They've made it abroad and now they want to come back – estate agents say expat househunters are a growing part of their business. ALANNA GALLAGHERtalks to two families who've made the journey home
THE GREEN, green grass of home – and dramatic falls in property prices – are tempting an earlier generation of emigrants to look at buying a home back here.
Expats who’ve made money abroad, as well as investors looking for good deals, have been looking at the state of the market and deciding it might be time to make a move.
And although the story of the collapse of the Irish property boom has made headlines around the world, falling prices are not the only draw for those returning.
Expats dominate home sales at the top end of the market, in the €1 million-plus category, says John McNally of McNally Handy.
“These individuals work mainly in the medical and IT fields. Many have kids aged 12-plus and private school fees in Ireland are not as expensive as they are elsewhere. Education is a huge factor in their return. Most of these people can work from anywhere.”
Mid-market houses – those selling for €450,000-plus – are also sought after by Irish people abroad who actively want to come home, says McNally. He’s had calls from Dubai, Amsterdam, Germany and even Madeira. “I get emails every week.”
Is the lure of the auld sod something genetically programmed into our being? McNally thinks so, referring to it as “the Field syndrome” after John B Keane’s play.
The majority of Savills’ clients at its office in Blackrock, Co Dublin, are expats returning from the UK. “It has always been their long-term goal to return,” says Ronan O’Hara.
“These are returning emigrants at the upper end of the food chain. Blackrock houses are reasonably expensive, in the €800,000- plus category. Despite everything, the quality of life here is just great and our education system is one of the best in the world.”
It is these latter two factors that really influence decisions. Last year, he sold three houses on the same Blackrock terrace to Irish people returning from Singapore, Spain and London.
“These homehunters want to make one move and stay put for years to come – to really put down roots,” says McNally.
The recent Allsop auction attracted a huge amount of interest from abroad. Of the estimated 250 bidders, at least one-fifth were bidding remotely by phone or online from overseas, says Robert Hoban of Allsop Space.
Most of these buyers haven’t been actively looking for Irish property or aren’t registered with Irish property websites.
“It is the media attention the auctions have garnered in overseas press that has sparked their interest,” he says.
“It could be a Leitrim native who sees a property in his home county that he feels is well-priced. The auctions have generated a whole new house-hunting audience.”
Then there are people chasing a dream of a home in the Irish countryside. In Savills’ Cork office, overseas requests account for 15 per cent of all enquiries, says Catherine McAuliffe. These are “mainly expats. They’re all looking for a home on a bit of land – at least an acre on the edge of town. They’re all chasing the real Irish rural dream.”
Back from Australia - and looking to buy
THIRTYSOMETHINGS Emer Craig and Eoghan Moloney have returned home from Adelaide, in Australia. They met at university and together left Ireland for Oz in 2006.
They had Eve, their daughter, in 2009, and decided to return home to be closer to friends and family and to avail of that support network.
"We wanted Eve to be close to her grandparents, that they would be active in her life, and felt we'd be better off back in Dublin," Eoghan explains.
The return was a "staged exit", says Emer. She works in professional services for law firms. She came home with Eve in December 2010 to look for a job, giving herself six months to test the waters. If successful, the plan was for Eoghan to follow her.
Emer landed a job within three weeks. By her own admission she was really lucky. Eoghan returned home 12 months later, in December 2011. A university lecturer, he got work teaching languages at the University of Maynooth.
As first-time buyers, they started househunting in earnest in mid-January. They are looking for a three-bedroom family home in Celbridge or Maynooth.
Before they emigrated, they had been looking to buy an apartment as they wouldn't have been able to afford a family home at the time.
Now the idea of paying management fees for an apartment does not appeal. They also want a back garden that Eve can run around in.
The quality of housing stock varies enormously, says Emer. "A lot of the properties we've viewed are ex-rental and not in the best condition."
Many are still asking more than the couple would like to pay for them. Unrealistic pricing is still there, says Eoghan.
"You think that there would be a lot of housing stock on the market, but the reverse is true. Plus, we're now looking for a three-bedroom family home, like most of the other buyers out there."
Compared to 2006, the process now is far slower, says Eoghan. "You have to convince everyone – the agent to turn up, the bank to lend you the money and the owner to sell at a price you want to pay."
Estate agents are open and frank about the market, but still need to be called to get follow-up on any email enquiries, Emer adds.
They have a budget in the region of €200,000 to spend. For that, Eoghan would like a fourth bedroom, "a study or place to chill out", while Emer would prefer a "south-west facing garden".
Both want to live in a well-established estate. "There's no way we're moving into an estate that wasn't there before we left," Eoghan says.
We had been priced out of the market during the boom
SALLY O'KEEFE, her Dutch husband Hans Guyt and their twin boys, Olly and Hugo, age eight, moved back to Ireland from Holland last August.
"We'd been living abroad since 1999 and we moved back for family reasons," says Sally. "Olly has a severe form of autism and the schools here are better . He's in a class of 12 with one teacher and two special needs assistants. In Holland, he was in a class of 12 with one teacher."
Her husband continues to work in The Hague, commuting Tuesday to Friday. Sally is a secondary-school teacher. She's job hunting and has been accepted onto the VEC panel of teachers.
"We love being back and had always wanted to come back but we had been priced out of the market during the boom," she explains.
They decided on Bray because it ticked the infrastructure boxes and it's by the sea, Sally explains. "The seafront is worth its weight in gold. It is an amenity the whole community uses."
They're renting in a "lovely development" in Bray and want to stay locally. "We're looking for a three or four-bedroom home in a quiet location, preferably with a green out front," says Sally.
"We want something relatively new because the house needs to be ready to go. Olly doesn't like change, so any work will have to be done before we move in."
They have about €300,000 to spend. They sold their home in Holland for €50,000 less than they paid for it five years earlier. Dutch property prices have fallen by between 5 and 10 per cent.
Sally says she sees house prices here gradually coming down. "Houses that were €390,000 are now €300,000, for example. It's rotten for the people who are trying to sell them, but for us it means we can finally afford to buy. The way house prices were climbing in 2005, we thought we'd never get back."
At dinner parties they don't discuss their househunting, says Sally. "It's a completely different atmosphere to when we used to come back during the boom."
She welcomes the forthcoming property price register and says that in Holland, such a database already exists.
Making an offer on houses in this market is difficult, she admits. "The house has an asking price, but it's a guessing game as to how much the vendors are willing to sell for it."
