A fantastical housing market in Mayo and beyond

A MAYO WOMAN'S DIARY: BARBARA DALY

WE bought our house six years ago for €122,500. It is a small 1970s semi-detached dormer.

A similar house close by has just gone up for sale for €250,000.

Welcome to the fantasy house market.

These prices mean nothing in terms of the value of the physical property but where they do matter is in people being able to match their buying ability with a property.

If you cannot borrow these amounts you can’t enter the market.

What must it be like for those looking for a ‘starter home’? Here we are in small-town, rural Mayo and it is no easier than in a city.

There are no houses to rent and rents have rocketed. There are no houses to buy and when one is available it is often snapped up before being advertised.

Added to this, houses that would never have even been put on the market a decade ago (because no one would have bought them) are fast becoming realistic possibilities.

Cottages in ruinous condition where BER ratings do not even apply are being sold for what we paid for our house.

We were able to walk in and live in our house when we bought it. These others are for ‘complete repair and renovation’.

There are also a large number of holiday homes in the area, entire estates in fact. Some are used often, some just for a brief stay.

This is not a rant about people owning holiday homes, but it is a shame to see so many houses barely or never used and with such a crisis in the market.

Anyway, back to the fantastical price increases and the apparent doubling in the value of our house. What use is it?

We get excited momentarily and then we remember that if we sold it we could not buy anything else anyway.

For us it is simply a number and in three, five or ten years’ time that number could have doubled again or even halved.

This house has worth to us only as our home and we are extremely fortunate to have it.

Unless our financial situation changes greatly it is here we will be staying.