Getting Over Ourselves when it Comes to Housing

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Absolute rubbish - the OP has looked after their needs and are simply explaining some of the upsides and downsides.

You can do the same if you wish. Or like others, just moan on about how dreadful the housing market is and sit on yer hands. If/ when you reach older age, then you'll learn who made the best decisions in life. God helps those who help themselves.

Good for you OP. I'm a firm believer that the wheel always turns when it comes to things like house prices. Looks like you have taken on a manageable amount of debt.

Just adding to what you said : In their preferred location too

But if you waited a couple of years then Sinn Feinski and Putin before People will give you a 5 bed mansion with a garden for a trampoline next door to your parents. Just vote for them and you'll be sorted. And all for free because someone else will pay for it all.

Oh wait. I see you have a job. Sorry about that. You fall into the someone else definition. Empty your pockets like a good socialist there please.

Yawn.

FF & FG are great I agree, lets keep them in for another 100 years.

I would love to see how you calculated this?!

Fair play op but think it comes down to personal choice. Your commute & the lack of a spare room would be huge downsides for me.

Sounds like it worked out for you. If you didn't have a family home to move back into though you wouldn't have been able to save anything like that. And a 1 bed apartment is fine for your current circumstances, but if you were thinking of kids in the medium term a 1 bed apartment could be a very risky move. If prices fall dramatically like they did for the previous crash it could put you into negative equity and delay you being able to find a family home.

We bought in 2018 and thought we were buying at the absolute peak. But we weren't in a position to buy before and circumstances kind of dictated that we did need a place then so just bit the bullet and bought. I think a year later prices had come down by 1.6% or something after years of growth, so it was kind of confirmed that we had bought at the peak.

Then Covid happened and prices went nuts. A house two doors down from us sold for €130k extra that to me looked very similar in value to ours.

You just never really know when you buy what will happen. The one piece of advice I would give to someone is if you're thinking about a place make sure to consider if you'd be happy to still be there in 5 years. Because you might not have a choice and have to be. So if you're looking at a 1 bed apartment and thinking you could be married with kids in 5 years make sure to consider that the value could plummet in that apartment and you might find yourself tens of thousands worse off when looking for a new place than if you had kept renting. The reverse can also be true, but is it a risk you'd be happy to take?

"getting on the ladder" is not a flawed idea, nor do I think you understand the point of it.

The number one reason behind it is that it is better to be spending money on repaying a small mortgage (and thus building up equity) rather than just burning it on rent. Secondly, rather than trying to go from zero the a large house, that you buy something suitable for the interim. i.e. while single and/or no kids, that you buy a 1/2/3 bed and only buy the 3/4 bed 10 years later when you have the kids etc. You also benefit from getting the experience of owning a place and discovering what is and is not important to you before you take the plunge on buying the "forever home". Yes, should prices increase over that time, owning the smaller house will give you some padding in that regard, but that is more of a bonus feature, not the primary reason.

The huge problem facing people today trying to buy is that they are stuck in the vicious circle of it being difficult to save for a deposit while renting. Thus, it takes them longer to build up the deposit before they are ready to buy. Therefore, they end up renting for longer wasting even more money and so on. And because this drags on, instead of buying a small place in their 20's/early 30's, they are now still trying to buy in their late-30's/40's and have to go straight for the "family home" which costs even more and requires an even bigger deposit and the circle continues (except once they hit their 40's, the term of the mortgage they can get is constantly reducing).