When I started writing this column, people told me I’d be offered houses. I have had estate agents phone to let me know a suitable home was about to come on the market, but that may have happened anyway.
None of them, though, were saying they would put that house aside for me. They wouldn’t be doing their job properly if they offered it to me, or anyone, for the asking price. Unless the seller instructs them otherwise, they have to let people go to auction and get the highest price they can.
I have been recognised by a few estate agents at viewings, and by other buyers. “You’re not going to go writing about this one now and driving the price up, are you?” asked one man at a Phibsborough viewing. I was never specific about the houses I’d been to see or the ones I was trying to buy. Alerting other people to homes I thought were definitely worth buying wouldn’t be in my interest.
Yet the market is small. I’ve had emails from other first-time buyers wondering if the three-bedroom home in Inchicore was on Tyrconnell Road (correct), or the home with tiny windows was in Cabra (incorrect).
Actually, two individuals did get in contact to see if I wanted to buy their house. The first was more plausible; a woman with a home on the market in Glasnevin, but the property wasn’t for me. The second offer was more incongruous: a man who had built a second house on his land — in rural Kerry. It was cheap, I agreed, and gently explained that I work in Dublin and that it would be quite a commute. “I thought that might be the case,” he said. “Thought I’d chance it anyway.”
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Overall, however, no, the allure of being praised in print hasn’t brought vendors flocking to me. It’s a seller’s market, and the only thing that’s going to bring them flocking is more money. That, alas, is not something I have — especially since I moved into a new rental property in September.
So I hereby retire from home hunting. It’s not the depressing stories that got me — although a Dublin estate agent recently said that of all the properties he sold this year, only one went to a first-time buyer — nor is it the constant betting and losing.
More than anything, it’s the time that goes with all of that. It’s the half of Saturdays spent driving around Dublin, and the worrying and strategising that goes into bidding. After a year, I am officially admitting defeat. If I manage to find a get-rich-quick scheme or if, more likely, paying €1,400 a month in rent for a modest home really gets to me, I might find the resolve to go through the mortgage application process again.
Seriously, though, what are the alternatives? Live in an area I really don’t like, find a job that allows me to work from a rural setting, find myself a very wealthy husband?
It feels as though I’m in a (very boring) movie in which I play the underdog and just at the moment I’m about to lose to more powerful forces, something wonderful happens and all is saved, but the moment has come and gone.
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The worst thing about giving up, is accepting what you’re taking on: no end to devastatingly high rents. Even if I tell myself I’m waiting out this housing bubble – which I reckon won’t end until at least 2022, because that’s the soonest the Economic and Social Research Institute says we could have supply to meet demand — that’s still accepting another six years of being at a landlord’s mercy.
I welcome the new rent control proposals — a 4% annual increase cap — but I am not confident in their abilities to even start fixing the housing problem. The central issue remains: There are not enough houses. I know, I know, I’m a broken record. Best of luck to the other home hunters and renters, it’s depressing out there.
So, barring a Christmas miracle, that’s me saying: goodbye, and thanks for reading.