Housing supply tracker

Line up supply (completions, vacancy, planning) against prices and rents for one area over the same years. It reports indicators side by side; it does not model demand or need.

Related projects: One Million Homes (Rob Cass, Edward Dixon), House Price Ireland (Unknown), EireEstate (Evegny Koltsov). Not affiliated; see ../_shared/inspirations.md.

Calling the tools

Steps name each operation as source/operation (e.g. cso/cso_get_data), using the typed tool name as the operation. On the default surface, run it with ireland_call, for example:

{ "source": "cso", "operation": "cso_get_data", "args": { "table_code": "NDQ05", "filters": { "TLIST(Q1)": ["20251", "20252"] } } }

If an argument shape is unclear, call ireland_describe with { "source", "operation" } first; it returns the schema and an example. search, fetch and nearby are top-level tools. If the server was added with ?toolsets=<ids> or ?toolsets=all, the typed tool can be called directly with the same args.

Tables

Steps

1. Name the area. Call ireland_resolve_place with the place, a council, an LEA, or lat/lon for an address. Keep the exact local authority and LEA names (e.g. "Galway City Council", "Galway City West"). NDA05 labels LEAs as "<LEA>, <council>" (e.g. "Galway City West, Galway City"); ireland_resolve_place accepts that form too. To list a council's LEAs, pass "list": "lea".
2. Codes. Call cso/cso_get_table_metadata for each table and note the area's category code (local authority codes look like "2ae19629-...") and the latest periods.
3. Completions. cso/cso_get_data on NDQ05 (or NDA05 for an LEA) filtered to the area and the last 8 quarters or 5 years. Sum quarters into calendar years only when all four are present.
4. Vacancy. cso/cso_get_data on VAC14 (or VAC15) for the area: vacant dwellings, dwelling stock and vacancy rate.
5. Rents. cso/cso_get_data on RIQ02 with all bedrooms ("-"), all property types ("-") and the area's Location code, for the same years.
6. Prices. ppr/ppr_price_stats for each year (from/to), once with "property": "new" and once with "property": "second-hand". Each result also reports new_count and second_hand_count.
7. Pipeline (optional). planning/planning_stats with { "council", "from", "to", "min_units": 1 } gives the exact number of applications proposing homes and the units they propose, computed by the planning service. units_recorded shows how many applications filled in the unit count. Some councils leave it blank or enter 0 for every application, so report a total of 0 units as unknown. planning/planning_search lists individual applications. These are applications, not permissions or homes.

8. Ranking across LEAs (optional). Let ireland_query do the ranking on the server instead of pulling every row. For example, completions per 1,000 residents for each LEA in a council:

   { "tables": [
       { "alias": "leas", "source": "cross", "operation": "ireland_resolve_place", "args": { "place": "Galway County Council", "list": "lea" } },
       { "alias": "done", "source": "cso", "operation": "cso_get_data", "args": { "table_code": "NDA05", "filters": { "TLIST(A1)": ["2024"] } },
         "steps": [{ "filter": ["Local Electoral Area", "contains", ", Galway County"] },
                   { "derive": { "lea": "trim(split_part([Local Electoral Area], ',', 1))" } }] } ],
     "steps": [{ "join": "done", "on": ["name", "lea"], "normalize": true },
               { "derive": { "per_1000": "round(value / population_2022 * 1000, 2)" } },
               { "select": ["name", "value", "population_2022", "per_1000"] }, { "sort": "-per_1000" }] }

   Show the full list, not just the top or bottom. To roll LEAs up to a county, list the county's LEAs with ireland_resolve_place ("list": "lea") rather than guessing from council names.

9. Rents by LEA are not available. RTB rents in CSO (RIQ02/RIA02) are by county, town and neighbourhood, not LEA. Report the town or county rent and say it is not an LEA figure.

Output format

Illustrative layout; the values are examples, not data.

## Galway City Council: supply and prices
| Year | Completions (NDQ05) | Vacancy rate Q4 (VAC14) | Avg rent (RIQ02) | Median sale (PPR) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Sources
- CSO tables NDQ05, VAC14, RIQ02 (CC BY 4.0; RTB data hosted by CSO); PPR data as of DATE

Rules

• Follow ../_shared/citations.md and its PPR caveats.
• Completions are ESB connections, not planning permissions or commencements; vacancy is based on low electricity use. Say both once.
• No statements that an area "needs" a number of homes; that is outside these data.
• PPR new-home prices exclude VAT.