Sir, Thomas Reed (November 13th) suggests that a 20 per cent "cash" down-payment should be required from house buyers to reduce the upward pressures on house prices.
What he does not seem to understand is that the increase in prices is not fuelled in the main by "normal" demand from first-time buyers or eventual owner-occupiers, but by investors and speculators on the property market. His ridiculous suggestion, if enforced, would favour those cash-rich speculators and exclude even further those people who want to buy a house for the purpose which it is designed for - i.e. to live in. - Yours, etc.,
Blackrock, Co Dublin.