Daft Property - Irish Property News

The 10 new rules for first-time buyers... 100 per cent mortgages are gone, so are long-term loans – and the easily-flipped starter home is a thing of the past... WITH HOUSE prices down by as much as 50 per cent, property has never looked as affordable – or has it? While prices may have plummeted, people’s incomes have also been slashed, due to a combination of higher taxes, pay cuts and the disappearance of discretionary income such as bonuses, while getting a mortgage has become more difficult as banks tighten up their lending practices. Nevertheless, the collapse in prices means that first-time buyers are slowly coming back to the market. But what lessons should they have learnt from the crisis? 1 ASKING PRICE NOT SALE PRICE What’s a house or an apartment actually worth these days? In the absence of official sale price data and with estate agents prevented from publishing prices (house prices are covered by the Data Protection Act) it is difficult to find out what is is really happen