Edel Faherty

Edel Faherty, a nurse who has been in full-time employment since 2008, shopped around several banks for a mortgage.

Getting a mortgage while renting meant cutting back on nights out and forgoing foreign holidays and weekends away but it did provide her with a goal, she says.

“I invited friends round for dinner instead of going out and there was a lot of borrowing of box sets."

“I spent a lot of time going round Lidl with a calculator too. It meant I was able to save €700 a month, one third of my monthly take home salary.”

Buying as a single woman, she took out a 35-year term mortgage with the first two years fixed. “I’m paying less than I was when I was renting, €615 a month instead of €750.”

For mortgage approval she had to show six months of savings, a year’s income and all her outgoings, shopping, petrol for the car and so on. They also wanted to see that she could live on the remaining monies.

“That feeling of putting the key in your own door is amazing,” she says. “There is a sense of home that you get that is different to when you rent.”

She has a hand-me down couch and a TV stand given to her by a friend.

She took anything else she was offered but had to buy most of her kitchen appliances.

Is she happy? “I have the luxury of living in my own home, an apartment in Firhouse, where I can sing into my hairbrush in the bath if I want to.”

In conversation with Alanna Gallagher