Can someone tell me how help to buy works

"New" basically means you're the first person to live in it. It could be bought from a new development, or a house you have built yourself. The process for buying both of these is very different from buying second hand, so there isn't much chance for ambiguity.

If it's not new, you get nothing. Rennovation doesn't count either.

https://www.citizensinformation.ie/en/housing/owning_a_home/help_with_buying_a_home/help_to_buy_incentive.html

That post was a bit tongue in cheel above but really that's what happened. My brother did it, he was one of the very first to avail of it. I'm talking first days of the scheme. 2016 or 2017, whenever it came out can't remember exactly. He had his 10% saved and a bit more, about 40k saved for a 380k house.

They then got the HTB grant, somewhere around 20k. He used most of the 20k HTB to top up his deposit and reduce mortgage but he could have used it as part of his deposit and kept 20k in savings if he wanted. He bought in the first sales weekend, they all sold out. The following weekend they were on sale again, magically up 20k on the weekend before. Same as the HTB amount.

This doesn't compute. If it's 5% of the purchase price at most, then you will never get €30,000, because that would require a house valued at €600,000, which would be ineligible for HTB as the upper limit on price for a HTB purchase is €500,000.

I did apply for help to buy and was approved for €30,000, but ended up not bothering as there are basically 0 eligible properties in Dublin. However, my understanding when I was looking into it was that you can use the HTB figure to fund your deposit.

I bought a home through HTB. In the beginning I was sceptical, because usually there is a catch.

There are 2 catches I found, the first is that yes, house prices on new builds magically went up by about 15/20k at the time it was introduced, it is what it is. Secondly, you have to live in the property for 5 years before selling, and you can't rent it out before the 5 years is up either.

At the end of the day, I hadn't anything close to a deposit for a house, barely 2k in the credit union, resigned myself to being a renter for life.

This almost looked too good to be true. Thankfully it all worked out, and now my mortgage is about €600 less per month than my rent was!

It's a bit of hassle with the back and forth with revenue, but worth it in the end.

I bought my house many years before any incentives such as HTB on the opening day of sales. I went back the next day to look at the houses and the prices had magically gone up by 20k overnight. Assuming HTB is the cause is just an assumption. There is so much demand and short supply that the prices will go up regardless.

Tbh, I think it is the fault of the HTB as a scheme, because it wasn't well designed. It's trying to do two jobs that don't always, or even regularly, line up. The reality is that new builds are, in general, going to be pretty expensive. All else being equal in terms of things like area and size, a new build will usually be built to a higher standard, with more modern finishes, and will therefore be more desirable and probably more expensive than a similar second-hand build. So if the goal is just to help FTBs get a foot on the property ladder, it's not much help to many, especially those living in urban areas (and a lot of FTBs will be younger professionals who will be working and living in these areas). In general, it would make more sense for people at the bottom to be buying older, cheaper places to get a start, and then trading up to something newer when they have more money.

Incentivising building could then be a completely separate issue. There's no reason to only incentivise new builds for FTBs. Families trading up, or elderly people who might be downsizing need new builds just as much as first-time buyers do, probably even moreso. FTBs are a limited segment of the market so incentivising new builds through them only is going to have a limited effect.

I don't think the Leitrim case is a good comparison though. You don't need to wait for a developer to build something for you, you can build yourself and HTB will work for that too; meaning that in more rural counties like Leitrim where more people will be doing their own builds, the HTB is a huge help, since the upper limit is unlikely to be a problem there.

All that being said, while I think HTB is a bad scheme from a public policy standpoint, and not very helpful for a lot of FTBs, if you are eligible for it and are looking somewhere that you actually can get a new house for under €500k, you'd be a fool not to take it. It's a huge amount of easy cash in hand. If you're getting potentially 30k tax free (not too hard if you're a working couple who have 5 years of taxes paid), that goes a huge amount either toward a deposit or just giving you a huge lump of extra savings to hang onto if you already had it sorted.

It's probably good to also have a 10% deposit, as this will give you some more flexibility in buying in case you end up not getting a new house. Even if you are 100% dead set on getting a new build though, regular savings will stand to you when applying for a mortgage, and you can often get lower interest rates if you contribute 20% of the value of the house.

If I was you, I'd either start talking to some banks or a mortgage broker about getting mortgage approval. You can apply with a few different banks and see what each will give you to try and get the best rate. If you get approval early on it will make it a lot easier to start shopping, since many sellers (for new or second-hand builds) will ask that you have your mortgage approval in place before agreeing to accept an offer.

Also, look for some solicitors in and around your area and ask them (either send an email or call) how much they charge for services needed to buy a house so you can get a few quotes and keep one on retainer. It will be good to have someone ready to go early so that you aren't scrambling to find one if and when you do find somewhere to buy.