Sir, - A surcharge tax on new mortgages! To quote the great tennis player: "you cannot be serious!" I am in the process of buying a new house I cannot afford a "second hand" one because of the stamp duty. I meet the lending criteria that the Bank of Ireland applies - 2.5 times my salary. I probably will not qualify for the homebuyers grant, even though I will be a new homeowner in Ireland, because I owned a flat in the UK before returning to Ireland last year.
House prices have gone up since I came back by, in my experience of househunting, some 15-20 per cent. Now the ESRI is suggesting that I should pay even more. Why me? I'm only trying to buy an overpriced house in an overheated market within the bank lending rules. I'm not getting anything out of the deal. I would agree that government intervention is necessary, but another tax on new homebuyers is regressive and not the sort of imaginative approach that is needed to deal with the structural problems in the market.
Yours, etc.,
Temple Crescent,
Blackrock,
Co Dublin.