It took 20-something Robert two years to save the money, with help from the First Home Scheme. Moving back in with my parents, they became my roommates.
Software engineer Robert Walsh was working at Dell and renting a room in a three-bedroom, two-bathroom apartment in Leopardstown, where he was paying €875 per calendar month.
He had moved out of his home at the age of 22 and had been renting for about 18 months.
“That was a good experience. It showed how much money can be taken away quickly.
"Buying was a better value proposition. You can go a lot further with less. You get value when you own.
"I felt like I was earning a substantial amount of money and able to save up.”
It was part of a conversation he first had with his parents.
“They were happy to see me doing it. Not having them would have been more of a challenge."
He moved back into the family home in Co. Kildare.
Moving back home, he maintained the level of independence he had while renting. He was “trying not to fall back into the role of the child in the house”.
He paid attention to what he was spending on food.
“I had to make a conscious effort, where I was going to shop, to only buy the essentials. I knew what deals were on and where. I kept an eye on best-before dates.”
He bought his own groceries.
“I had my own shelf in the fridge. My parents became roommates.”
Monthly expenses were also scrutinised.
"Do I really need x, y, or z?" Streaming services got the chop. He just kept one and swapped his existing gym membership for one in a more affordable place.
“When I started saving, it was very minimal. When I moved home, I started saving what I thought I needed to, about €1,000 a month.”
Then he went to see a mortgage broker.
“Michelle Moloney at Irish Mortgage Corporation (IMC) looked at my finances and told me that I needed to be saving €1,400 a month to demonstrate my repayment capacity. That was a shocker, a 40 per cent increase in savings was required.”
It meant having to cut out a lot, he recalls.
“That’s where the isolating part came in. No to casual drinks on a Friday. I only got to hang out once in a blue moon.”
How did he find it?
“It was tough. I was watching everything I was spending. In this day and age, so much stuff has a price tag. It felt isolating.
"I was having to say no to a lot of things. I got strategic. Instead of ‘let’s go for dinner and drinks’, it was ‘let’s go for coffee and a walk’.
He says there were times when it was a bit lonely, but in total, he saved about €40,000.
“It took longer than I anticipated."
He looked at second-hand homes.
“Daft became my home so much so that my browser would suggest it as I'd start to type. I ended up in some bidding wars. Some were going on at €295,000 and ending up over €400,000.”
He availed of the First Home Scheme (FHS) an affordable housing option, which, through additional funding, supports first-time buyers to purchase a newly constructed home or to build their first home.
The FHS is a shared equity approach. This means that the government and participating banks pay up to 30 per cent of the purchase price, as long as the property costs €500,000 or less, in return for a stake of the same size in the home.
The purchaser gets five years before they have to begin making repayments on the service fee, which is 1.5 per cent of the amount borrowed from the government, from year six to fifteen only, rising higher afterwards, explains Joe Flanagan, business development manager at IMC.
There is also the option to buy back this stake, which is available from six months into the term.
Some people do this. Some people don’t. This is all predicated on a housing market where prices continue to rise.
Het got €150,000 through the first homes scheme and paid €500,000 for his A-rated, two-bedroom, two-bathroom apartment at Woodbrook Court in Shankhill.
“My girlfriend was a great support, someone to vent to, and a shoulder to lean on,” he says. She wasn’t involved in the purchase, but they had a conversation about it.
“This was what I was doing already.”
He rents a room out to help with the mortgage repayments.
“As much as I was by myself doing it, I don’t think I’d have gotten through it without my broker. It was great to have the broker deal with the bank, a support unit in a sense.”
Savings went out the window for a while after he moved in in March. But he’s locked in again now.
“I sat down and did a full budget. I try and keep it updated so that I can be on top of maintenance fees.
“I did get lucky in a lot of it. I got lucky with the timings and just ran with it.
“It was such a proud moment. The idea of it still sends a shiver down my spine.”
To find out more, click on Irish Mortgage Corporation and on First Homes Scheme
