Industry may never build 30,000 new homes

The building industry will likely “struggle” to build 20,000 homes this year and may never deliver the 30,000-plus new homes that experts predict are needed to fully meet demand, one of the country’s largest house builders has said.

However, Glenveagh Properties said that despite the supply constraints, it nonetheless expects house prices to settle closer to the rate of annual wage growth because it believes the Central Bank’s rules, which ration the amount of mortgages lending, will do their job by dampening house price inflation.