Irish Politics Thread

That's grand if you're living in the West. If you are renting in Dublin or Cork that would be really hard.

In addition a single person on 50K is competing with couples for houses and apartments.  2 people in 25k each will have better take home pay than 1 person on 50K as they will have Better tax credits and be on lower tax rates. 

That is the huge societal change since the 80/90s is the double incomes. 

As a result the answer is that single workers have access to public housing. 

Roisin Shorthall was excellent, Louise Reilly I thought did well too 

An alternative solution is the return to the availability of 100% mortgages. Sensibly applied these can free up capital for people who long term can afford houses, but may not have the capital at that time. However, a forensic look at circumstances should demonstrate that people on 50k, with contracts of indefinite duration should be easily able to sustain mortgage repayments, provided that is their only property. It can he treated like a rental payment. A working family on a collective income of €100k should be able to sustain a larger mortgage.

The difficulty with 100% mortgages was the number of people who had more than one, and arrived with little or no capital. The nonsensical assumption was that each property used for speculative investment would pay for the primary residence. It made little sense and really came to light when people couldn’t maintain the interest repayments on the primary residence, let alone anything on the “investment”.

Working people, with a single, sustainable, decent income should be trusted and not tarred with the brush of those maxed out years worth of earnings by acquiring a property portfolio on credit.

 

Interest rates have pretty much been zero for savings for a long time now, but some Bank's do have "save to buy accounts" which rewards people for regular savings (providing the mortgage is taken out with the same bank obviously).

 

Go back 15 years and everyone was investing in property and bank shares so I think there is definitely fear there. But there are some guaranteed managed funds which are still earning great returns and are open to people rather than just having cash in a savings account. But in general investments are not for young people looking to buy their first home, can't be locking funds up for years when it's needed now.

But that’s where I think the financial education needs to come in. You’ve hit the nail on the head as to what people were investing in. The two major problems was that those investments were not diversified, and were often paid for by way of credit. It was a dangerous game to play, whereby if you purchased shares from existing funds, all you lost was the money you already had. When you lost it and the money was borrowed, that’s where the problems started. The funds approach is the way to go, and if people start early enough they can be building it with the intention of unlocking it at 27/28.