High rents now seen as main barrier to owning a property — survey

The high cost of rent in the Republic is seen as the biggest hurdle to getting on the property ladder, a survey by consumer advocacy group Taxback.com has found. Nearly one-third of people (30 per cent) believe stricter rent controls would help first-time buyers striving to buy their own home because it would make it easier for them to save up for a deposit, while 24 per cent believed a loosening of mortgage lending rules would have a positive impact.

The next most popular option was a grant to allow first-time buyers refurbish old homes (16 per cent) followed by an extension of the Government’s Help-to-Buy scheme (16 per cent) and a property development-related measure to encourage the delivery of more new homes (14 per cent).

“There was a time when the Central Bank’s mortgage lending rules might have been viewed as the biggest challenge to those looking to get on the property ladder — but our survey shows that this is no longer the case,” Marian Ryan, consumer tax manager with Taxback.com, said.

“With the average asking price for a new rental in Dublin now standing at more than €2,100 a month — or €1,618 a month nationally — it is incredibly difficult for anyone renting to save up the deposit for a home,” she said.

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“Rental price rises hit an all-time high last August with the supply of rental properties here now at its lowest level since in 2006, according to the latest report from Daft.ie. The chronic housing shortage is only compounding the problem of soaring rents,” she said.

Ms Ryan also noted that while there had been calls for the mortgage lending rules to be relaxed, “giving people the capacity to borrow more might only serve to push prices up even further”.

“As Irish house prices are now as high as they were at the peak of the boom in April 2007, the Central Bank and Government will be reluctant to do anything which could further fuel house price inflation,” she said.

Taxback’s pre-budget survey of 1,500 people also sought opinions on a proposed vacant property tax to “incentivise the owners of vacant habitable residential properties to bring their properties back into use”. Some 60 per cent of respondents said they believed a vacant property tax would help boost supply.

A quarter (24 per cent) said they thought it might help in rural areas “but probably won’t make a big difference in cities”, while 16 per cent said they did not think it “fair to property owners as they should be allowed to leave their properties empty”.

“It is abundantly clear that people want action where Ireland’s housing challenges are concerned and that very few people believe that owners of vacant properties should be allowed to leave them idle in a country where so many are looking for homes,” Ms Ryan said.