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Are Nepo Baby Buyers pricing people out of Ireland’s housing market?

IT Sunday: Read the latest columns from David McWilliams, Fintan O’Toole, Roe McDermott, Trish Murphy and more

The NBB, or Nepo Baby Buyer, is a first-time buyer financed by wealthy parents.

Sun Sep 3 2023 - 08:26

Welcome to this week’s IT Sunday, a selection of the best Irish Times journalism for our subscribers.

This weekend, David McWilliams is discussing a new type of “nepo-baby” - the NBB, or Nepo-Baby Buyer. The NBB is a first-time buyer financed by wealthy parents. The effect of the NBB in the Irish housing market is to price out those whose parents cannot give them a leg up. “No matter which way you look at it, the NBBs now constitute about half of the market for 25-34s. The housing market has been constructed, by way of various tax incentives, to be the way most Irish people accumulate wealth,” writes McWilliams.

“The implication for the 60 per cent of young people who do not have wealthy parents is obvious. They are shut out of the one asset that, rightly or wrongly, Irish people believe gives a stake in society and a wealth base to build upon. We can argue the rights and wrongs of this, but it is an essential financial fact in Ireland.”

The inability to buy a house, mixed with soaring rents, has led many young people with little choice but to remain living with their parents well into adulthood. As Conor Capplis wrote here during the week, in Ireland, 68 per cent of people aged between 25 and 29 still live in their childhood home, according to Eurostat. This is significantly higher than the EU average of 42.1 per cent and the sixth highest overall of the countries surveyed.

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Capplis spoke with people stuck in this predicament, including Ella Araojo, aged 27, who is living with her parents. “I am a microbiologist for a pharmaceutical company, which would make you think I could afford to move out,” she says. Arajao speaks about watching friends with partners being able to buy and rent properties: “They’re out there setting up for their independent, adult life and it’s difficult to do that in the comfort and confinement of my childhood bedroom. You feel stunted, kind of left behind in that sense.”

Fintan O’Toole, in his latest column, examines the prospect of Sinn Féin being in government next year, and poses the question: what should the current Government do to prepare for the probability that Sinn Féin might replace it next year or at the latest in early 2025?

“As we get closer to an election the Government parties will no doubt talk up the alleged threat to democracy of Sinn Féin in power. But if they actually believe in the reality of that threat they should be acting now to minimise it,” he writes.

“There’s no point trying to scare voters away from Sinn Féin by warning them that our democracy is vulnerable to being taken over by dark forces and unelected influences. If you want people to believe in those vulnerabilities you have to show that you are serious about reducing them. The way to protect democracy is always through more and deeper democracy: more checks and balances, more effective means of calling those in power to account, more independent sources of public information and discussion, more limits on the flow of dark money.”

In our Food section, Corinna Hardgrave this week doled out a dazzling 4.5 star review for a Dublin restaurant she says has really upped its game. Delahunt, on Camden Street, has made its way straight to our food critic’s favourite restaurant’s list. Read more here.

In her latest advice column, Trish Murphy responds to a reader who, from the outset of her relationship with her partner, noticed something strange: “When we would go food shopping together, which would be extremely rare, he would always steal one item from the shop, something small like a banana or an apple.” Now that the reader is pregnant, the behaviour has extended to things like rattles and babygrows. The reader confronted her partner, who immediately became defensive, espousing “drivel” about corporate exploitation. Read the full query, and Murphy’s response, here.

Roe McDermott this weekend hears from a reader who is tired of closeted, married men approaching him for affairs. “I’m gay and single, and recently met a man who made a move on me. It turned out he was married so I said no... Why do men play from the closet? Even among themselves it’s very unfair.” Read the full piece here.

In this week’s On the Money newsletter, Joanne Hunt explains how to save money on new hearing aids. Sign up here to receive the newsletter straight to your inbox every Friday.

As always, there is much more on irishtimes.com, including rundowns of all the latest movies in our film reviews, tips for the best restaurants in our food section and coverage of this weekend’s Electric Picnic festival. Ahead of next weekend’s kick-off, you can find all of the latest Rugby World Cup analysis, squad profiles and updates here. There are plenty more articles exclusively available for Irish Times subscribers here.

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