20016-09-14 unaffordability table

The unaffordability index of Irish housing

This picture speaks a thousand words and in many cases tens of thousands of earnings that a person would have to have in order to afford an average home in different parts of the country. We used recent data from the Daft report and then broke it down into borrowings and compared that to average wages.

The column after ‘county’ is the average price in that region. If we assume a first time buyer will typically want a 90% mortgage we then look at the amount of earnings they’d need to have in order to get the loan.

The last column is where the real story lies, it compares prices in the area to average wages taken from the CSO.

Anything in a white cell with a minus is very affordable, anything in black means you’d have to be earning above average wage to buy a property in the area.

If the cell has a red background that is showing you where the difference is greater than €10,000.

It’s fairly clear that cities and in some cases …

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2016 central bank macroprudential mortgage rules

2016 Mortgage lending rules submission by Irish Mortgage Brokers

We sent our research and thoughts on the lending rules to the Central Bank as part of their industry consultation process regarding the existing mortgage lending rules.

While we are critical of them in particular for first time buyers, we haven’t had an issue on other aspects of it (such as controls for investors). The submission argues with supporting evidence for 90% loans for first time buyers to be available generally but to keep other controls generally in place, or to do nothing at all and give the adjustments more time to bed in.

Submission is here: 2016 Central Bank macroprudential rules submission Irish Mortgage Brokers

The findings of a survey carried out by Behavior and Attitudes of clients of Irish Mortgage Brokers, DNG and Hooke & MacDonald which was mentioned in the press is also available here: 2016 MacroPrudential review – survey findings

 

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RTE Drivetime: Discussing Home Choice Loan, 25th August 2016.

On the 25th of August we were featured on RTE’s ‘Drivetime’ with Mary Wilson to discuss Home Choice Loan which is a state run mortgage lender. The state lender has only done 21 loans to date or about 3 loans a year.

There are many reasons that HomeChoiceLoan should be popular but in practice they are not lending and there are many questions about the validity and use the scheme has.

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Today FM: The last word, Matt Cooper talks to Karl Deeter & Ruth Coppinger

Karl Deeter was on Today FM’s ‘The Last Word’ with Matt Cooper to discuss proposals by TD Ruth Coppinger to break the law if you are at risk of eviction.

Our view is that the law should be honoured and that to suggest breaking the law ought to be way down the list of suggestions for people with housing difficulties. It would make far more sense to speak to the Department of Social Protection and to use the services and protections that we have set up as a society rather than to take the law into your own hands.

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Newstalk ‘The Right Hook’, Jonathan Healy speaks to Karl Deeter

We were speaking to Jonathan Healy who was covering for George Hook on ‘The Right Hook’ about the ‘home renovation initiative’ which is set to end at the end of 2016. We covered some of the general terms and conditions of how it worked then went on to analyse whether it was a good idea or not given the various happenings everywhere else in the market.

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rent control Europe - Germany

Rent control Europe: Germany

Population: 81,770,900 GDP: $3,467,780,000,000 Avg. Weekly Earnings: €962.00 Avg. Apartment Price (Per. Sq. M.): €4,078.00 For 120-sq. m. apartment in city centre Avg. Monthly Rent: €830.78

German rent control systems are often heralded as a solution to the problem of unaffordable housing. Germany boasts the strongest economy in the European Union and, despite experiences difficulties of its own during the economic contraction of 2008, has been rapidly recovering to pre-recession levels.

Among the countries we have analysed, Germany is the most receptive to tenant-friendly legislation; German home-ownership is the second-lowest in the European Union, at 52.5% in 2014[1], and as low as 15% in municipalities like Berlin.

Historically, property prices have risen very slowly in Germany, removing one of the primary motivations for buying a home: hedging against rising future rents. To compound this, German banks are notoriously risk-adverse, and these stringent lending practices protect the housing market from financial market distortions, reducing the risk of default and providing market stability.

According to the OECD Better Life Index, 93% of Germans are satisfied with their current housing situation[2], which has …

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2016 change tenant calculator

The cost of turfing out tenants

It is often assumed that landlords don’t want to give people long leases preferring to see people leave and obtain a rent increase where possible. This belief doesn’t factor in several concerns, firstly is that rents are not always rising, that moving is an inconvenience to both tenant and landlord and that there are some hard costs to factor in.

For this reason we created a small basic calculation to show that in many cases the recouping costs equate to more than a months rent and that a landlord would have to increase rents by about 12% to break even.

The other thing that happens is the landlord takes on a new risk of an unknown tenant, good tenants are like good credit applicants, they often don’t pay top rates because of their past performance, a new person might be habitually late, break more, or be more high maintenance.

This is yet another reason that shows the benefit of a long lease to a landlord, equally the tenant also benefits by having the protections of a …

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Newstalk: Breakfast show speaks to Irish Mortgage Brokers

We were pleased to feature on Newstalk’s ‘Breakfast Show’ this week, to our surprise we became an association! To clarify, that was just a title oversight by the presenter, we are still our plain old regular selves working as brokers.

The piece was questioning the validity or need for first time buyer type grants and what it could mean for both buyers and the industry.

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2016 france rent control

Rent control Europe: France

Population: 66,689,000 GDP: $2,829,192,039,172 Avg. Weekly Earnings: €1,128.44 Avg. Apartment Price (Per. Sq. M.): €13,639.00 For 120-sq. m. apartment in city centre (Paris) Avg. Monthly Rent: €848.59

France boasts the second largest economy in the European Union, and alongside their German counterparts, are responsible for a major portion of the fiscal policy introduced by the Eurozone nations. French legislation is also among the most pro-tenant in the world, and this is coupled with the policies introduced by Francois Hollande, the French Socialist President, which target the wealthy.

Currently, France is faced with housing shortages of record proportions; despite government subsidies and tax cuts incentivising construction of rental properties, household investment is at its lowest point since mid-1999. This lack of investment puts additional stress on companies and consumers to create growth, and spur the recovery forward. Paris in particular is a popular destination for foreign investors, which has caused local legislation intended to curtail this absentee ownership. These housing regulations have made the situation worse, with additional restrictions on rents decreasing investor interest in the area.

There also exists considerable …

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