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LAST UPDATE | 2 Sep 2021
GRADUATING DURING THE recession was like getting punched in the gut – it took the wind out of you.
The hopes and promises that had been built up over a lifetime were dashed overnight. Emigration loomed. Many, including me, ‘took the boat’ and only some (including me) ever returned.
It struck me in later years when I went up elevators in New York or across US railways, I was following in the path of the Irish immigrants who built them. I sometimes wondered if I was walking the same street as my great-grand-aunt, who was a nanny in America and lent my grandfather the money for his shop in Enniscrone, Co. Sligo.
I was just another in a long line of emigrants who had found economic opportunity everywhere except at home. I’d never really intended to stay abroad, and I really love being back.
It’s the simple things you miss: instead of being ignored by the person behind the till, I have a chat with Colm, the owner of my local shop, or Thiago, the local barista. Chatting about the match, the pandemic, anything. Nonsense really. But it’s those small things that make me feel so much more at home here than I ever did anywhere else.
A good friend of mine who graduated at the same time, lived with me in New York, and returned at the same time to Dublin, told me recently she was moving to London for good. She said in one summer there she’d lived more than she lived in four years in Dublin. That familiar feeling of the gut-punch came back again.
When I came back to Ireland in 2017, I decided I wanted to start a business in Dublin. I had been lucky with work opportunities abroad and decided to invest the money I’d saved working – by then about the equivalent of a deposit for a house – in building a small business advising entrepreneurs on how to grow their companies. I was determined to be part of stopping that cycle of finding opportunities elsewhere; I wanted to create it here.
Repeating past failures
Four years later, I’m an aspiring homeowner locked out of homeownership and condemned to eternal rent. Even a modest apartment in the city seems completely out of reach.
The banks aren’t particularly helpful either, especially for the self-employed. A friend of mine sold a company recently, netting a significant sum of money. The bank wouldn’t lend him the money because he didn’t ‘have a permanent job’. I guess that’s what the highest interest rates in Europe are for?
Almost everyone my age (33) I know in Ireland who bought in the last five years has done it from inheriting (money or a house) or getting a loan or gift from family. I don’t know one person who has rented, saved while renting and bought.
It’s now so common, the banks are asking ‘what else do you have other than your income,’ as if my mother’s house plants are magic money trees.
I’m afraid to invest my hard-earned savings into growing the business and I’m putting off having a family with my partner. My friends and family abroad encourage me to emigrate again. Worst of all – I’m losing confidence that the country can change, that its successes of reversing this in the past were not just flukes.
My friend’s story – our story – isn’t unusual. It’s a story as old as Ireland, a story of a country’s promises to younger generations falling apart, where homeownership and a reasonable quality of life are only possible in other countries.
Frankly, if it’s hard for me – an entrepreneur earning a decent living, made possible by good education and work experience abroad – what hope do others have? How will the single mother in emergency accommodation be able to thrive in Dublin? What are the prospects for people at the start of their careers? How can someone on a low wage in social services, many of them at the coal-face of the fallout of housing, build a life here?
What is Dublin without its buzz – the bustling pubs, pints as an art form, the world’s best musicians in snugs and concert halls, the unique Dublin lyricism, the weirdly comforting roar of the Viking boat tour, the hum of a city alive? If we are not buzzing, are we slowly dying? Is a city without the young even a city at all?
Best little country to do business?
I’m bewildered by a system where my business pays more in tax than the cuckoo fund that’s letting homes lie vacant. My rents climb year on year faster than my income rises because there’s little regulation of rent levels.
If I hoard water, Government wants me to pay for it, but if I hoard land I get a tax break? Who protects me from the unscrupulous landlord who didn’t pay back my deposit with no cause? Why is there a difference between ‘affordable’ housing and ‘private’ housing? Shouldn’t most homes be affordable in a just society?
I’ve lived around the world, but I fell in love with Dublin – its people, its culture, its natural beauty, its history, and its sense of community. I want to invest in life here – build businesses and raise a family – but I’m not sure the Government wants me to.
We met the pandemic with an emergency response in a matter of days, but this housing crisis has been in the making for a decade. Where is the decisive action? Where is the bold leadership, the sweeping powers, the speech from a hotel in Washington? Where is the NPHET for housing? The Cabinet subcommittee? Have we become so accustomed to Government failure in housing, they’ve normalised it? Have we lost our sense of community so deeply, we value homes only in euros?
I want to make sure no one is punched in the gut again. I want my future children to have every opportunity this world can give them. But for that to happen, we need a sea change in how we think about homes: a constitutional right to housing, a radical investment of the State in building high-quality homes for affordable prices, strong rental regulations, and taking the greed out of property.
Where I lived in the US, there are taxes on anyone who holds derelict and vacant properties; penalising developers who don’t develop them into homes. Here, we seem content with a city falling into disrepair while homeless numbers climb.
The country can raise money at historically low interest rates – the whole point of the austerity programme – but we seem determined not to funnel that money into creating thousands of construction jobs, creating reasons for the emigrant tradesmen I went to school with to return.
The Government parties would like to convince us that a better housing system is unattainable, it’s too complex or too expensive to fix. I see it differently: dynamic and thriving communities with affordable homes are what we as citizens deserve.
We should accept absolutely nothing less.
Eoin Hayes is the founder and director of Cantillon Labs, a startup consultancy in Dublin. He’s a member of the Social Democrats and rents in the city centre.
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Are you really priced out of the property market in general or are you are priced out of the Dublin property market? The article title says you’re on a good living. Leixlip, Navan, Rathnew, Drogheda, wicklow Town all nice places, affordable houses and more and more within commuting time of Dublin City centre
Not saying you’re one of them but have heard so many friends complain about the cost, but when asked where they’re looking they say Dundrum, or stillorgan or castleknock or clontarf.
I have colleagues in London who commute 2 hours each way. Ireland people seem unwilling to commute more than 30 minutes
@Nick Johnston: why should we accept a 2 hour commute as normal? Dublin is not London and there is something wrong when everyone can’t access accommodation never mind good earners. Homeless people living in hotels and funds owning a lot of the city. This looks at more than just housing which is so basic, when all these city Centre properties are gone and not available for the communities that lived there for generations and local workers and students etc they whole system is so messed up..this has a spill on effect for so much more than housing too.
@Nick Johnston: Exactly this. Too many Irish people want to live in their Mammies back gardens. Just move further out until you can find somewhere affordable. Guaranteed it will be a bigger living space, bigger gardens etc etc. We can’t all live in the city centre either.
@Gerry from the Block: or we could just look at the many, many ways to solve the issue rather than just telling people they need to commute longer. Any progressive society should be looking at how they can have their workforce live close to where they work as there are huge benefits to it. The reason property prices are insane are all fixable.
@The Guru: How would you solve the issue though? I can’t see any way of solving it. Property in the city centre is just too valuable and the landlords and owners want to hold on to it and who could blame them, it’s worth a fortune. I can’t think of a single city in the developed world that is cheap to buy in for the same reasons as Dublin is unaffordable to all but the very well off.
@Nick Johnston: Drogheda is not a nice town
@Gerry from the Block: there are literally loads of solutions. Vacant property tax. It’s a disgrace we don’t have that yet. Rent controls. Government investment in affordable and cost rental housing. Lifetime tenancies. Huge taxes on cuckoo funds.
@Gerry from the Block: there are also a lack of affordable housing options in commuter towns and a primary issue is saving for a mortgage while renting. I currently can’t save more than a couple of hundred max a month and that’s with penny pinching. So it will be about a decade before I have the guts of a deposit and God forbid if the house needs any work (it will need work as a lot of available properties are not of of a decent standard) . Plus there are other important concerns such as what are the transport routes? What if you don’t drive? Rural isolation is also difficult for many and it can be very hard for some people to integrate in existing communities or to leave their support network behind. I’ve looked at properties and those I can imagine within my budget before I’m 40 are all all far beyond regular commuter distances such as the West Coast and Donegal etc. There might be a few that are available or quality which you will compete with others for and likely lose to someone else with a boost except for in isolated locations that do not appeal to many people for a host of logistical and personal reasons.
In general there remains a housing shortage across Ireland, if we all move to Meath do those who want property from there move to Cavan and so on? Dublin is not over populated but it is under resourced and housing in Ireland is expensive and elusive for many and the general ‘gotcha’ comment of ‘why don’t you move further away’ isn’t helpful as it ignores so many factors. Should only the wealthy be able to afford Dublin properties? Should people have to see their families move en masse outside of their childhood areas and move schools and see cohesive communities disintegrate due to increased mobility and constant change based on affordability? We have already seen many inner city communities altered negatively by lack of affordability so that many people dont know their neighbours or care to. The idea that cities are only place for those who earn a certain amount is blind to the housing crisis and to the importance of community and diversity in housing. Who gets pushed out by this kind of thinking and who remains? Yeah of course people want to maintain value etc, which is why you prevent this kind of hoarding and behaviour through regulation. We don’t have to accept it.
@Jensen Bhroin: Meath, Kildare, Wicklow ARE Dublin if not now then soon enough. London was the same series of small towns slowly meeting, Holland is soon going to consist entirely of 3/4 major cities and their suburbs. We should suck it up an face the fact that 40 minutes on a train is not a big deal, all of these places should be adequately connected with the next 100 years of expansion in mind.
@Nick Johnston: commuting 2 hours each way is insanity. That’s a minimum 12 hour day. Not much of a defense.
@Gerry from the Block: build more houses. After WWII housing was cheap for decades across Europe. Do you think that average workers couldn’t afford houses in cultures. That’s all recent. That’s all by design.
@Nick Johnston: ya let’s gate off Dublin and only have it full of millionaires. What a pitiful example of someone with no ideas. You want people to commute from the countryside then kill road tax on cars and reduce vat on diesel and get rid of vrt. You wish to empoverish the next generation with out of control property prices then ok but there needs to be protection for those commuting. Some of the suggestions I’ve made will plat a small role. Also where possible free public transport. Your ideas and values firstly are outdated & are unsustainable. We have a housing crisis. Its not a Dublin housing crisis its country wide. Pushing the problem out to the countryside doesn’t solve it.
@Gerry from the Block: if more people did live outside Dublin demand will drop and then “eventually” prices should stabilise no? I’m.not saying straight away but it should. Move out of Dublin, save a little and then perhaps move into Dublin at a later stage?
@lilolil: I can’t see the collective us moving back in to Dublin any decade soon.
@Nick Johnston: It’s impossible for skilled x2 income family to get a house in Athenry…. ATHENRY!!! It’s not just a ‘Dublin thing’…. Rural Ireland is awash with derelict properties. In my town, there’s two bed bungalow, on a corner, by the railway line empty for years (at least 30, it’s old), It’s been for sale… no one can afford it because the owners want €170k for it. It’s falling apart & the owners don’t care.
@Gerry from the Block: no no, you just accept you have to move 2 hours out in the sticks. What’s wrong with wanting to buy a house near were you were raised??
@Ni Thuathill Aoife: There are over 900 3 bed+ properties for sale on my home in Dublin for less than 450K.
@Pauline Gallagher: Either is any of the others mentioned bar Wicklow Town lol.
@Pauline Gallagher: Either is any other mentioned lol bar Wicklow Town.
@Eddie O’Neill: me either but have to start somewhere no?
@Ni Thuathill Aoife: that’s some waffle. All of it sent centered and unrealistic. Dublin isn’t London, no it’s a smaller version so instead of 2 hours, how about 1?
@Nick Johnston: I’ve been living in Dublin 24 (S.W Dublin overlooking the Dublin mountains with 50 acres of Doder parkland and Sean Walsh park 26 acres.. I’m originally from the Midlands and farming background as are lots of my neighbours . I really enjoy walking my dogs and cycling through the Dodder park and Sean Walsh park… houses selling for €300.000 + needing upgrades but there are options. I didn’t have any choices but I wouldn’t move from this friendly neighbourhood.!
@Gerry from the Block:
This comment perfectly captures the mentality which perpetuates the housing crisis.
States his friend is self employed and sold their company and doesn’t understand why he can’t get a mortgage. With a basic understanding of how banks work he would know the bank needs to see income flow to pay back the loan.
@dublindamo: The right kind of income flow. The banks have surrounded themselves with a jungle of monkeys, it’s a best of luck situation getting to the middle.
@dublindamo: doesn’t matter if u have a cash. the banks need to see a steady business or a steady job.
I like so many others, bought my house in 2007 for €710,000 and now it’s worth €560,000. Property prices look cheap to me now! We are now living in a country where people think they should get the house they want and not what they can afford! Wake up and smell the coffee
@jeanette: LOL
@jeanette: Would the bank have lent you 560k then using today’s rules?
@jeanette: I don’t necessarily sympathise hugely for someone who invested in a business but wants a house now too, but I think your comment shows you to be experiencing housing from a different perspective than what the article is aimed at. I don’t think you can complain about people being picky about houses when you yourself have a property that’s well above the value of houses that people can be forced to look into buying because they don’t have other choices. You clearly haven’t had this problem in the last 12 or so years. The fact that you bought during the boom means you probably got a much more favourable mortgage and by virtue of the boom, you yourself got the house you wanted but couldn’t afford.
@Mickety Dee: Name any bank that will give a loan for the full value of a house.
@David Geraghty: mortgage rate was 5.46 and now 2.95%
@jeanette: haha. Read your own statement again. If it wasn’t for ridiculously cheap money you couldn’t afford that house. You might be trouble in the future.
You overpaid and now you want prices to go up to bubble level again. Horrible logic.
@jeanette: are you paying 2.9%? You are probably on a tracker. We can’t run society for people who over spent in a bubble. You are part of the reason we are where we are.
@john smith iv: if you bothered to read my comment above you will see that borrowing wasn’t cheap when I purchased. I have no regrets that I purchased then. It’s my home and not a business! Bubbles always happen in the property market! Nobody can guess when it’s going to happen and I wouldn’t wish it on anyone!!!!
@jeanette: I get 3,588.18€ per month at 90% down on a 710k house over 30 years. If you did that, well you and the banks add crazy.
So he is investing all his money in a start up business and expects the banks to lend him the money for a house? Can’t have it both ways
@Mickety Dee: why not? Why can’t we stand someone having it all?
@Ni Thuathill Aoife: because if it collapses like most start-ups do he’ll have no way to repay the mortgage. Taking too much risk is how the sector collapsed in 2008
@Ni Thuathill Aoife: Did we have it all in 2007?
@Mickety Dee: Didn’t we almost have it all was 1987.
@Darren Byrne: too much risk with developers not all self employed people who also deserve to have a home as well as a business that employees people
@Ni Thuathill Aoife: I have it all!!
@Ni Thuathill Aoife: I have it all!!
@Ni Thuathill Aoife: I have it all!!
@Darren Byrne: lol
Why do ye wish to live in Dublin. A move to the affordable west would do ye all a load of good.
Great internet service enables a whole lot of fresh air work quality here.
Dublin is fine but by comparison to the west, it is a large smelly over priced dump. Phew! Regards JJ
@JJ Sheehy: very wet out wesht.
@john smith iv: Do what the rest of us do. Get a bloody coat, enjoy lower prices, a wonderful place to raise kids and a lot safer.
Lifetime tenancies are the answer, as in many countries. Then renting or owning is less important. The institutional landlords should be made offer these especially as they pay no or low tax. However the small landlord who needs their property back, especially if they go abroad themselves to work for a spell, should be excluded from lifetime rule as is the case abroad.
@Pat Redmond: I wouldn’t mind this of rent came down significantly. But I would not be up for people (and myself) continuing to pay 45% + of income in rent with nothing at the end of it but continued financial stress and no savings and the inability to afford rent once retirement is reached. If I had a mortgage I would pay significantly less and have a property at the end of it. But I don’t have a mortgage because rent is insane. So any such proposal would have to see rent drop significantly by about than 50% from the current average I’d say. I don’t see that happening.
@Pat Redmond: That’s what Cromwell said.
@Jensen Bhroin: from the landlord perspective and a lot of once off landlords,almost half rent goes on taxes.. I’m not a landlord I’m senior citizen on non contributory pension!
You will pay income tax on your rental profit at either 20% or 40% whichever rate applies to you. You will pay PRSI at 4% if it applies. You will pay the USC at whatever rate applies to you, most likely the 8% rate.
I moved from a farming background to Dublin 24 Firhouse Rd West, in the late 70′s and interest rates were 13% to rise to 18% and 80′s were the most difficult times. !! Unemployment and emigration. 3 houses in my area for sale( very nice area and people) for just over €300.000 needing upgrades but there are options out there. Excellent public transport 45 min city centre!! Lots of country ppl and Dublin and great neighbourhood.!
@Veronica Conway: Give me a break with these ‘high’ intrest rates from the 80′s. 18% of F-all is F-all. Back when a house was 2-3 time the average salary of a single person. Try 10x your salary now… The greedy boomers have ruined the country for the young with their investment properties and what not.
@Christopher Byrne: you know nothing with that comment
@Christopher Byrne: Give me a break !!
Average wage was less than £100 – £80 in my case and mortgage was half the wages. Heating cold houses, no drylining.. wind blowing through the windows and doors
3 bags of coal to keep warm £10- 15 week.+ bills esb etc etc and 4 kids like steps if stairs.!
Get real you haven’t got a clue!!!
Dublin needs to dramatically change its attitude to apartment living.
Far too many houses and any sort of building above 7 stories is a rarity.
I would be gone from this country if I was in my twenties or early thirties . Gone I would . Total kip .
@Aunties: I hear there are jobs and affordable housing in Kabul and Kandahar
I have bought in the past 5 years and definitely did not inherit any money or get any gifts. It was flipping hard work to save while renting but I managed. However that isn’t going to be the main problem here – if you are self-employed or an investor, the bank are going to be particularly weary around lending. It’s prudent. They need to know there is a good chance they will actually get their money back. It’s why those who are self employed often have to show a lot more records than a PAYE employee. It shows continuity of income.
Title should read ‘.. I can afford a home but not in Dublin.’
Aweee, poor thing!
You can work remotely so it shouldn’t be an issue. Banks ask everyone what else besides income have you got and always have done. Anyone I know who bought when I bought 15 years ago had to move home and SAVE. You could have just worked in a normal job and not left? Like thousand s of us did, go home to mammy for a year, get a tax break off the government as a 1st time buyer and hey presto you have a home. Instead you decided to up sticks for adventure, made some money and became successful in another way. Why didn’t you buy abroad with your success, then sell up and come home? This poor me attitude is at pandemic levels. We stayed, we paid taxes, we sucked it up, we saved and we bought. Like generations of us have done before. Dublin isnt the be all end all when remote working is an option
@AJ: go home and save? For how long, 50 years? On the average wage you could earn 45k, but the banks will only give you 3.5 times your salary. Show me where you can buy a family home for 150k that doesn’t have wheels on it. It was easier back in the day, my folks bought their home for 30k, I’m not sure what their repayments where but the amount became insignificant with wage hikes and such. Suddenly your 200 euro mortgage is about one tenth of your current salary and you are sitting pretty. People now are stuck paying 2000 a month for 30 years. And unless the average wage increases to 250k a year (which they won’t as they are stagnant) you can’t compare the current situation with the war stories and takes of hardships from the 70’s.
@Alan Biddulph: If you’re buying a family home (and not just somewhere for yourself) then likelihood is that you have 2 incomes so that would be more than the 45k.
As for somewhere that you can get family homes for about €150k – well you’re right you can borrow about €150k on a €45k income but the houses you’d be looking for are over that amount as you’d have to have a deposit. A quick search on myhome.ie shows that there are over 1.3k houses on the market for a max price of €200k. So you’d have to save €50k between 2 of you (if it’s a family home). Not exactly too bad.
@Susan Walsh: that’s not how it works. Your deposit is minus from the affordability number not added. So if the most you can borrow is 150k you have to have a 15k deposit but if you have a 50 deposit the bank will only give you 100k.
@Lisa Mannion: How on earth does that make sense – the more savings you have the less you can borrow?! The rules from the Central Bank is that you can *borrow* up to 3.5 times your salary. If you are on €45k and want to buy a house that’s €750k that’s fine but you just need to have the other €600k in savings.
@Susan Walsh: the rule is the house can be valued at 3.5 times your salary. And that’s what you can borrow. If you have a pile of saving you can buy a house outright or get a loan for the difference but I can’t see anywhere where you would get mortage for a house of that price.
I lived and worked in the uk and came back cos house prices were cheap at the time. Biggest mistake I ever made. Can’t wait to leave.
@paul mccoy: Hop it so
@paul mccoy:
But can you afford to leave? Lots of Brits who moved abroadcant move back as they can’t afford the housing costs in England. We bought a 1930s 0ne and a half bed council flat in Brixton for my daughter to get her on the property ladder. Three years late we sold it for £410,000. She’s now bought a two bed house with her boyfriend in Hanwell requiring a lot of work for £650,000 . It will cost £100,000 to renovate
@paul mccoy:
But can you afford to leave? Lots of Brits who moved abroadcant move back as they can’t afford the housing costs in England. We bought a 1930s 0ne and a half bed council flat in Brixton for my daughter to get her on the property ladder. Three years late we sold it for £410,000. She’s now bought a two bed house with her boyfriend in Hanwell requiring a lot of work for £650,000 . It will cost £100,000 to renovate
No time for ‘big city’ dreams in Ireland. You would think we’d be savvy to that by now as it’s always been the way of subservience here. While you’re start-up is ticking along, pick up soul crushing middle-managing insurance job for a year… you’ll be choking on the spicy chicken fillet rolls in no time!
Join the queue buddy
Newsflash: as a self employed person you need to provide 3 years accounts as evidence of income. If you can’t afford a house in Dublin you definitely can’t afford London or New York. People have always used other means to borrow for their deposit and some people do actually save by moving back home or going to one car etc. If he put all his savings in his business then that was a choice he made. If buying a house was so important he could have got a paye job for 12 months then got his mortgage then set up his business. Sounds like an awful lot of entitled whinging and not much logical thinking about his future.
It really is tough for the squeezed middle in Dublin and absolutely something needs to be done about housing supply and rents, but as far as I can tell, this individual runs a sole trader consultancy, so regardless of his cashflow, he is essentially a contractor with no guaranteed income. He would be high risk for any bank to give a mortgage to. I wonder how he managed to spend a house deposit on setting up this business?
Get the message loud and clear – the political classes and “our” government do not represent the interests of the people of this country. Just think hard about that next time you’re heading for the polling booth. The electorate must force this to change.
We bought our first property in London when I was 48 despite having a successful business and sold 10 years ago when I was I’m my early 60s.
We struggled to get the deposit together but a very helpful mortgage broker managed toget a £40,000 top up from Norwich Union. We had to be creative in our source of funding and could only afford an interest only mortgage. We bought a flat for my mother in Dublin and have just paid off the mortgage on that.
We now live in Valbonne in the south of France. We bought our first house in london when I was 48 and had rented before that or lived over one of our pubs. Not ideal with a young child but needs must. We managed to scrape a deposit together with the help of a mortgage broker and bought a very nice house with an outside downstairs loo. We spent quite a bit on renovation and a loft extension. As our business prospered we bought a flat in Dublin for my aging mother and then for my older daughter. Later we bought a one and a half bed 1930s council flat in Brixton for my younger daughter for £290,000 which we sold after three years for £410,00 which enabled her to pool with her boyfriend whi als had help from his parents and sold his flat to buy a 2 bed house requiring about £100,000 in renovations in Hanwell.
Our home in Valbonne where we live now has increased in value by maybe 10% in the 16 years we’ve owned it but the French are building lots of very nice social housing apartments around us 5 or 6 stories highwhich helps greatly to stabilise house prices.
The lack of apartments and the huge urban sprawl of 3 and 4 bed semis which seems to be the only things irish people are prepared to live in has gone way beyond a joke. Social housing is not free housing. Rents are paid as any vulture fund will tell you and it’s profitable too. In London many MPs own former council houses and some even rent them back to the councils they were bought from. I believe something similar is happening in Ireland. Following Thatchers policy of selling off social housing has been as much of a disaster in Ireland as it has been in England
Get out while you can
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