We were quoted in a this piece by Aoife Valentine of the Irish Times which was an interesting article about the situation renters face.

When discussing the rising age of first time buyers she quoted us as we mentioned that “this is something that’s become very obvious to mortgage broker Karl Deeter.

“When I started working in lending in around 2003, people in their 20s were borrowing. Nowadays, your typical applicant is no longer 24 to35, they’re 30 to 40,” he says.

New mortgage lending rules issued by the Central Bank in January say that first-time buyers may borrow only 3-and-a-half times their gross annual income, and they must save a 10 per cent deposit on the first €220,000 of the value of the property and a 20 per cent deposit on any higher value.

Deeter believes these rules are now having an effect on who gets on the property ladder.

“What the deposit rules have done is keep people in the rental sector when they otherwise would have been leaving.

“Because we’re in a period of what you could describe as broadly fixed supply, it compresses the rental sector specifically. I describe it as housing austerity: if you’re a renter, you’re trying to just paddle to stay still,” he says.

 While Karl Deeter also feels we need better rental regulation, he says it’s also a matter of adjusting expectations.

“If you’ve got rich folks and a high-paid job, you’ll be okay and you always were going to be okay. If you’re not in that category, then you’re going to have to seriously think about what you want in life and if a house is one of them,” he says.