Charlie Weston
Question: I have just been promoted at work and got a pretty big pay increase. I am going to treat myself and the family to a holiday this year, as we have not been able to afford one since we bought our home two years ago. My wife thinks maybe we should throw an extra few euro on the mortgage each month, but I am not sure. Maybe we should just save it?
Mortgages was the hot topic for this evening’s Consumer Call in with Sinead Ryan.
Karl Deeter from Irish Mortgage Brokers and Joey Sheahan from mymortgages.ie were on Sinead’s expert panel offering advice, and answering listener queries.
Check out the full podcast ‘Consumer Call In: Mortgages’ here:
https://www.newstalk.com/podcasts/consumer-corner-on-the-hard-shoulder/consumer-call-mortgages
MyMortgages Limited trading as MyMortgages.ie is regulated by the Central Bank of Ireland.
15/07/2019
There were 71 houses and apartments sold in Sligo in May, to a total value of €8.9m, but there has been a call for the government to extend the Help to Buy Scheme to help many who cannot afford to buy.
31/07/2019
Calls have been made to extend the Help to Buy (HBT) scheme to include second-time property buyers in Wicklow.
An extension of the Help-to-Buy scheme is crucial and it should be expanded to include all buyers of a primary residence not just first-time-buyers. This is the contention of experts at MyMortgages.ie, who say while it’s widely accepted that first-time-buyers need the security of the Government financial support scheme being extended past its December 2019 deadline, second-time-buyers have had less attention, with falling numbers in mortgage approvals showing that they too are struggling.
The CSO Quarter 1 2019 new dwellings completion report confirms a strong upward trend across all housing construction activity data sets.
“While it is important to continue our efforts to ensure that this trend is maintained and even further improved, it is encouraging to see today’s results,” says Housing Minister Eoghan Murphy.
“In order to properly address homelessness” he continues, “affordability and the challenges in housing, we need to fix supply. These numbers show that this is happening.
The help-to-buy scheme should be extended “sooner rather than later” to help first-time buyers being priced out, a mortgage expert has said.
Joey Sheahan of MyMortgages.ie was speaking as a report from EY and DKM showed nearly half of all counties in the Republic are now unaffordable for first time buyers on an average income.
There will be a “dramatic fall off” in first-time buyers entering the market next year if the Help-to-Buy scheme is not extended.
That was the stark warning from the head of credit at MyMortgages.ie, Joe Sheahan, who was responding to the latest Central Statistics Office (CSO) figures on house prices.
While house prices continue to ease with the annual rate of increase in May now the lowest in six years, prices increased by 2.8% nationally in the year to May, compared to a 3% increase in the year to April.
