Softening house market?

Say you see your dream house in 5 years time. Say someone elderly in your family needs to move in with you and you need to build an extension. Say all your kids move out and you want to downsize. Then imagine you have 25 years left on a massive mortgage in each of these situations. If you are Johnny stacks of cash then sure maybe it wont matter as much. If the market has tanked you can service the loss / extra costs and it won't matter when you bought. I'm guessing though as Ive never been in a money is no object situation. To me it would matter and matter a lot.

I see what you are saying though. Right now you could be paying more for rent than a mortgage. A side effect of our pathetic government and the opposite situation to the run up to the last crash. There is luck involved too for sure. It'd be a sh!t situation to feel you are railroaded into it at the wrong time perhaps due to a crossroads in your life. E.g. wanting a stable home to start a family.

I appreciate it could be a touchy/emotional subject (not saying thats you) but from a purely logical viewpoint I just cant wrap my head around how people can say it doesn't matter when you buy if its your forever home and dont think I'll ever see it that way. Its the biggest financial decision of a lifetime for most people (who arent loaded) and will have a massive say in how much freedom they have to move house in future and their % of disposable income if they buy at the top of the market.

There was a covid frenzy of activity mid last year to early this year that people are discounting, when people were still not sure when covid might strike again and were clearly willing to go a bit wild to get business done. I think that element is gone from the market now too. It doesn't help that it only takes 2 or 3 people to bid against each other and set the entire market value of the housing stock but that is the unfortunate reality.

I totally disagree with this mentality. Have you seen the rental market at the moment ? We have a slack channel at work which is dedicated to new employees at our company looking for accommodation in Dublin. People are almost begging for accommodation! It doesn't matter what you want 5 years from, if you don't have a roof over your head at the moment.

Not following what you mean here by mentality. I was debating if you could buy a house you dont plan to sell at any point between the bottom and top of the market does it matter when you buy? Are new hires a part of that debate right now? I suppose they are if they can get mortgage approval. So what do you think? Should a new hire in Dublin buy a property now or wait?

It will be an interesting first qtr next year for sure.

I think you’re correct about misinformed sellers, what they aren’t realising is that exemptions would carry people into the 4x salary range at the start of the year if they could show capacity to pay anyway. Anyone saving to buy now at the 4x range still has to show the banks 6 months of statements / savings showing that they have capacity to repay and pass the stress tests. Personally, I think interest rates increasing trumps everything else.

The only other reason for an agent to log in and increase the asking price would be agents looking to make any bids over the asking more visible to increase buying sentiment.

New builds stopping also has the effect of less work for people in construction. Not great for the economy and if the effect is large enough, it might also result in foreign construction workers going home, or Irish workers heading abroad

Wouldnt that mean there would be more houses available for rent? also less people interested in buying? so it would mean lower prices again. Just wondering.

It would be a factor that would work against the effects of low supply. Maybe not enough to cancel it out, but my point is that it would at least counteract it a little. Some will argue about the difficulty of getting tradesmen for maintenance work, but if people are tightening their belts then they might delay getting some jobs done.

Generally a slowdown benefits those with cash because they can finance jobs easier and have less worry about regulations. Therefore it more likely that refurbishment's, extensions, replacement kitchen and bathrooms will become more appealing to tradespeople. As well there is less time waiting for you payments on smaller projects

Government intends to get 15k modular homes build this will suck in a certain amount of labour. LA's will probably step up doing complete refurbishment's.

While there will not be a flood of workers leaving the country a trickle can make a difference. Lads going to the UK or labour from Eastern Europe returning home. As well you will get trades people reducing hours. No more 50+ hour weeks. Price local work a bit cheaper to avoid long commutes

You could see a switch from larger city projects to smaller urban and rural projects which may be affordable for those with these projects.

And how many properties have you bought with that tactic

It's the last gasp rush of people trying to buy before the Maklouf “modest” increase in house prices coming in January, along with the certain interest rate increases - get those drawdown fixed interest rates locked in today!!

This is why the loan is set to a ratio of your means and security. Same with all loans.

I suspect the question is it really is ever a good idea to buy at the top of the market. That still comes down to how much you want something and the availability of it and your ability to afford it going forward.

For some it will be worth. Others it won't be.

Agreed. However the following 20/30 years depend on when you decide to have a bank set your payments. Like I said previously of course the more money you have the less chance of a bigger mortgage going tits up but I assume when posting here we are generally speaking about everyone who can get approval for the loan required. Just because you can doesn't mean you should.

No one can see the top of the market or the bottom until it's long gone by.

My mentality has completely changed in the last 6 months. It's not worth waiting and hoping for a crash if you can buy now. Just suck it up and buy a house you'd be happy to live in 10 years from now, come what may.

Let's be honest, for many the alternative is risky renting and potentially putting your life on pause, or emigration.

Housing fell 10% year on year from 2008 to 2012. That won't happen this time. Too much demand, too much savings, too little supply and too few alternatives.

That could have been the dream. An Ireland where property prices increased at 3 or 4% per year. Just think about that for a moment. A fair shot for all no matter when they need to buy a home. Then think about cnuts like Bertie who fvcked it all up and lads like him who are still at it right now.