Stamp duty should be hiked to 100% to stop investment funds buying up whole housing estates, the Social Democrats have said.

The Dáil last night debated a Sinn Féin motion calling for stamp duty on the bulk purchase of homes to be hiked from 10% to 17%.

The Government has already agreed on a counter-motion – with Housing Minister Darragh O’Brien admitting that the current rate ‘absolutely’ needs to be reviewed.

The debate comes less than two years after the Government raised the stamp duty on the purchase of 10 or more homes from 1% to 10%.

Sinn Féin housing spokesperson Pearse Doherty told the house that the measures have not been effective – with figures showing that bulk purchasing by investment funds had actually increased in the years since.

Meanwhile, the Social Democrats argued that the issue was now leading to a surge in emigration.

Stamp duty

The party’s housing spokesperson Cian O'Callaghan told Newstalk that bulk purchase stamp duty needs to go far beyond Sinn Féin’s proposed 17%.

“What is needed is 100% stamp duty on the bulk purchase of homes,” he said.

“We think that would be a strong measure that would actually be an effective ban on this.

“It would mean that individual buyers then wouldn’t have to be competing with multi-million and indeed multi-billion-euro funds.

“Anything short of a strong measure like that and we are just going to see investment funds continuing to snap up homes.”

Houses in the Belcamp Manor estate in north Dublin. Image: Occu

Sinn Féin launched it motion after it emerged an investment fund recently bought up 85% of a new residential housing estate in Dublin.

The homes at Belcamp Manor are now on a the rental market for more than €3,000 per month.

Deputy O'Callaghan said the Government has failed to tackle bulk buying.

“We have had revelations in recent days of an entire housing estate being bought up by an investment fund,” he said.

“We were told by the Government a year and a half ago that they were going to stamp this out, that it wouldn’t happen again, and we have actually had figures in the last few days showing that the numbers of homes and houses being bought up by investment funds is actually increasing year after year.”

Housing

Minister O’Brien has defended the Government’s Housing for All policy.

He told the Dáil that the last stamp duty increase only came into force in May 2021 – while planning permission for Belcamp Manor was granted in 2019.