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

Few tips I can give you having gone through a torturous purchasing process over multiple years.

• Try get to know some estate agents as quickly as possible. ‘Off market’ sales were almost always the best value we saw. It’s hard to get on their ‘list’ of off market buyers without showing you’re serious on a few houses initially. Once you’re on, you’ll start seeing some great houses with much less competition.

• Houses sold without estate agents must be less than 1% of the market. You’re looking at far too small a pool of houses. I’d forget this completely.

• Don’t be afraid to be the second highest bidder on a house, especially if you’re not 100% convinced on it. A significant percentage (20%+ id estimate) will fall through. If it does fall through and comes back to you at a price you were willing to pay. Don’t get too smart about it. We lost a house over this saying we’d drop our offer to asking price as the other bidder wasn’t legit. Seller put it back on market again. We bid asking but after a few weeks we ended up bidding about €100k over what we were offered the house for and still didn’t get it. Still kick myself to this day over being a smart arse.

• Estate agents are sneaky, don’t trust a word they say about ‘sellers want a quick sale’ etc. all that is just salesspeak. But they’re overwhelmingly not crooks and if you get too transfixed on that every one trying to rob you, you’ll be miserable. Sales tactics to draw higher offers from you are real. ‘Fake bids’ are a figment of the imagination of disgruntled outbid buyers. I was one of them. But take 5 mins to think it through and you’ll realise they make no sense. Be courteous throughout, but give away as little info as possible.

• Biggest one. Get it over with as quick as you can. Life’s too short to waste years trying to buy a house. It’s fun at first, but gets miserable over time. If I could go back in time, I’d happily have paid an extra €50k or more earlier in the process while we were still excited about the whole thing. The mental torment we went through for two years bidding was more painful than the money. In the end, it was relief and not the joy it should have been.

• Especially for you. The interest on your mortgage will be roughly half your rent. So you’ll save nearly €15k a year by buying. This time next year the 5 year fixed will probably be at least 1% higher. So your interest repayments will be c.25k more in the first 5 years. So you’d need a €500k house today to sell for €460k this time next year to be exactly the same financially. The maths is against you there.

Best of luck.

I was also considering buying. I decided to hold for a bit, there are more and more signs to stress in the housing market and recession.

Your question on avoiding EAs is odd as your reasoning is you want to get house cheaper....remember seller wants to get max price...

Anyway, my situation may be different to you since Ill likely just buy with cash, mortgage rates getting too high. But Id still consider holding.

Thanks a lot DataDude. I feel much less lost after reading your post, and will most likely refer back to it until I understand the tips by heart.

We will make sure we won't stay that long (+2 years) in the market, we need to provide stability to our kids, if needed we will indeed go with slightly more expensive/less value than our favorite sales from the price register.

No problem, you’ll be fine. You know what you want to buy, you know what that costs and you are able to afford it. You’re in a far better situation than most

I think its a bit of both. Private people who don’t want 30+ strangers stampeding through the house including nosey neighbours, all with the risk that the winning bidder is a spoofer.

Happy to risk getting a slightly lower price but doing it quickly and discreetly with 3 or 4 buyers who are known to be serious and ready to close quickly.

Will be intresting if this sparks some action on short term lets

Same thing applies to rulings against both landlords and tenants.

Nothing happens after a "ruling".

Id say if anything was going to be happen Mr. Godart might be the very one to roll the dice fight all this barmy legislation in court. The outcome of that could be interesting, especially if he won.

I’m sure there are many sectors where customers/service users are treated poorly. Is attempted manslaughter where you try not to kill someone?

Was at a viewing yesterday in Dublin in the (>300k) bracket and there must've been over thirty different interested parties there.

Everyone knows at this stage the RTB (real thick bastards) are absolutely useless. Useless for the Tennant and useless for the Landlord

Any examples? Have a friend looking in this segment and he’s having a rough time with being outbid on everything. Mainly SCD - blackrock and surrounds mostly.

Had spotted Cairn Hill alright. Looks fairly priced and no action. This person has no interest in Foxrock unfortunately.

No knowledge of North Dublin pricing but have always been interested in what a direct sea view was worth. Think an EA from Howth in Irish Times last year said it was about €250k extra on €1m house. Feels about right to me but just based on what I’d pay rather than hard data.

Agree with you generally, but unfortunately these friends are a teacher and a surgeon so no WFH. Proximity to the hospital in particular is key so less flexibility on location than most.

Also if friends and family are all south of Dublin, I personally wouldn’t even consider north side, despite how lovely Howth and some other parts are.

Well thats all nice points but the actual figures show they are trending to show negative year on year prices either this month or next.

We are a bit behind UK on rate increases, possible why we are a bit behind on drops.