For anyone who says to you that the housing crisis that currently wracks the majority of the country is uniformly deleterious to society; says that unsustainable escalations in property prices have caused rents to rise to their highest ever recorded level - with no sign of this upsurge abating; says that the increased financial onus this has placed on thousands of people has driven many to become homeless, countless more to be wracked with persistent stress and anxiety, and some even to suicide; who says that all this has benefited no one, I want you to laugh in their face. Laugh in their face and tell them to open their eyes. Tell them that, yes, while the rampant corporate opportunism that pervades the property market has been nothing but detrimental to anyone looking to have the gall to demand such an extravagant luxury as a roof over their head, it is a truly thrilling time to be a large private rental company in this market. They are doing swimmingly in all this.
I-RES Reit, Ireland's largest private landlord, have announced that their profits have more than doubled in the opening six months of the year to 30 June. Cockle warming stuff. This massive increase in profits has primarily been driven by a 13% increase in net rental income.
It's reassuring to note that all sense of compassion and civic duty can quickly and effortlessly be shelved by people in these rental companies, seemingly without suffering any of the profound sense of gnawing shame and self-loathing that one would expect to be engendered by showing such flagrant disregard for the welfare of common people at the expense of corporate greed.
As a result of this increase in profits, they announced that they are planning on declaring an interim dividend of 2.6% per share for the period to shareholders. The company's CEO, Margaret Sweeney, said while, announcing the soaring financial performances, that "I-RES has delivered another strong set of results for the six month period to 30 June, achieving excellent operating metrics, underpinned by active property management and asset management, as well as further portfolio valuation uplift."
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Excellent to see that success in the property business comes at no cost to a person's basic ability to sound relatable and personable. She continued, "We continue to invest in the supply of apartments and houses for rent through a combination of acquisitions and build to let. Rental demand remains strong and the supply of residential accommodation remains constrained resulting in a combination of attractive yields and rental growth." In short she is essentially saying that the imbalanced situation where demand is far outstripping supply - by some margin - particularly given that many property companies in possession of land, prime for development, are retaining it without the intention of building on it solely to sell it on at its highest market valuation - means that they can currently continue to escalate prices without immediate fear of recrimination or a sudden devaluation.
Well, at least we all have a future to look forward to where we all huddle in shoddy, self-assembled log cabins hidden shamefully down the end of our parents gardens.
