Irish Property Market chat II - *read mod note post #1 before posting*

Older houses, especially corpo ones of a certain vintage all used cement roof tiles instead of slates.

Cement tiles last forever if fitted well

Wait for a home insurance company to call itself

Its for xcorpos pre 80's.ie

A spin off of the car insurance it's for women. Ie

I think the issue here is many just don't understand HTB.

Your first sentence is accurate, unfortunately the rest of the post displays how accurate the first sentence is.

As of November 2024 the first time buyer average mortgage drawdown was €319,161, up 24,000 on the previous year. This shows that the vast majority of ftb are finding homes in the 2nd hand market where there is little/no government interference. The vast majority are locked out of new homes market.

Several research papers on recipients of ftb grants have found that for a large proportion

A. They did not need it to purchase

B. They purchased or built a bigger home than they would have without the grant

Separately self build homes comprise close to 20% of total housing output. Many of these qualify for FTB grant. Should the taxpayer be subsidising land owners with 30k when they already have the site and most likely would build without the grant

From this we can conclude the beneficiaries of HTB are

People who already can afford to buy, landowners building on there own land, those in the top 10% of income earners and all those professions that extract income from housing supply, bare in mind that almost 50% of the cost of housing are soft costs

I was going to include those that purchase in low demand areas but I suspect the Grant is purely inflationary here and may be a trap for the buyer

In terms of affordability and housing supply, the FTB grant is about as useful as an umbrella during last Friday's storm

What could replace HTB?

State act as guarantor of 10 to 15% of the home price where the applicant(s) display savings or rent paying history that display ability to repay mortgage

Reduce up front costs (deposit) to 2 to 3% of the price

This would deliver the same or better impact to the ftb without the overall inflationary impact of the grant

We experienced the worst property crash in the world and research from that period showed that ftb's were by far the least likely to default following an extended period of 110% mortgages.

Those that did, the majority recovered with time

Reducing the deposit requirement to 4-5% for FTBs that meet income requirements would be a very reasonable move I'd think.

At no real cost to the state too, and with very little inflationary impact. But it would make things noticeably easier for young buyers.

I can understand this. There is also the ethical question of why they should pay taxes to fund a state that consistently works against their own best interests, or to fund pensions that they themselves will never have.

From someone who is currently trying to buy in Kilkenny as a single person its an absolute **** show at the moment over the last five years. Cheaper houses are up nearly 50K since Covid, house sold at 175K three years ago now 230k asking, houses at 200k now at 260k asking.

Lucky enough my rent is 750 for a small one bed apartment but if i somehow get evicted and can't get a place i'll be moving country.

Looking back (I left during lockdown) the worst aspect is/was the way EAs use the sellers-market as a licence to act complete A-holes rather than the out-of-control prices.

Poland also have a much bigger differential between property and population, they estimate they are short of 4 million units to house the people living there and its just as well Ireland had not got this discrepancy to begin with and its just as well Poland population is falling or it would be worse

https://notesfrompoland.com/2024/10/07/poland-records-eus-highest-house-price-growth-for-third-consecutive-quarter/

A whopping 69% of Ireland's 25-year-olds are still living with their parents

https://jrnl.ie/6606062

Unless you have family help to buy a house or wish to delay growing up by staying at home into your mid 20s, the housing crisis in Ireland is not worth fighting. Emigration is the better option. RTE News had interviews with young people on Instagram about emigration and lots of bright youngsters giving their opinion that they were going to emigrate because of the lack of opportunities. It really shows how the country is only thriving for home owners while those that rent or live at home see the country as failing. Sad to see so much of the money in the last 2 decades wasted on propping uo the housing market rather than developing the country to become a more liveable, modern and sustainable place to call home; it does feel like the place is one financial crisis away from being back in the early 00s in terms of how it has evolved and developed; strip away the Googles and Facebooks; as well as the many expensive meals out and the problems in education, healthcare, infrastructure and housing will suddenly highlight two lost decades.

All of the options here are stomach churning. Housing completions, dont even matter that much, affordability is massive… If wages are poor here, property prices eye watering and you lose fifty percent of your salary, over a nothing threshold, this will slow down the return of irish citizens, back to the state…

Most emigration was traditionally to the UK, later on to continental Europe, and when long term residential visas were easier to get, US, Canada or Australia.

Most of the people "emigrating" are really going on 1-2 year holiday visas and to countries which have huge residential property crises of their own. So they come back in the end, potentially with a bigger deposit than they might have saved here. Yes, a few do stay but I'd say the bulk of 20-somethings going on a holiday visa won't qualify for long term work visas. The age related thing too does mean you have to go before you hit 30 or 35 or not at all. I remember looking into it when I was younger but the cost to me at the time was completely prohibitive, there was just no way I could have done it back then. One thing I do notice is that a lot of entry level salaries still start low here and take a long time to creep up. Anybody who doesn't job hop every 2 to 3 years has a good chance of being left behind on a salary they'd never buy anything on, so it might be just as attractive to go somewhere where salaries are double or more what you might get here, and there's nice weather and living conditions to go with it.

Its often single people too, as single people are far harder hit here than couples with 2 incomes would be when it comes to housing.

Hang on a minute... its not the same. Those other countries, have proper infrastructure for a start and you don't lose half your income over a nothing threshold. The latter being a massive factor... you are getting seriously cosmopolitan cities, Dublin is anything but...

Also getting a room or place to rent in Dublin is nigh on impossible, I don't believe for a minute, its anywhere near as extreme even in other places with housing issues, which is everywhere the majority of our immigrants are going... but I'd love to see proper break down on like for like rents, Dublin v Melbourne etc and pay, and net income...

70% of 25 year olds live at home with their parents in Ireland today. This is an abject failure of modern Irish society and you can talk of corporation tax, high earners and high house prices but for these people living at home well into their 20s, that is an utterly depressing place to be. From relationships to cutting the apron strings, the country is nurturing a generation of adult babies and this will have profound impacts on things like the future birth rate (immigrants will need to replace home born children) and provision for retirement.

Max marginal rate is around 52% iirc