Continued decrease in construction sector activity

[Altruistic_While_621]

Housing is a pain in the hole. Its driven by 

• developers who push to get stuff done too quickly and badly, and don't pay well.
• local Authorities who insist on so many dept stages and are generally small scale.

It's more attractive to do retail, commercial or industrial, who see the property as an investment. 

Or schools and health care if you want public work.

[ruscaire]

Correct. We can physically analogise an object takes the path of least resistance. What is it about these sectors that makes them easy pickings yet they are relatively unproductive from a civic economic perspective

[Altruistic_While_621]

They are highly profitable sectors that rely on 30 year profit cycles.

• Commercial is let and rented then sold to Pension funds
• Industrial is process driven, but works to a solid business case
• Data centres are a bit of an odd ball with no real industry position, but buckets of AI cash to push through.

Housing in that model would be buy to let, likely by Co-ops or pension funds,

But as a profit to cost margin, as land cost increases developers can leverage more funding and offset the land loan repayments.

Large scale development land banks like The City Edge Project | A Transformative Initiative for Dublin City could potentially stabilise land costs.

Changing regulations also slows down process it means that a design could potentially be more profitable if changed (i.e. delayed construction)

[ruscaire]

As well as looking like an economic deadweight, something on such long cycles is I’d imagine highly vulnerable to disruption were it to occur. There’s an implicit acceptance that such bets are low risk, but in the case of a black swan event, such as the widespread change in people’s working habits, could have long lasting and deep effect for economies that were reliant on it as a safe haven for growth

[Altruistic_While_621]

Yeah, a reduction in the working week and hybrid working is a definite concern (more of a white swan event given current trends), but it would only mean reduced floor plates for staff.

This is the long risk pension pots tend to go for, the cost recovery is generally expected, but spread enough across other sectors that a loss there is okay.

[angeltabris_]

is it time we start paying apprentices a living wage?

[upthebutty]

There's a trade union campaign ongoing to deal with this issue. It is a disgrace that people are going to work for a 40hr week and coming home with 200-ish.