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

As I have said many times before, this housing crisis we are living through is the result of govt action on a number of issues. There are many prongs to the crisis and there's no one silver bullet to fix it.

Allowing people in nursing homes to rent their homes out will help, but not on its own.

Are you sure public services haven't improved? There are a lot more services available now from when I was a child. Standards are very different now too. Care for the elderly and children have definitely improved.

The MNC workers add a small element of housing demand, while at the same time paying for all our services.

If we want to cut immigration, we can look at other areas which dont contribute financially to the state coffers, student visas, IPAs, non-skilled workers and so forth, but attempting to put a lid on MNC growth is a sure-fie way to push those companies out of ireland.

The MNCs need to be able to grow headcount in line with business demand.

If they cant do that here, they will move somewhere that allows them to run a successful business, talking all of the existing jobs in Ireland with them.

Behind a paywall, but if the article is saying that the scheme inflates prices, well everybody knows that.

The value of the scheme is that it enables young people to buy their first home, when otherwise they could not have afforded to do so.

As a first time buyer, I would prefer a home at 450k that I can afford with FTB support than a 400k home I cannot afford to buy without the supplement.

Without the scheme, more young people would leave the country as they cant put down roots and buy a home and more existing property owners would snap up those 400k properties instead.

I am not saying the scheme is perfect, but if you're stuck in Dublin paying 2.5k a month rent, it's very difficult to save a mortgage deposit.

This scheme helps bridge that deposit gap and enables young working people to stay in Ireland, through the attainment of home ownership.

I'd say inflating property values by 5% or 10% or so is fair price to pay for allowing our youth to remain in Ireland.

Then reduce deposit requirements for FTB and use savings to provide water and electricity to help increase supply

Win win

True, but outside of the Dublin region, which is still where most people live, the salary requirements are a lot lower.

I do know plenty of twenty somethings earning 60k+ in Dublin and a good amount of couples earning a 130k household income in the same age bracket.

Though as you say, the FTBs will generally be in their 30s and of course even more likely to be on 130k housiehold income.

Median age is 35 for an FTB in Dublin.

FTB didn't cause the crash last time out, they may have been some victims but certainly not the cause.

Its perfectly rational and justified to reduce deposit requirements in an environment where rent is often double mortgage repayments

One could argue that such a measure would deflate a bubble rather than cause one as you can still put a limit on price through LTI limits

That is a paranoid belief. It is much simpler to see that it is to prevent people going into negative equity. I know plenty of people who are landlords and nobody consulted them about bank lending rules. If you look back at all the changes made to landlords and bank rules very few favoured landlords but were at their cost

The aim of such a measure would be to cool house price inflation by removing ftb grant and use savings to provide the water/electricity infrastructure to increase supply.

5% inflation is much more manegable, but you need a catch up period to restore affordability for ftbs.

I know of no other investment that continually rises without some correction period. The forces that prevent corrections need to be removed

negative equity is not the end of the world.

The real reason we have such stringent lending rules is because banks cannot repossess non paying loans. 90% LTV Max is to protect banks not consumers

Sorry if this has been discussed recently but is there a bit of a change in the market recently? I'm in Galway city and seeing an increase in the amount of property for sale over the last month or so. I've also viewed two houses that were advertised 2 weeks ago that are in good locations and one has had just one bid of the asking price and the other has had no offers yet. I feel like 6 months ago they would be sale agreed at least 50k over asking.

That maybe, but the liklihood of the mortgage holder returning the keys to re-enter the rental market would be very slim

Replace the 10% deposit requirement with the state the guarantor for the 10%

Again the Loan to income limits are the highest risk to mortgage default. The deposit requirement is far less risky in the ftb segment

Using those figure from 2010 it would take 9 years to get out of negative equity and 10 years to get 5% increase you are talking about. During that time rents dropped and people did walk away from property and go back to renting. This was very noticeable on the help to buy program from the government.

Rents are restricted to a 2% in high demand areas so rent does not rise for those who already invested. The negative equity wasn't equal either so national figures distort things.

The belief vested interests are controlling things is paranoid. If you start with the belief you will find things to back it up by pointing to results you don't like. Actual evidence will not be found. As I said look back and see the legislation has rarely been a good thing for landlords

Ladies and gentlemen: your Sunday morning puzzle

How many occurrences of complete and utter state dysfunction can you identify in this story

And we're being sued over the million euro social homes