Coronavirus curse could be property market’s opportunity for change

While Covid-19 has created massive challenges and huge uncertainty for property markets in Ireland and elsewhere, it has also generated opportunities for change. Will we grasp or spurn those opportunities?

Construction costs look likely to soften over the next two years, due to a reduced pipeline of activity, so the SCSI has called on the government to embark on a major public sector housebuilding programme

In the dark days of the first lockdown, it was speculated in some quarters that property prices might fall anywhere between 10 and 15 per cent. There was also talk that housing output would fall substantially due to the impact of Covid-19.

Thankfully, neither of these has come to pass, as both the property and construction sectors – perhaps battle-hardened from previous decades – displayed a surprising resilience and adapted quickly to the drastically changed ...