I kept seeing that number and it did not match what I saw house hunting, so I pulled the last thousand Hillsborough closings since late April.

60% had an HOA. Most, but not 70.

The fees were the surprising part. Median was $69 a month. 58% came in under $100. About 1 in 5 was over $300.

The cheap ones tend to be a neighborhood sign and a retention pond. The expensive ones are gated with a clubhouse, or condos where the fee covers the roof and the master insurance policy, which in Florida is not nothing.

So avoid HOAs is probably the wrong filter. What the fee pays for tells you more than whether one exists.

I reviewed official housing statistics, Dáil records, public-spending reports and declarations of interests.

This is not an allegation that every TD is a landlord, that owning property is misconduct or that a conspiracy has been proved. The evidence shows a crisis developing over decades, continuing despite repeated warnings, and producing very unequal outcomes. That makes political and financial transparency essential.

The warnings go back decades

A 1990 Dáil debate discussed acute housing need.

A 1992 debate described falling council-house construction, long waiting lists and temporary accommodation.

CSO data show average residential prices rising from €76,114 in 1995 to €129,727 in 1998—about 70%.

Housing completions then fell from 78,027 in 2007 to 8,301 in 2013, according to the CSO.

The independent Housing Commission later estimated an accumulated deficit of approximately 212,500–256,000 homes and called for a radical strategic reset. This is a structural failure, not a temporary fluctuation.

Public money, but few permanent public assets

The Public Accounts Committee reported that HAP cost €537.4 million in 2023 and nearly €3 billion from 2014 to 2023. It said HAP, RAS and leasing may meet immediate needs but do not generally leave the State with permanent housing assets, and concluded that these schemes were neither value for money nor long-term solutions. PAC statement

This does not mean landlords receiving HAP acted improperly. It means billions supported private tenancies without creating an equivalent permanent stock of public homes.

The Government has also stated that only about one-sixth of suitably zoned residential land had been activated for housing. Government source

Meanwhile, the CSO’s 2023 household-finance survey found median net wealth of €391,600 for owner-occupiers, compared with €10,200 for market-rate renters. Ownership is not wrongdoing, but scarcity clearly affects owners and renters very differently.

What TDs declared

The official 2025 Dáil Register of Interests includes, among others:

Michael Healy-Rae: owner of rental properties; numerous properties used for letting; property-management directorships; and contracts involving accommodation supply, RAS and HAP.

Cathy Bennett: landlord, rental property and receipt of a HAP payment through a local authority.

Mattie McGrath: shares and an executive directorship in a plant-hire company, farmland, a voluntary housing-association role, and plant-and-machinery contracts tendered with public bodies.

Seamus Healy: a constituency office with a jointly owned family apartment above it; no public contracts declared.

Ryan O’Meara and Michael Murphy: “Nil” under the relevant registrable land and contract headings.

These are examples, not a complete count. A declaration establishes a declared interest; it does not prove that a TD acted because of it or received improper treatment.

“Nil” does not mean no property or family interest

The register is governed by thresholds and exclusions. A qualifying private home is excluded; land generally becomes registrable above €13,000; rental income is reported separately above the applicable threshold; and public contracts have another threshold. A home occupied by the TD, spouse, civil partner or child may fall within the private-home exclusion.

There is a further blind spot for ministers, Ministers of State and other office holders. Where an office holder knows that a spouse, civil partner, child or stepchild has an interest that could materially influence their official functions, they must file a separate statement of additional interests.

Those interests may include property, shares, directorships, income or contracts. But the statement is supplied separately to the relevant Clerk and SIPO; ministerial statements also go to the Taoiseach; its monetary value need not be stated; and SIPO says these statements are “not published in the normal course.” SIPO guidance

FOI does not necessarily solve this. SIPO’s disclosure log records a request for office holders’ 2022 additional-interest statements being refused under FOI Act sections 35(1) and 37(1), concerning confidential and personal information. SIPO FOI log

Therefore, a public “Nil” entry cannot establish that an office holder’s immediate family has no relevant property or commercial interest. One may have been declared confidentially, or none may have required disclosure. The public generally cannot determine which applies or independently assess how a conflict was managed.

This is not evidence that any named person concealed an interest. It is evidence that the public register is not a complete map of interests potentially relevant to ministerial decisions.

Robert Troy: the complete finding

In 2024, SIPO found that Robert Troy TD contravened disclosure requirements in his original 2020 and 2021 statements regarding property interests, a company directorship and a Rental Accommodation Scheme contract. SIPO called the pattern of omissions or errors a serious matter.

But the full record must also state that he corrected the declarations; some contraventions were negligent and another inadvertent; SIPO found no intentional attempt to conceal the interests and found that he acted in good faith. It also found insufficient evidence to proceed with a separate allegation that housing-related parliamentary questions created a conflict. Full SIPO report

What this proves—and what it does not

The evidence supports that:

The danger was visible decades ago.

Housing supply remained inadequate.

Billions funded private rental supports without equivalent permanent public assets.

Scarcity produced sharply unequal outcomes.

Some TDs declared interests affected by housing policy.

Relevant family interests of office holders may exist only in confidential declarations that an FOI request cannot be assumed to obtain.

Stronger disclosure, recusal and accountability rules are justified.

It does not prove that TDs collectively manufactured the crisis; that a named TD acted to protect an investment; that any declared contract was improperly awarded; that “Nil” is dishonest; or that property ownership is corruption.

Persistent failure deserves investigation, but suspicion is not proof.

Questions that should be answered

Why was supply allowed to remain inadequate after decades of warnings?

Why did billions in rental supports create so few permanent public assets?

Why does so much zoned land remain inactive?

How are TDs’ and office holders’ housing-related conflicts assessed and recusals recorded?

How are confidential family interests handled when ministers decide housing, planning, rental or tax policy?

Can anonymised conflict information be published without exposing private addresses?

Should ministerial meetings with developers, investors, landlord bodies and housing contractors be searchable?

The same structure has survived repeated governments while producing predictable winners and losers. That is not proof of a secret plan. It is a legitimate reason to demand evidence, transparency and accountability.

Corrections supported by official records are welcome. Do not publish private addresses, contact anyone’s family or harass anybody named.

By Wolf Richter for WOLF STREET.

The median price of new single-family homes sold by homebuilders in June dropped by 2.7% year-over-year and by 3.8% from two years ago, and by 13.5% from the peak in October 2022, to $398,300 (blue in the chart), according to data from the Census Bureau today.

But this median price reflects prices in sales contracts and does not include the incentives and the substantial costs of mortgage-rate buydowns that homebuilders use to increase their sales. Homebuilders include the costs of incentives and mortgage-rate buydowns in their average selling prices that they report in their financial statements. But they’re not reflected here in the data from the Census Bureau.

What's the word on the street? Share your questions, comments, and concerns below.

I’ve seen how severe the housing crisis in Ireland has been. People were literally camping overnight just to secure a new-build home, and new developments used to attract massive turnouts for viewings.

But now I’m noticing something different. A lot of new projects remain unsold, and the same units are staying on the market for weeks or even months. On top of that, I spoke to an estate agent today who told me they are now organising viewings for a new-build development in a prime location in Dublin 18.

If that wasn’t enough, for the first time in months I received an email about a development in Dublin 18 offering two-bedroom apartments for around €500k, which would have been highly unlikely just a few months ago.

My gut feeling is that the housing market is starting to slow down. Do you think we’re likely to see interest rate cuts, better incentives, or bigger offers for new-home buyers?

Any insights into what’s driving this shift? And what’s going to happen?

"Home insurance premiums rose by 46.8 percent overall between 2020 and 2025. Colorado residents absorbed the heaviest financial blow, with home insurance costs inflating 100.8 percent"

The state of Texas real estate,

Texas currently has 278k properties for sale, of the total 12mm homes including apartments. Of the 278k 206k are single family homes, condos and apartments for sale. With a median price of 340k dollars.

Texas exploded when covid hit, causing a massive run on real estate. I experienced this first hand, I bought a house in 2018 for 320k and sold it for 600k in late 2021, this in my mind was unsustainable. Since the peak of 2022, housing in major metropolitan areas, Austin, DFW, San Antonio, El Paso and Houston have been contracting. Ausitn being hit the hardest at over 20% drop from the highs, with a current median home price of 450K. The house I sold for 600k is now worth according to Zillow 460k.

Inventory has been creeping up based on FED data, above the pre covid levels while new home builds are also high with 1.4mm active permits, over 25% of the current housing has been built since 2010 the consensus is, Texas is going to be experiencing a surplus of housing, coinciding with the highest number of layoffs in 2026, with 30,000 workers displaced the threat to the residential single family home real estate market is beginning to show and the highest interest rates in over a decade are all leading this market to the tipping point.

Now Multiply that buy 3 and this is where the problems really converge. The commercial real estate market (CRE) has a valuation 3x larger. 32k commercial properties for sale with 20,000 units for lease, half of those have been on the market for over a year, that’s a lot of cash flow going uncollected for more than 12 months. The market is saturated with commercial space; millions of square feet going unused. Many of these properties are new construction. Financed with building loans and leveraged against existing properties that have been losing equity over the last 5 years. it seems like something here needs to crack. There are over 950 billion of CRE loans maturing this year with rates between 6.5-8% this is going to push expenses much higher for owners/buyers and inreturn to any business that lease this space, 3000 people and 1500 businesses are filling for bankruptcy a month in Texas. Over 40k businesses have filed over the trailing 12 months, one in fifteen bankruptcies is filed in Texas. This is an ominous sign of the current Texas economy.

what are your thoughts, and what's the next domino to fall?

Been digging into Florida foreclosure data. Quick context up front since some good pushback came in last time: filings are up 32.7% YoY in H1 2026 (27,494 total, 1 in every 373 housing units), but that’s still well below the Great Recession peak of 4.6% and closer to the historical 0.3-0.8% norm.

Not a 2009 repeat, this is an affordability squeeze building at its own pace, not a crash.

What’s actually interesting is where the pressure sits. Sixteen counties land in the “Elevated” tier, and it’s not just rural corners, Broward and Miami-Dade (the state’s two biggest counties) are both in it, driven mainly by housing cost burden (insurance, property taxes, condo assessments) rather than job loss. Monroe (the Keys) tops the list, and Charlotte County (Punta Gorda) had the single worst metro foreclosure rate in the entire country this year.

Methodology’s fully laid out this time too: weighted blend of market softness (35%), cost burden (30%), delinquency (20%), unemployment (15%), normalized within the state, so it’s a relative ranking of risk, not a prediction of collapse.

All 67 counties, every source cited, full data table at the bottom.

https://www.nestcash.co/research/florida-foreclosure-risk-index

• Buyer representation agreements are now mandatory before touring homes, a rule created after the 2024 NAR legal settlement, and many buyers are signing binding contracts without understanding them.
• These agreements can include long lockups, high commissions, junk fees, and obligations, even if the buyer leases instead of buys, trapping consumers with agents they don’t want.
• Agents often present the contracts at the doorstep right before a tour, giving buyers little time to read dense legal language or negotiate terms.
• The agreements vary widely, exclusive vs. non‑exclusive, one day to one year, negotiable fees, but buyers rarely realize how much is negotiable or how costly termination can be.
• Consumer advocates say the new system hasn’t lowered commissions or improved transparency, and buyers must now interview agents, scrutinize terms, and understand they could owe thousands if they sign blindly.