Boom times in the property area make watching the market a real kick for anyone lucky enough to own a house, especially if they bought it in or before early 1994. The house-sellers' good fortune, however, has become the house-buyers' full-blown crisis as many young firsttime buyers watch their dreams of home-ownership implode. The huge demand for, and low supply of, houses in the Dublin area is pushing house prices so high that many young people cannot get a foothold in the market. "Couples with £100,000 to spend are finding their choice very, very limited," says Rena O'Kelly of Sherry Fitzgerald. "First-time buyers are very, very frustrated," says estate agent Peter Lawlor, of Lawlor and Associates in Dun Laoghaire. "The problem is universal, although it's worse on new estates and in the better areas."
He says that many first-time buyers who, four years ago, might have bought a new house on a private estate, are today buying in local authority estates. In some estates in the Dun Laoghaire area, 90 per cent of the houses are now privately owned - and these houses have doubled in value in since 1994, he says. For example, a three-bedroom, semi-detached, former Dublin Corporation house in Sallynoggin is today getting offers in excess of £110,000, whereas the same type of house sold for £40,000 in 1990. People trading up are also being trapped in the turmoil, since those who have sold three-bedroom semi-ds for good prices are nevertheless finding it impossible to buy four-bedroom detached houses in established areas, Lawlor adds.
Mark Fitzgerald of Sherry Fitzgerald believes that we now have two sections of homeowners which he calls "pre and post-Humanae Vitae". The post-Humanae Vitae babyboomers, born after June 1968, are facing more competition for a limited stock in the established areas. "If you were born after 1975, your chance of buying a house in an established area is distinctly less than if you were born in 1965," he says.
First-time buyers who cannot afford to pay in excess of £100,000 for a house have three options, according to Des Ryan of the EBS in Dun Laoghaire. One is to find a guarantor for a portion of a mortgage more than their salaries would normally allow. Others without this resource will have to come to terms with a future of long-term leasing, which the EBS predicts will be an increasing trend in the future - although at the moment, rented accommodation of the size and quality required for family living is not yet available in Dublin as it is in the rest of Europe.
The third option - which is happening on quite a large scale already, according to Ryan - will be for young couples to purchase homes in towns outside Dublin and commute. "Today many first-time buyers are quite happy to move outside the Dublin area and are buying in Drogheda, Mullingar, Arklow and Gorey. As the road network improves, people are happy to spend time in the car if they can buy a better property for the same amount of money in a country area where the quality of life is better," he says.
"Cottaging" - living outside Dublin and working from home with the help of home computers, modems and email - may also be a solution to the commuter trap. Already some executives living outside Co Dublin are working at home, starting at 8 a.m., then driving into the office mid-morning when the traffic is lighter.
However, Mark Fitzgerald believes that in the end it will only be possible to preserve the community atmosphere of Dublin if we drastically improve the transport system, which has not been developed for 100 years. A major part of the solution to the property crisis, in his view, would be an underground system which would make areas such as Dundrum, Goatstown, Sandyford, Tallaght, Templeogue, Terenure and Rathfarnham more accessible to city workers. He is so convinced of this that he believes that the Government should sell one of the State banks to finance it. "No part of Dublin should be more than 20-30 minutes from the city centre," he says.
Mark Fitzgerald would also like to see the building societies and banks easing their lending limit, the familiar two-and-a-half times one salary plus one salary. Interest rates are so low that mortgage repayments are requiring a smaller proportion of the average two-career couple's salary than they used to. Lenders could give larger mortgages if they were based on the borrower's net income after repayments, rather than on gross income, he asserts. Des Ryan, however, maintains that the traditional criteria based on gross salaries has "stood the test of time" and should stay. Instead, the EBS is considering granting 30-year mortgages, which could help borrowers buy more expensive houses.
Whatever the solution, there is no doubt that one must urgently be found for the thousands of young people who are beginning to feel excluded from a lifestyle which previous generations have taken for granted. "If what we are interested in for the post-Humane Vitae generation is achieving a quality of life, as opposite to a struggle of life, what we need is for Government to take the kind of visionary leaps that were taken by previous generations, such as O'Malley and free education," says Fitzgerald.
Buying a home is about more than property ownership. It is also about childcare, the family, community and work - with great implications for our society in the future. It may already be too late to stop Dublin's transformation from a city of villages to a city of commuters and cottagers working in cyberspace.
