42

Yeah, and so that's another thing I wanted to ask you about, because you probably have good visibility of this. Having sold a lot of these units to people 20 or 25 years ago when they were entering it as an investor, you might be seeing them now exiting. Do you have people come back that bought units off you 20 years ago and say, ken, I'm getting out?

Speaker 1: 28:01

Oh yeah, it's becoming an avalanche at the moment. Something like between 30 and 40% of second-hand sales in a lot of locations at the moment are the small landlords exiting the market. That's amazing, really that high, yeah, in a lot of the established rental locations that's what's happening. That is really at the core of the dilemma in the rental market at present. That's why rents are so high and that's why there's such a shortage of properties.

Speaker 2: 28:42

But another thing to follow on from that, because we often hear this then the complaint that people have that, oh, the landlord's selling, so he's evicting his tenant. And it's not terrible. And as you know and as anyone who's listening to this will probably know who didn't live under a rock I was involved in a controversy a number of years ago when we decided to exit a single family rental business in Tirlstown. We wrote to our tenants and we said, hey, we're going to get out of this business, we're going to sell the houses. Your lease has a year to run. We're giving you that much notice, whatever it is. And also, do you want to buy the house that you're living in? We'll sell it at this price, fair price, no competition, no active bidding.

Speaker 2: 29:22

And that blew up into an absolute shitstorm because of misinformation about what was really going on. And the reason we were leaving that business is because it wasn't profitable for us to carry it out anymore. We're not a charity, so we did nothing wrong. I'm sure there's a lot of people that would dispute that, but in fact we sold a lot of those houses to the tenants and some of them got to buy their first house, as it turns out, very, very cheaply. The fact that that's still going on five years later, right, people are still rotating out of being landlords five years later.

Speaker 1: 30:02

It's a very serious problem that the regulation it's overregulation. Now the scaring all these smaller landlords and if it keeps accelerating, the problem is just going to get much worse. It doesn't matter if we up the housing completions to 40,000 or 50,000 or 60,000, which we should be doing anyhow every year it's just going to keep. That's just going to keep being a drain on it and the regulation just keeps coming down the line and there is no reason for it and the likes of having a cap on rental rises has been shown to be counterproductive.

Speaker 2: 30:52

Yeah, it has never worked anywhere and yet proponents of it keep saying, yeah, but we want to. I mean, what I find amazing about the cap on rent, you'll notice that the inflation crisis that took over recently after the war started in Ukraine, no one talked about a cap on food Right, food is more important. Food and water right, and the price of eggs, price of cheese, price of all these things was rising dramatically. Nobody brought up the idea that we should turn around to Tesco and say, hey, we don't care how much it's costing you to provide those eggs and the cheese, but you're capped at 2% growth per year.

Speaker 2: 31:32

Nobody turned around to Ford or to Toyota and said we don't care what your production costs are, because they know that what will happen in that scenario is that Tesco will just say thanks very much. Here's the keys of all our stores, good luck, as will Ford, as will Toyota, and nothing will get sold. The only reason that they do it in the property industry is because the property is immovable, so they tax it or they limit it because they can, and so it's always been this eternal well that successive governments could go to to either tax or to regulate in order to placate, or to seemingly placate, in the hope that it would work. And it hasn't worked here, right, because what's happened since that cap has been brought in right? The supply of housing continues to decline.

Speaker 1: 32:17

It just was wrong in so many ways yeah.

Speaker 2: 32:24

Well, look that's. We're not going to change anyone's mind, I don't think on that. You're either on one side of that debate or you're on the other. But I think that history and economics and just playing goddamn arithmetic shows that trying to cap any the price of anything in a market economy is just nonsense. It's just nonsense. It never worked.

Speaker 2: 32:43

Yeah, turning away from the investor side for a minute house prices generally right For somebody that wants to buy their first home, be it a apartment, be it a three bed, be it a whatever. The prices in the last couple of years have run up pretty significantly, not maybe like they were in 05, 06 when the kind of the madness was happening, but still quite significant in the last two years. What's your view on that? Like, obviously there's a shortage, right, so that's going to drive up prices. But at the same time and I'm speaking from the billers perspective here the profit margins in construction have been declining, so the prices have been going way up and the profit margins have been going down. Do you think that prices are supported now? I mean, I know that in your role as an agent you don't want to be saying that the property market's overvalued, but do you think prices are supported, like they've come up an awful lot in the last two years. If you were saying to somebody now we said, okay, should I buy my first home Is now a good time.

Speaker 1: 33:45

Well, I think you have to go back to the 2005, 2006, when there was 87,000 new homes being built.

Speaker 2: 33:55

Isn't that like astonishing that we all forget that? Sometimes I think well, I forget it when you hear it said out loud 87,000 units a year. And we did what? 30,000 last year.

Speaker 1: 34:05

That's under 30,000 in 2002. Yeah, no, I think it's all relative. I mean, I remember back in the 1980s, 1990s, and people had said, oh gee, that's costing 40,000. Yeah, that's very expensive, but it's all relative.

Speaker 2: 34:30

The levees now are nearly done. Which right I mean? Irish water is 5,700 euros per unit, and you were selling houses the entire house for 40,000 pounds.

Speaker 1: 34:41

Yeah, now I think, to be fair to the government, the assistance they brought into the likes of first-time buyers, the first-time buyer grants. The help to buy scheme. That's a fantastic scheme and that has helped so many young people to buy homes.

Speaker 2: 35:05

And it doesn't cost the taxpayer a dime right, Because it's a tax refund of the taxes that were paid.

Speaker 1: 35:11

And it has pulled thousands of people out of the rental market and has helped that scenario. And yet you get people complaining about certain politicians who, you'd have to wonder, do they really want the housing crisis to be solved?

Speaker 2: 35:31

at times, I think that they probably don't want the government to solve it.

Speaker 1: 35:37

They want it to transpire that they are the ones that could solve it.

Speaker 2: 35:42

That's human nature for you.

Speaker 1: 35:44

But I want to ask you a question, though I do think that anybody who can afford, who has the deposit, who can afford to go out and buy a home, whether it's a house or an apartment at the moment, I don't think they can go wrong. There's going to be a continuous shortage. The cost of materials, inflation, the build costs are going to keep rising. I mean, they went up by a considerable amount last year.

Speaker 2: 36:14

So that does seem to support the argument that housing is not going to get cheaper it's just not going to happen.

Speaker 1: 36:19

Certainly not new housing right.

Speaker 2: 36:22

At the same time, I look occasionally at friends of mine, say, oh, I'm thinking about buying this, I'm thinking about buying that, what do you think? And I'm dragged into the vortex that is my home and daft. And then inevitably, like the internet, I go down a black hole at looking at things and I start seeing apartments, individual apartments, which I assume our landlord selling right, exiting the rental market Seemed to me very good value to me that you can buy an apartment In in Dublin city center for very little for what it is, considering the areas that sometimes that they're in like in Dublin 8 Places like that. What's your view on that? Like, if so, for a starter home? I know everyone's very focused on the new house and everything but apartments that were built like in in the 2000s. I know there's some, there's a lot of. It's terrible the issues around around fire safety that I've only affected certain certain blocks, but they do seem to be cheap, right apartments on an individual basis.

Speaker 1: 37:15

Yeah, I am. Well, they are. They are relatively cheap and they are. They are good value compared to what it costs to Replace that home. You do need to take into account, though, that Whoever buys that is going to have energy costs Much higher, yes, than than the new, the new build.

Speaker 2: 37:42

Yeah, that is a fair point and it's some of them. Even though they're, they're not bad Even if the difference actually, and that the scale for energy is a bit confusing because People might think B and what's the difference in B and a was actually a lot.

Speaker 1: 37:54

Jump from. B day is a huge amount, so that's something that people should really take account of.

Speaker 2: 38:01

You see any light at the end of the tunnel? You're involved in conversations of policymakers and politicians and people. Do you think that that the that the problems are understood?

Speaker 1: 38:11

and and oh, I do think they are understood, but there there seems to be a. They seem to be frozen in decision-making and they keep looking over their shoulders. I would be very optimistic now. I'm an optimist by nature, yeah, but I would be optimistic that In this situation has got so bad now that radical action has to be taken. And if radical action isn't taken, it's going to be just a disaster scene for home buyers and renters, and politicians can't afford to let that happen.

Speaker 1: 38:56

And you know, when you look to the United States and where had the construction industry in areas where Housing is needed, they're incentivized and they have to bring in incentives here. And, irrespective of what People, some people might say, it's, it's, it's it's just helping developers, it's not just helping developers. If you help developers, you're helping the home buyers, whether it's a subvention or whether it's an incentive. And Radical action has to be taken, and very, very quickly. The government proved there's with the when the pandemic came. This radical, urgent action could be taken and They've been praised for it and they did a great job on it. They need to do the same on housing.

Speaker 2: 39:53

Well, I was gonna ask you if you had a magic wand that you could change one thing, but you gave me about seven things there that you change. So your, your magic wand is, is very special, counting We'll, we'll, we'll, we'll give it to you because of your, your experience, and but no one will take it from you. I've owned last question for you.

Speaker 1: 40:12

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 40:13

Knowing what you know, seeing what you've seen, would you encourage your grandchildren to go into the property industry?

Speaker 1: 40:23

Definitely. Yeah, it's one of the best careers or industries out there and I know my own Is sound, donald and daughter Rena, and absolutely love what they're doing. You have new challenges every day, but there's some great people in property here in Ireland with a better reputation and and rightly so then a lot of the practitioners in in the UK and and further afield. It's very well regulated. It's a very professional industry here. I I I would definitely encourage young people to look look at us, which I would also encourage them to look at other aspects of the construction industry, whether it's the trades or Whatever. Him you know anyone who gets into carpentry or electricians, electrical work or anything. They, they move on and they they do well.

Speaker 2: 41:32

And there's very good Careers to be had. Actually, yeah, there may be, you know, sitting in a nice office every day and that's not for everybody, but the rates of pain, everything are very, very good.

Speaker 2: 41:43

So yeah, for those, those trades, and should be encouraged. More people are going to it. So Well, look, ken, thanks a lot. That's been great real, real history lesson for me, even though I know I regularly get them from my own father, but it's. It's nice to hear about what went on, it's nice to hear about how far the whole thing has come and it's also nice to hear that after that many, 55 years, you're still an optimist. We need a bit more of that, I think, in the country. So thanks very much for for joining me and, yeah, the build is hosted by me, rick Larkin. Carrie Fernandez produces episode. Original music was written by Cass. If you have a suggestion for the show or know someone we should interview, please let me know by email, rick at the bill podcastcom. Thanks for listening. You can severity fire.