What do I need to acquire a House in Ireland Today?

Are you planning to acquire a house in Ireland? To those who are inexperienced with the procedure or are seeking to acquire a mortgage for the first time, it may seem lengthy and tiring. Obtaining a mortgage has never been straightforward; nevertheless, a combination of rising house prices and restrictive Central Bank credit criteria has made it extremely difficult in recent years. While various people will most likely take different techniques, specific broad guidelines, anyone can guarantee their application runs well.The first one is to ensure that your financial situation is well and that everything is accounted for. In addition to jobs and money, this may include goods such as home insurance and property valuation. It would be best to consider how long you have lived in Ireland, depending on the lender, and this may play a factor in their choice. Borrowers should also ensure that they have good credit and are not in excessive debt. Lenders are more likely to be wary of consumers with poor credit records since they seem less likely to repay their loans in …

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Costs you Should be Aware of before Buying a House

There are more costs associated with buying your first home than just the 10% deposit. There are many additional fees, duties and taxes that you should be aware of before buying your home. 

 

The first fee you should be aware of is the stamp duty. The stamp duty is not included in your mortgage, so it’s a good idea to save this fee up in addition to your 10% deposit. The stamp duty is calculated at 1% of the selling price on a home or residential property of up to €1m, and 2% of the selling price on homes and residential properties above €1m. This stamp duty may change however, and full details are available on the Revenue.ie website. 

Legal fees are another hidden cost of buying a home that you should look out for. There are a lot of legal aspects that have to be accounted for when officially transferring ownership of the property to you, so you should find a trusted real estate lawyer to take care of this transfer. Legal fees will vary depending on …

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The All You Need to Know Self Build Mortgage Guide

Self Build Mortgages are different from typical mortgages in the fact that it is difficult to put the key in the door immediately. These homeowners typically build their home from scratch or have to extensively renovate their property. If you are thinking about building here are some helpful tips:

Maximum Mortgage – The most one can borrow is 3.5 time their annual total income. Self-build properties are calculated by adding the site price plus the build cost plus. The banks also calculate the final valuation once the building process is completed. Most of the time, the method which yields a lower mortgage value is the method that is picked. Extra Money – It is smart to make sure to have extra money set aside in the case of unforeseen expenses. A smart bet would be to set aside approximately 10% of the total cost. You don’t have to be an expert to apply for a self-build mortgage. You also don’t need to hire a company to undertake the project. Building yourself will save you money in the long-term and can …

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Should there be a tax on hoarding land?

There is evidence for property owners hoarding land because there is an expectation for rising house prices in the future. However, this only contributes to the housing shortage crisis. If the budget for 2018 included such a tax for property owners who choose to hoard land, it will give a financial incentive to build on the land now.

Property taxes are supposed to reflect the market value on the properties but all the valuations have been halted leaving a lot of room for political unrest.

Increasing the property tax, according to John Fitzgerald from the Irish Times, will give the government extra proceeds to fund for housing. This will give incentive to better utilize properties and give extra cash to the government to help out with the housing shortage.

It will also allow people with homes help the …

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Making property tax relevant to local expenditure

Patrick King of Dublin City Chamber and I presented a paper to the Dublin Economics Workshop this year about how we could match a property tax with local expenditure so that it doesn’t become a transfer mechanism or general revenue raiser.

It would put power into local authorities, maximise incentives to do things in a cost efficient manner, and make it fair and relevant locally so that you aren’t comparing values of a house in Dublin 4 with one up a mountain in Lietrim.

By having no relationship to the actual costs of running a local authority we will instead opt for something that is bound to cause trouble in the future… the presentation is here.

We are going to publish a full paper in time, we never did get a chance to move to a more serious platform with the research, but what it did do (at least …

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MyHome.ie Property Investor Report, 1st March 2012

We are please to bring you some interesting analysis on the residential investment property market in 2012. A big thanks in advance to MyHome.ie who made this possible by giving access to their data. You can get the report here or by clicking on the image to the right.

It was created by Karl Deeter of this firm and Frank Quinn, a lecturer in valuations at Senior College Dun Laoghaire. The valuation models used are Discounted Cashflows, the Investment Method and one developed by Karl which is an after tax comparison against bank deposit returns.

Tom Dunne of Dublin Institute of Technology Bolton Street kindly critiqued the report.

The general findings were that property is still overpriced in our main cities for investors (buyers face different costs/taxes/incentives). This over-valuation will adjust but one big inhibitor to investing in property at present is the taxation of it.

The coverage thus far (eg:

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Propertypin proves nothing on Rent Allowance (other than that their figures are wrong)

There was an interesting post on ThePropertyPin that I came across on twitter and in reading the analysis I was struck by the statistics mentioned regarding the rent supplement.

For a non-landlord, hearing that ‘rent supplement’ is above actual rents must seem like lunacy, heck, even for a landlord it sounds ridiculous. In particular when the average is 7% above the general asking prices according to the piece. But taking this post on the face of things merely circumvents the truth within the figures.

In fact, in many instance there are several factors at play, such as a local authorities inability to accept ‘asking prices’ as the real price, where these figures are negative it demonstrates that they know the asking price is not the ‘clearing price’ and therefore they can offer the client (rent supplement recipient) far less than that which is dictated by the market.

For instance, in every case given, Leitrim is not giving people enough to rent a property and its the same in Longford. In Longford the average …

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Using rebuild costs to determine if you can buy below costs.

With so few transactions occurring it is hard to get an idea of values when the most common approach is the ‘comparative method’ (we cover some of the pros/cons in our investor reports) which tends to be most accurate when there are lots of sales happening [and for the same reason can be pro-cyclical].

A useful tool for potential property buyers is to see if they can purchase ‘below cost’, this is particularly useful when there are not enough transactions on the market to get good information or if you want to have a gauge you can use on your own.

Construction costs calculated every year by the Society of Chartered Surveyors in their ‘house rebuilding insurance guide’ and by using their estimates as a guide it can help potential buyers discern a good deal when they see one.

For instance, a 1,200 square foot 3 bed semi-detached in Dublin will cost (using their rebuild estimate of €177 per square foot) €212,400 to build.

If you are thinking …

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