Just when agents are wondering how many more years are left in the lucrative first-time buyers market, along comes a whole new tranche of buyers with good savings records and hefty deposits.
Welcome ye overseas buyers - whether you're Polish painters, Czech carpenters, Slovakian slaters or Filipino nurses. Agents are rapidly learning how to spell a lot of unfamiliar names, as foreign workers pile into the property market, realising that there is no future in long-term renting with interest rates so low. Not surprisingly, the lending institutes are welcoming these new customers with open arms, particularly as many come with healthy deposits, steady jobs, and a reputation for being disciplined about repayments. With over 350,000 immigrants into Ireland over the last five years, there's bound to be knock-on effect in the market says Ken MacDonald whose agency, Hooke & MacDonald, has noticed an increase in sales to foreigners. The new buying power of the Eastern European has only emerged in recent months, in price sensitive areas such as Tallaght, Clonsilla and Ashbourne where last weekend alone Sherry FitzGerald sold around 80 houses, many of them to about half a dozen different nationalities who were obviously taken by the low starting prices of €264,995 for two-bedroom townhouses. Suburban landlords renting to people from all over the globe need not worry just yet . . . the trend is for these workers to rent for at least 12 months before they start wanting their own front door.
It's been three long years since the Spencer Dock apartments were launched in a flurry of excitement with TV cameras standing by to record the queues of people waiting to put down their deposits. Then, silence and more silence. Until earlier this year, when work actually got underway on the Treasury-CIÉ site on the north quays. Still, most of the building effort has been concentrated on the office element of what is the city's largest urban renewal scheme. However, the first of the apartment blocks are also beginning to appear over ground, but the first residents will not be moving into until, earliest, Easter 2007. That must surely make it the longest lead-in time for any development in this country but the way the market is going, deposit holders who are still hanging in, will get a bargain in the end. The original selling prices started at €290,000 for one-beds and from €350,000 for two-beds. This is already looking extremely cheap, given that most of the two-beds now coming on the market in the city centre seem to be starting at around €500,000. Those who opted out of the scheme wouldn't have been stopped by Treasury, as in some cases they proceed to flick on the same units at over €100,000 above the original price.
Anyone looking for three-bedroom houses at €151,000 or apartments at €113,100 might encourage first-timers to hurry off to The Property Path, a sales office for affordable housing, being opened today by South Dublin County Council in its County Hall in Tallaght, with deputy mayor Karen Warren and Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government Dick Roche doing the honours.
The idea for a dedicated sales office was inspired by misconceptions about affordable housing among first-time buyers, in particular the confusion between privately-owned affordable housing and local authority housing. Visitors to The Property Path can see which housing developments are coming up soon, find out how to qualify and apply for the scheme there and then. Just now there are four different developments in Clondalkin, Lucan and Tallaght with 90 units between them, available to qualifying candidates.
