Ciarán Mulqueen: You have more transparency buying a steak in Ireland than you do a home
Quite often a new article appears about the housing market, and I know it means I am going to be fielding calls all day and getting hundreds of DMs on my Instagram. For seven years, I have run a social media page offering housing advice and information. I have written a book and currently host a podcast on the same theme.The coverage this week of the latest research on Ireland’s dysfunctional buyers’ market by the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI) is one of those times.The report does a good job of outlining some of the issues around bidding wars and lack of knowledge a lot of people have about the home-buying process. But it doesn’t capture the full picture of what I hear from buyers, or the need for better enforcement of regulations on estate agents.The research claims that online bidding platforms can inflate prices more than other processes. It also found people in open auctions were more likely to exceed their budget and bid above what they believed the property was worth. But the study has one major omission: it fails to look at asking prices, and how they were set.READ MOREMan who alleged ex-partner cut his face and arms gets protection order against herMunich was no love-in, but Rubio spared Europe a Valentine’s Day massacre Mary Black: ‘It’s beginning to sink in, this goodbye is a bigger deal than I thought’Love for life: ‘That evening, my life changed. The rest is history’ I recently did a survey on buyers’ and sellers’ experiences over the last few years. It got more than 5,000 responses, which is an indication of the strength of feeling about property.The ESRI found major gaps in people’s knowledge of rights and responsibilities. Many people do not realise agents can keep marketing a property after it goes sale agreedIf you’re not active in the housing market yourself, it is difficult to comprehend the challenges buyers face. People often message me saying they have moved to this country and they cannot wrap their head around how our system is so slow and so lacking in transparency.Take asking prices: it has become the norm now for buyers to assume that every home will sell well above asking price. But that isn’t – or shouldn’t be – normal. In other countries, the first person to offer the asking price gets the home. Here, it seems little more than a fantasy number.A recent report by MyHome (which is owned by The Irish Times) found that 40 per cent of homes sold in 2024 went for 10 per cent or more above the original asking price, and one in seven transactions got 20 per cent more. Either buyers are awash with cash, or prices are deliberately being sent too low. It’s hard to avoid the suspicion this is done to stimulate a bidding war – after all, the more bidders, the more the home is likely to sell for. Estate agents can then use this in their marketing for their next client: “We always sell, on average, for X over the asking price.” I’ve heard of opening bids that are €80,000 above the asking price.[ Explainer: One big reason why Ireland’s home-buying process is so fraughtOpens in new window ]The next issue is information. The ESRI found major gaps in people’s knowledge of rights and responsibilities. Many people do not realise agents can keep marketing a property after it goes sale agreed. They also do not realise that either side can walk away with no penalty before contracts. In Ireland, being sale-agreed is basically a handshake.But even when people are armed with some knowledge and know the rules, they can’t enforce them. I hear all the time about bidding processes done by email with “zero transparency”. You have more transparency buying a steak in Ireland than you do a home. There is a code of conduct in place, but many buyers feel there are no real consequences when it is breached, and no practical route to challenge the process.The ESRI research found that 14 per cent of respondents felt they had been the victim of so-called ghost bidding - when bids are invented to drive up the price of a property. One-third of prospective buyers told the ESRI they expected to fall prey to ghost bidding.[ The Irish Times view on homebuying in Ireland: odds stacked against the buyerOpens in new window ]If that’s not a damning enough indictment of people’s faith in the system, there’s the practice of being forced to bid against yourself. It comes up a lot in my conversations with buyers. One buyer summed it up: “I was the highest bidder on a house for a month, but I was then asked to bid against myself to get it over the line.”Exacerbating the situation is the fact that it is far too easy to just put a home up for sale in Ireland. There seems to be no obligation to make sure a home is actually legally ready to be sold, which means buyers can spend months paying rent, paying for surveys, paying legal fees, and living with constant fear that the deal will collapse. The average rent for a three-bed in Dublin is €3,000 per month, according to the latest rent report by Daft.ie – buyers can waste thousands on rent while waiting for a sale to close.If we want to fix housing, we need more homes. But we also need to fix the process by which homes are soldBut for many of those who contact me, the worst part of the housing market is when sellers pull out. It is entirely legal for a seller to go sale agreed with someone else at a higher price after agreeing to sell – this is a process called “gazumping”. Estate agents work for the seller. That is the reality; that is their job. But who is representing buyers?If we want to fix housing, we need more homes. But we also need to fix the process by which homes are sold. This part is easier and quicker to fix than supply, and it would reduce stress quickly.Here are five steps that should be set in train now:1: Establish a national digital bidding system where every bid is logged, verified and visible.2: Make sale-agreed status on a property legally binding, with limited grounds for either side to withdraw. If one party pulls out, they should be fined multiples of the booking deposit to be paid to the other party.3: Homes should be legally ready to sell before listing, including grant of probate, so conveyancing does not start from scratch after sale agreed.4: We need standardised, enforced advertising rules, including verified details and genuine price guides, so “priced low to stir up a bidding war” stops being an accepted strategy.5: Enforce stronger regulation of the sector through a housing ombudsman and more muscular enforcement by the Property Services Regulatory Authority (PSRA).It is sometimes suggested that it has always been extremely difficult to buy a home, and that people now just need to save harder, compromise, or stop buying coffee. That is true to some extent. But Housing Europe, which represents 44 national and regional federations and 16 partner organisations across 31 countries, has done an in-depth study on the subject and found it is comprehensively more difficult to buy a home in Ireland now than ever before. Buyers are not failing; the process is failing them. If we want a housing market that works, we need to stop treating this as normal.Ciarán Mulqueen hosts the social media page Crazy House Prices and is the author of How to Buy a Home in Ireland
