Has any First Time Buyer been prevented from buying a house due to the Central Bank's rules?

[Brendan Burgess]

(I started another thread, but the title was misleading, so I deleted it.)


Most of the posts on askaboutmoney have come from home owners finding it difficult to trade up.

But has anyone here found that they could not get on the housing ladder as a result of the rules?

I suspect that cases are few and far between, as Sarenco reports here

Limited Impact of Central Bank mortgage rules on FTBs

 

[Brendan Burgess]

I have gone through 200 posts in the Mortgages and Buying and Selling Homes forum, and this issue has not come up yet.

I would have thought that there might be people in Dublin trying to buy a house for €350k caught by the requirements, but they don't seem to be posting on askaboutmoney.

I thought that there might be people with 5% deposits buying for the first time, but they are not complaining on askaboutmoney either.

Maybe the 15% exceptions are covering all cases?

Brendan

 

[trasneoir]

I suspect that the chilling effect could be more significant than the number of actual refusals:
- how many punters won't bother talking to the bank until they have already met the affordability criteria
- how many punters have given up on property ownership in the short/medium term because saving a 10/20% deposit seems impossible.

 

[Brendan Burgess]

how many punters have given up on property ownership in the short/medium term because saving a 10/20% deposit seems impossible.

I think that there may well be people who can't get the 10% together and pay rent. But I don't think that anyone is suggesting that the 10% should be relaxed. Hadn't the banks introduced maximum LTVs of 90% before the Central Bank limits were introduced?

So the issue is whether the €220k ceiling over which 20% is required has prevented anyone buying a house? I doubt it somehow. They may have had to buy a lower priced house than they would have wished, but they can still buy a house.

Brendan