A place to call home

For anyone deliberating a move home, the second thing you are most likely to give careful consideration to, after a job, is a place to live.

If you are residing abroad, and keeping a watchful eye on the Irish property market, you will know that currently it’s not easy to buy, or rent. Prices are not back to their peak but they’re heading in that direction and supply is low.

However, there are plenty of new developments coming on stream and while the property market is not where it needs to be, in order to meet supply, these new schemes will go some of the way to meet demand.

To buy

If considering a move back to Ireland, Lisney’s divisional director for residential sales Stephen Day advises on securing a rental property to begin with.

“For rental accommodation, never mind a mortgage, you need to have secure employment. Once you have a job, you’ll find a rental and then once you’ve done that you’ll need six months of renting, with a decent bank account to prove you can pay the bank back. Once you do that, the bank will consider you for a mortgage.

“It’s incredibly difficult to buy whilst abroad; the banks just aren’t in that space yet. It’s better to come home and rent for a while to begin with. I’ve seen it time and again, people coming back in a rising market and feeling they have to buy straightaway. They end up buying in an area they don’t want to live in. My advice is to rent for six months and don’t be fussy on the area you live in, from a rental point of view. Then if you have to pay a little bit of a premium on top of what you would have paid six months earlier, at least it’s a calmer approach to buying. Don’t panic-buy,” he says.

Day says while supply peters off at this time of year, it will pick up again in February. However, demand will continue to outstrip supply.

Jill O'Neill, communications director with Sherry FitzGerald, says while they expect to see an increase in new-homes completions, from about 18,000 in 2017 to a possible 21,000 or 22,000 in 2018, twice that amount is needed to meet demand. "It's a particularly tough market for buyers of new homes and although the situation is improving it's still tough," she says.

To rent

Vernon Pilcher of VIP Property Services in Dublin says when choosing a location to rent, it’s important to understand what your geographical footprint is going to look like. Where are you likely to work, where is your family going to be based, as well as the schools your children will attend and your connection to family or friends already in Ireland.

“Ensure that you consider all aspects of your lives so that the place you live gives you the best possible chance of balancing your work, family and personal interests. Be careful not to become ‘disconnected’ from your family and friends. We have seen examples of emigrants returning to Dublin after a lot of anticipation only to find that their lives do not work as expected and they had to return to their overseas lives. Even if you used to live in a place, you should re-acquaint yourself with it, things might have changed such as the cost of things, schools, shops, businesses, people that you used to know may have moved on and a once-familiar place may feel completely different,” he says.

“Once you establish your geography, this will probably give you the criteria for your first preference as to where you want to rent a property.”

These criteria are the information you will use in your search, most probably via internet property portals such as daft.ie, or myhome.ie

“When you start your search, you may need to adapt your requirements to the market in terms of location and pricing, and of course availability. If you struggle to satisfy your first preferences then we recommend looking at the options by following a train or road or bus route along until you find availability / pricing that might suit. You could well find that you are able to ‘trade off’ some commute distance for more affordable or larger properties,” Pilcher says.

Retaining the services of a local agent to ‘go after’ properties when you get closer to the time that you will arrive is also a must. This gives you the means to have attendance at viewings, provide references to the letting agent directly and to manage the financial and practical matters here so your arrival is hassle-free.

“With the internet of things we are well able to share photos, videos and other information to really give you an understanding of a property without disruptive travel. The letting market in Dublin in particular is suffering from a lack of properties coming back to the market for rent so you need to have a way of responding almost immediately should a suitable property come to the market,” he says.

New properties are under construction and some will be available to the rental market. Some big landlords such as IRES REIT are constructing properties expressly for the purpose of renting and these should be monitored for upcoming releases.

Some employers use relocation companies (Irish Relocations, for example) to source rental properties for their employees. These companies effectively act as the local agent to secure rental properties from the market and then make all of the arrangements for the person to arrive and start living in the property.