Irish Property Market chat II - *read mod note post #1 before posting*

Wait if u can…if rent is below market, and there is no urgency to buy…dont make an emotional decision ! High interest rates, peak property prices impose lot of risk..but if u are in urgent need go for it

Wrong thread.

And imagine if you were 40 years old and just getting older and watching the property prices the last few years hoping they would go down so you could buy. You would be in a right crap situation then. Instead you would have been watching your allowed mortgage term getting less, interest rates getting higher and prices running away from you and your rent was going up. Instead you are in your own house that may go down in value but you are stable. No rent or possibility of being told the landlord is selling, probably fixed mortgage rate, term of your mortgage reducing while being paid off, and so much space.

My Dad used to say the minute you can afford it buy somewhere for yourself to live even if its a one bed apartment or a shed. Get out of the rat race and then you can trade up or build up at your leisure without being stuck at the whims of the rental market.

I took this advice and started with a 1 bed apartment. Now in a house with no mortgage left.

My brother did the opposite. He is 45 now and himself and his wife and child are living in a 2 bed house for over €2000 per month. They have no savings and could not afford to buy at todays prices. He still thinks there will be a crash, so wouldnt buy anyway. They spent the last 10 years waiting for their predicted crash. He wanted to move into my apartment before I sold it and I told him no, that I needed to sell it to pay off the mortgage on our house. HE was disgusted and tried to make me feel guilty that he didnt benefit from my good decisions. tbh if i let him move in he would have expected cheap rent which i would have had to pay tax on and then it would also have effected the value of the place to sell. But he would have never moved out then, so i did the right thing for myself even if he is pissed off at it.

If you say so. But I think I know how long my brother was expecting a crash for.

Ten years ago prices had just started to rise. Anyone expecting a further crash from the effective bottom was insane.

There were still plenty on here, or course.

I think I know what conversations I was having with my brother at the time. Or at least I remember them better that people who werent there with us.

I was telling him to buy as we had been at the bottom already. He was saying it was a dead cat bounce and all that sh!te. He couldnt handle the fact that he had mistimed the bottom and so continued, right on until today to say the crash is coming. Its too late for him now though. He has hit and passed the age where things only get harder when buying a place to live.

His rent was much cheaper then too, so it was even easier for him to wait for his expected "crash" even if it didnt come. Nowadays though he has a big problem waiting.

As you say, Boards is full of the same thought process.

For the majority of young buyers who had become accustomed to 5 yrs of doom and gloom, the certainty you speak of may have been as obvious as the certainty you have today.

Can you be certain about the property sector?

The only thing I would like to flag about this approach of buying anything you can is that in the current market it is very difficult to trade up without first selling your own house. Most estate agents won’t even entertain an offer from someone who isn’t at least sale agreed on their own property. I think people need to keep this in mind when purchasing as it’s often glossed over.

Yes its been like that for a couple of years now. Most people usually are sale agreed or close to it now when they are trading up.

Yeah no one knows what way property prices are going to go but you can make a very educated guess based on history and on the information at hand.

All markets are cyclical. Property prices have been on the up for the last 10 years with a hiccup of 2 months back in 2019 where they dropped. We have seen Dublin house prices drop month on month for the last 6 months for the first time in over a decade. We are facing into at least another 2 interest rate hikes before July. We can see these interest rate hikes have trumped our acute supply and ravenous demand issues. So educated guess time - if rates are going higher prices are going to drop further while the current paradigm exists.

Having said that there are other factors locally and globally that could impact property prices like world war 3 breaking out, further contagion of the banking mess in the states, another corona virus, a reunification of the country, the Shiners getting power, a ramping up of modular homes being built, further job losses in the IT sector, a huge drop in corpo tax, or mass emigration from our under 30s who have more or less been locked out on getting on that first step of the property ladder, that is just a few areas I can think of off the top of my head that could all have differing effects on property prices.

Well Dublin prices over the last 6 months would suggest your theory is wildly off the mark. These rate rises its not just people looking at the market going prices are going down lets wait, in a lot of cases they will be locked out of the market by the banking stress tests and affordability. People on here I think are underestimating the caution that will be the priority of all banks globally when lending after the likes of Credit Suisse and the shed load of US banks that found themselves in the sh1tter. I don't think there will be any appetite either publicly or politically for any Irish bank if they find themselves back in the same situation after the last crash so the banks here really have to step carefully. Even the BPFI mortgage drawdowns are showing mortgage approvals are down.

Property prices are dropping?

Few houses in desirable areas have popped back (relisted) at reduced price. Some changed agent of course, when reducing price.

I see two houses near me, both these houses have been previously advertised and now still for sale but weeks later not showing up online. Why is that? Skewing the numbers.

Another one similarly was for sale last year, then went off radar for few months, now back for sale.

They reckon prices are dropping this year....I don't see any evidence of it, not in Dublin anyway.

There must be a lot of cash in the country because the young people I see at viewings,versus the sale agreed prices, just don't seem equal.

Saw a house on Saturday, it's currently 200,000 over asking, and honestly it's far from perfect. Where is the money coming from? Older generations handing out money?

No one is reckoning the facts are 6 months of price drops in Dublin as per the property price register and 3/4 months of prices drops nation wide. This is an average some properties will be more desirable than others