Mortgage question

The way i see it....The idea of a mortgage is the bank owns the property till its paid back ( + interest unfortunatly), so they are guarenteed to get paid back

if the property is worth less then the mortgage the bank is in trouble if you stop making payments

Not quite, you need life assurance assigned to the bank to get a mortgage

If you die after buying the house then the insurance pays off the mortgage and your next of kin gets the house mortgage free

I see your point though, loaning below the agreed price gives the bank insurance against negative equity and also reduces the debt burden on the buyer (theoretically)

Great explanation, I would also add that it's possibly a way to encourage the construction of more efficient homes rather than keeping the older G rated homes going

I suspect it's also (in theory) a way to tackle house price inflation in urban areas. I know location is a factor but I really cannot see how some Dublin house prices are justified, considering a lot of the houses would probably need a deep retrofit

By making newer builds more accessible then it makes second hand houses less desirable

Of course the problem with that is that it'll just push people into the suburbs. Apartments are covered by the scheme but we only seem to build apartments to rent in this country

And as @JohnnyChimpo said, it plays pretty well into developers favour. Certainly a good way to keep the construction industry chugging along, especially given they seem to have great difficulty actually building houses based on the amount of complaining they do