Softening house market?

The luck is really just in the timing working out. I had about 3.5 years salary as a deposit too, saved over the previous 10 years, so that helped. If the timing didn't work out I would have emigrated. It really came down to a decision in 2012, stay and buy or move off somewhere else.

Is it more wealthy? Wages etc seemed lower than here, obviously currency fluctuates all over the shop

Wise words but why would this cause a drop in house prices?

If anything it would cause a rise

But isnt it likely that higher rates will affect employment levels/demand too? What proportion of demand is coming from councils?

Lagging indicators. You will see it fall more in the coming months. Rates are shooting up.

Those are probably trader uppers. Remember if you have your mortgage mostly paid off then you are only paying the difference between your sold house and your bought house. I know lots of people moving now because the place (usually nice apartments) where their house is has started to be flooded with rentals or social houses. I visited one last Christmas and you can definitely tell that the apartments around them have all been rented. Its like white flight in America all those years ago, but obviously not about colour. More about people getting away with being anti social and nothing for it but a move to a more expensive area.

If I listened to the so called experts on boards.ie such as propqueries etc I wouldn't have bought my first house in 2016, and wouldn't have sold and traded up in the middle of covid in 2020. It worked out better than I could have imagined. If you were take the advice on boards.ie you'd never buy a house as the next crash is always just around the corner supposedly.

Ive a better one. I told all my friends not to buy because there was a crash coming from 2002 to 2007. They all ignored me. the crash came just as i predicted (for 5 years :)). I didnt buy. I was smug for probably a decade.

I still dont own a property. Ive been predicting a crash for about 6 or 7 years at this point.

What have I learned.

1 - I know nothing. I am just guessing and will be right by fluke eventually. Noone posting in a forum knows anything either. Its just fun banter like football or boxing talk in the pub.

2 - Anyone I know who bought even at the height of the boom is so much better off now than those who didnt. They are sitting in a house/apartment, out of the rent spiral and with a low mortgage over half finished. In another decade or so none of them will have a mortgage and i will be paying rent.

3 - even the ones who bought studios or 1 bed apartments are better off than i am at this point.

4 - I now firmly believe that you get out of the rent cycle the minute you can, even if its buying a 1 bed apartment with an extra hours commute. At least your destiny is in your hands.

5 - I have now watched each minister for housing make the whole thing worse every time. And each successive minister is a bigger tool than the last gobsh!te.

6 - When anyone trades up they are just paying the difference in the prices of where they are selling and where they are buying, so its easier than buying for the first time. All these 700k+ houses you see being bought are probably being bought by people selling a 500k or 600k house. There would be very few that expensive that are FTB bought.

what difference does it make if they are trading up or buying from scratch

if they are trading up from a paid off mortgage then they will be limited in what they can borrow by their age and who say 20 years into a mortgage is in a position where they need to trade up from an apartment to a house or a smaller to a bigger one

they are still paying 750k for a basic enough gaff, well over 1 million when you factor in mortgage interest

I 3 bed house near me was bought new in 2020 for €490,000 it's on the market now and has an offer for €700,000... the world is fooked.

plenty are putting their houses up for sale and then backing out when they can't find a place, they are serious about moving, know 3 different people locally

its no different from last year, not much different from 2019-2020 when covid made it very hard to move

There were say 70 houses for sale in an area with 70k people in it, same with rentals, 3 -4 pages in myhome, at one stage 7 4 bed properties in total

people aren't bidding up houses for the laugh like they were in 2007, if you need a home you have very few choices