Softening house market?

How much should repayments be for 3 bed as a matter of interest?

Say for the sake of argument the first payment is 50:50 interest:principle, so they are paying 900 interest but paying 900 off the mortgage itself.

Also it depends on their take home pay. If their take-home pay is 3k per month, that is right, but if its 6k per month, then it's comfortable.

I am not surprised that we see more decreases than increases in the listed price. Why would anyone want to go back to renew a listing and increase the price unless maybe a sale has fallen through and it has to be relisted anyway? I think most people would just deal with the offers coming in and sell it to the highest bidder without going back to the listing, whereas if it turns out the asking price was too high or something comes up during the survey lower relistings are much more likely. Asking prices are not very realiable as a value indicator, and changes in same even less so...

Each house around us that is sold is being sold for higher than the last. I dont know anyone who has moved and is paying less rent apart from one couple who moved into a rent controlled apartment owned by a relative of theirs.

Monthly price movements:

July +1.0

August + 1.1

September + 0.6

October (just released) +0.4

As always discussed these are very lagged but finally the data looks to be cooling off after unexpectedly shooting higher in the summer months.

I take it these are finalised sales figures? So Octobers figures are probably for sales agreed in June/July?

Hope the trend continues!

I think some older houses at the lower end of the market will benefit from the recently expanded vacant property refurbishment grant where an FTB can get €30,000 (plus an additional €20,000 for structural works if required), and that's on top of the available SEAI grants as long as the house has been vacant for 2 years or more and you make it your primary residence afterwards. That is a huge amount of money and I can see how that will make those houses a lot more appealing to some.

I think a 50% drop is probably off the cards too, but a fall in prices in real terms is probably inevitable.

The population cohort that will be entering the market next i.e. current 20-30 year olds is significantly smaller than the current buying cohort of 30-45 year olds. As the absolute stock of houses is growing this can only lead to prices falling. This is unless net migration continues strongly to fill jobs that are mortgageable.

As an aside it's absolutely mad that we carry out a census every five years which predicts supply challenges in many sectors (e.g. the late noughties baby boom resulting in a current stress on secondary school places) but nothing ever seems to be done to prepare for it.

Yep, sounds about right.

Expect it to continue to trend down and should be showing flat/negative by early next year. But I made the same prediction in Spring 2022 when things were trending down and it took off again. So who knows!

Your graph does not indicate if or why a central bank would crash a market, it is just more fluff.

And what exactly will that do. There is probably 4+ areas that influence house prices.

Site costs yes a market crash could reduce these however that in itself would not significantly reduce house prices

Materials were expensive, however they have slightly dropped, but carbon taxes on building materials ( mainly effects steel and concrete) is going to keep increasing.

Labour costs are high at present but it hard to see them significantly reduce. There is a shortage of construction workers in Ireland and it's hard to see excess workers elsewhere which will significantly reduce prices

Regulations are adding cost all the time whether it's the concrete levy, planning, design, etc, unless we changevthe

If you don't like it don't read it. Plenty of other people appreciated the article being posted. It reflects the facts of what is happening on the ground in Sweden where there was a shortage of property just like there is in Ireland and interest rates are on a similar trajectory just with a time lag in the EU. Not sure why you believe I think Sweden is exactly the same as Ireland but there are similarities. Why would the fact that existing homeowners are on variable rates affect buyers who can avail of fixed rates?

He said "the fact that it seems that virtually all Swedish mortgages are variable and this is effecting...buyers" and I have asked why?

Prospective buyers are not on variable rates as you've stated, they can choose fixed rate products if they want. In any case I fail to see why this differentiates the Swedish market from the Irish market which is what he is implying - this is a feature of every property market - buyers can choose variable or fixed rate products - both are available in the Swedish market.

If both fixed and variable are available why are such a high percentage of Swedish buyers on variable rates?....

If the vast majority of Swedish buyers are on variable rates it very much does differentiate their market from ours...

You don’t see the correlation between such a high percentage of variable rate mortgages and property prices in Sweden at a time when rates are rising, and the benefit of a much higher percentage of fixed mortgages in Ireland? How can that be?