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 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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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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Irish Times article by John McCartney, Lorcan Sirr & Karl Deeter

The Irish Times carried an article by John McCartney (Savills), Lorcan Sirr (DIT Bolton St) and Karl Deeter (Irish Mortgage Brokers) about the issues surrounding a shift away from a home ownership model.

Our point isn’t that there is a definitive ‘right or wrong’ way to provide housing, obviously our market has massive issues at present, but the larger question is the long run effects and how a lack of household savings can turn a property crisis into a pension crisis of sorts.

That is why we need to find new solutions for more than just housing.

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Newstalk: Talking Point on housing, Saturday 9th April 2016

This week on Talking Point the host Sarah Carey did a great job of examining housing issues with the panel of guests which in studio included Lorcan Sirr of DIT, Dermot Lacey a Labour Party Councillor and Karl Deeter of Irish Mortgage Brokers.

Many relevant points were made about tenure, about supply constraints and solutions as well as discussions about things that don’t often make the press – such as permanent tenures and the like. It is well worth listening back on given the breadth and expert insight of the show.

 

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Irish Independent: Quote Irish Mortgage Brokers on Central Bank limits

Mark Keenan quoted Irish Mortgage Brokers on the topic of how the Central Bank regulations were affecting prospective property buyers.

Meanwhile, Karl Deeter of Irish Mortgage Brokers described Mr Frisell’s comment as “effectively engaged in social engineering”.

“If they know that shifting people from ownership and into rental is the outcome of their policy, and they keep on doing it, then we have to assume that this is the outcome they have been pursuing,” he said.

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Sunday Independent: Irish Mortgage Brokers mentioned in housing article

We were happy to see that our concern about social engineering was mentioned in an article in the Sunday Independent by Brendan O’Connor, the quote is below.

Or does the Central Bank think it’s desirable? And why has the Central Bank taken it upon itself to decide that Irish people should move to renting property rather than buying their own house? Mortgage broker Karl Deeter has suggested the Central Bank is indulging in social engineering. What other shifts in how we live would the Central Bank like to introduce you wonder. Perhaps a one-child policy?

The issue of social engineering was first raised by us in the consultation process when it began in 2014, specifically we said this was a concern in the following two quotes taken from our submission:

This policy will ensure that many people fall prey to a policy that in protecting banks hurts their future wealth. We are, and will remain, strongly opposed to measures that have societal engineering outcomes such as this.

And later we also said that

For people who don’t have rich parents …

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Newstalk have Irish Mortgage Brokers on to discuss Central Bank rules

We were speaking on Newstalk about Central Bank rules and the impact they are having on different parts of the market. Some of the notable moments are mentioned below:

Karl Deeter of Irish Mortgage Brokers & Advisors.ie noted that high mortgage deposits are forcing people to stay in rented accommodation and fueling the housing shortage.

Deeter said: “If you’ve got people who have to come up with an extra €20,000 and they’re looking to save that, they end up renting a house for much longer than they would have. But because of that what you’re seeing is that they’re staying in a certain sector where the supply isn’t coming on board.

“It’s driving up rents. That’s almost like an additional tax which makes savings harder. It doesn’t mean that house sales have stopped or the prices aren’t rising; they are but it’s just that people aren’t borrowing to do it”.

The full story is on the Newstalk website here.

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Bigger deposits equal less savings.

An often overlooked aspect of finance is that mortgages are actually a brand of savings, as perverse as that may sound, you have to consider what happens when you pay off a loan over time. The ‘interest’ is the part that pays for the right to use money from the future (which is what credit is, it’s moving money through time) in the here and now, the other part is a ‘capital’ repayment.

When you repay capital you are making a balance sheet gain (or for those into more up to date accounting speak, you make an improvement on your ‘statement of financial position’), even if prices stay static, over time you will eventually owe zero and that means you have a large asset which is the end result of this ‘savings’, albeit not in actual cash.

When you have a housing scarcity and rents are rising, this acts like a ‘tax’ on income, rent and mortgages are paid in after tax income, so the urge to buy when buying is cheaper and obtain a fixed outgoing (as you can …

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One Big Switch findings on mortgage holders

There was an interesting infographic out today from One Big Switch showing what people have done in order to make their mortgage repayments.

It ranged from working extra hours, to taking fewer holidays and socializing less. What is interesting about this, is that nobody tends to look at the wider economy effects of high mortgage rates, and the Central Bank while saying they want to examine them, cannot and will not do anything about it.

Higher rates act like an informal ‘tax’, and as some banks are foreign owned it means taking income out of the Irish economy and funnelling it elsewhere, this affects our balance of trade and was a reason we always questioned the Patrick Honohan diktat of not having an issue if all banks were foreign owned.

This informal tax reduces expenditure in the productive economy and goes towards rationalizing zombie balance sheets, so lower rates should be a priority for everybody, but the way to get there isn’t force, it’s competition and for that reason we are hopeful that the switching campaign will be a successful …

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