BARTERING IS back in these cash-stricken times, they say, which is fine if you’re Thailand, swapping rice for oil with Iran, or seriously considering holding a clothes-swap to compare underarm deodorant stains with your friends.

The power of trade-ins to solve the problems in the housing market, or at least as the Minister for Finance put it, “to address the overhang of unsold properties”, hasn’t gone down too well among anyone whose life or living is paralysed by the glut of new housing stock, or those hoping for more robust stamp duty reform.

The ability of a builder to delay paying stamp duty if they take a second-hand home in part exchange for a new property presupposes two things: that builders would be happy to take a trade-in rather than simply clear units and that there is any real demand among existing homeowners to snap up the kind of houses and apartments that were lashed up at the apex of the construction bubble. (Apart from desperate downgraders, that is.)

The latest housing bulletin from AIB’s economic research team concludes that first-time buyers are unlikely to come to the rescue. For the average first-time buyer couple, they say, the fall in the cost of servicing a mortgage (thanks to ECB interest rate cuts) is greater than the chunks of disposable income eaten up by the supplementary Budget.

Although mortgage repayments may be falling as a percentage of net income, the percentage relates to a smaller amount of net income. Translated, this will lead to a fresh slump in house prices and deeper negative equity for existing homeowners.

The Budget, concludes the AIB note, “only adds to the current difficult housing market conditions”.

Great.