Homing in on a purchase: falling house prices, Budget changes tempt young buyers

MARTHA SALWA is Polish and has been living here six years. Last week, she signed contracts on a three-bedroom semi that cost €165,000 in the commuter belt town of Stamullen, Co Meath.

“I was buying on my own and couldn’t get a mortgage from the banks. So I applied to Meath County Council for an annuity loan that is available to FTBs on low income.”

A single applicant must be earning less than €50,000, joint applicants less than €75,000. After a six-month wait, she got a loan to the value of €160,000.

Working in a permanent job, she’d been putting money by for the last two and a half years and had savings of €12,000.  “It takes a long time to get approval,” she cautions. “I sent in all the documents in June. Final approval came in November.”

Single buyer David

Cassidy has been saving since he first started working 13 years ago. The 33-year old signed for his three-bedroom semi in Aylesbury in Tallaght on December 21st, paying €220,000 for the property.

Through mortgage broker Irish Mortgage Corporation he secured a 25-year mortgage of €160,000; the balance was paid from his long-term savings.

“My father passed away when I was young, so that makes you grow up fast,” the 33-year old explains. “I’ve been saving slowly and I’m now ready to settle down. I have a secure job and though I’ve been looking since 2008, house prices then were still too high. The house type I bought was selling for as much as €400,000 back then.”

It’s a big step for David, moving away from home but he’s not going far. His mother is only 2km down the road and she tells him that he can still come up for his dinner any time.

Susan Cunningham has

been househunting “on and off” since 2006. She started in earnest last August.

“At that point, my bank told me [the Government] was going to get rid of mortgage interest relief, which absolutely galvanised my search,” she says.

She has been saving for the guts of six or seven years and has managed to amass more than 10 per cent of a deposit.

She’s buying on her own, has a maximum of €200,000 to spend and had no trouble getting mortgage approval. She is in a permanent job and is looking for a three-bed Victorian redbrick in Dublin.

Susan almost bought in 2008, but she had to go to England for a year with her job. The 56sq m (601sq ft) three-bedroom house she had planned to buy in Inchicore had an asking price then of €301,000. That property is now on the market for €120,000.

She is now hoping to buy something measuring 80sq m (860sq ft) in size and in better condition.

Another thirtysomething has

been looking at buying on and off for the last two years.

She has mortgage approval in principle for approximately €210,000 and is looking for a property with character and original features in the Dún Laoghaire to Bray area.

The Government’s decision on mortgage interest relief wasn’t the driving force behind her decision to buy a property.

She wants to buy the right house for her - “a redbrick terraced property with wooden floors, original fireplaces and good acoustics”.

Married couple Yoav

Arkin and Paula Fay have more than €300,000 to spend, pending mortgage approval. They have been turned down once already, six months ago.

“We had plenty of savings, are both in secure jobs and had no other debts, but we had gone over our overdraft facility to the tune of €20 twice in three months,” Yoav explains.

The couple now keep a “buffer of a couple of hundred euro” in their current account to make sure this doesn’t happen again. “I see us as being homeowners before the end of 2012,” says Yoav. “It is very much a buyer’s market and offers that three years ago would have been considered silly are now being accepted. There are houses within our budget that we couldn’t have considered before.”

Their mortgage repayments will be similar to what they pay now in rent, Yoav says. “The budget changes to mortgage interest relief will make a difference of approximately €200 a month to us for the first two years of our mortgage repayments.”