Mortgage Question: I have no savings, can I borrow a deposit?

The majority of lenders now insist that your deposit comes from a non borrowed source, and will decline your application if you plan to borrow it. The lenders who will consider your application will assess your application with the new deposit loan as a financial commitment which decreases the amount you can borrow on the mortgage, and because it is a short term loan it will eat into borrowing capacity much more than you may expect.

[eg: €100,000 loan over 30yrs costs c. €420 before tax relief, but one tenth of that, €10,000 at personal loan rates over 3yrs will cost c.€313 per month which would reduce the amount you can borrow by approximately €80,000!]

Short answer: You should aim to have your own equity in the deal via savings, if you borrow a deposit then you are running an additional risk and our firm are of the belief that this is generally not in the best interest of the borrower.

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US Real Estate roundtable.

CNBC hosted a discussion about whether home prices will go up in 2010, with Kenneth Rosen, UC Berkeley Haas School of Business; Matthew Garrison, The Matt Garrison Group and CNBC’s Diana Olick. The American situation is vastly different from that in Ireland but it makes for interesting comparison.

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NAMA uncovered

Yesterday the National Asset Management Agency (NAMA) legislation was brought out in the Dail (that’s the Irish Government buildings for our international readers) . We have put some of the developments into simple graphs to give an idea of the way NAMA will work and what the prices are as well as what they mean (for the pedants out there- they were drawn by hand to demonstrate the point).

So the total value of the loans is €68 billion, adding on €9 billion in rolled up interest – development accounts often had this factored into the end sale price, generally showing c. 15% profits (as a minimum) with the roll up included.

The €77 billion in loans will receive a 30% haircut (across the board) meaning the price paid will be €54 billion. It is important to note that different institutions will see larger haircuts than others, so it might be that BOI gets 20%, AIB 25% and Anglo 37% / INBS 42%, the 30% represents …

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The Regulator is good for business… In particular State owned business

In browsing the site itsyourmoney.ie today I noticed something interesting. First of all there is a section for ‘savings & deposit accounts’ then a separate one for ‘state savings schemes’ (note SSIA’s are long gone), but the ‘savings schemes‘ are all really just deposits! Check out their rates too! lol.

If you go to ‘compare costs and benefits’ on deposit accounts you get a list, but in with the banks who shows up? An Post, so they are either a ‘state plan’ or they are not? Indeed it seems both apply, they have their own section, and they are also in with the rest of the financial institutions.

If you go to compare products and click on a high street bank name, it takes you to a page where it shows the product details of whatever that bank has on offer, however, if you click on the name …

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