Daft Property - Irish Property News

Looser Central Bank rules, generous Help to Buy grants for first-time buyers - but trader uppers are being left out in the cold... They paid too much for their home during the boom; their wages are stagnant; their mortgage is still underwater; they may have a cheap tracker but have ended up renting their own home and leasing another family friendly property at a hefty rent themselves. They’re the negative equity generation and now they want to trade up – but any help form the Government is going towards first-time buyers and not them. Why? It’s a question many people of a certain age may be asking themselves following last month’s revisions to the Central Bank’s mortgage rules. For first-time buyers, the requirement to have a deposit of just 10 per cent – or as low as 5 per cent on a new build thanks to the help-to-buy scheme – means getting the funds together to buy a first property, particularly in Dublin, has become a good deal easier. But what about second-time buyers looking to...

Rates wipe out benefits of decline in house prices... BENEFITS to first-time buyers from drastic falls in property prices are wiped out by sharp increases in mortgage costs, new research shows. House prices have dived by 40pc since 2007, which means potential buyers would need a much smaller mortgage. But a series of mortgage-rate hikes by all lenders mean that the cost of servicing even a small mortgage has shot up. Mortgage expert Karl Deeter accused banks of capturing most of the gains for potential buyers of lower prices by pushing up mortgage costs. Mr Deeter of Irish Mortgage Brokers looked at the cost of a 30-year mortgage for a €350,000 house at the top of the housing bubble in 2007. At that time buyers would have been able to get a good value tracker set at 1pc above the ECB rate. This would mean a borrowing rate of 2.25pc. The monthly repayments for this mortgage at the moment work out at €1,337, without factoring in mortgage tax relief. Mr Deeter said that th...