I now know that Irish property suits my requirements, as per the previous post.

But how am I going to buy a property over there?

I have quite a few options, stemming from the fact that I have no absolute rush to leave my parent’s house. It is not a necessity to leave this house, rather a preference.

The ultra-safe route would be to keep my job, continue living at home where I have a large portion of my wages spare to go towards a mortgage on an Irish property. This would at least be an investment of my money and be a step up on the property ladder, albeit an Irish property ladder.

I could do the above and find a job in Ireland after I have sorted out a house. Then move over there to live in the property. I could let the property while I’m not living in it.

That’s half a plan.

I spent the next month racking my brains (and my parents brains) to use what we already have, to our advantage. My parents have a £200,000 property, which they have paid off, no mortgage. Between us, we have about £25,000 in savings. Three regular earners, been in our jobs for 12 months or more.

This is our ideas list and what I found out after calling more places than I can count:

All UK Personal loans

• Up to a maximum of £25,000 can be borrowed. Considered me and dad taking out a loan each and I pay for both….but…..
• Lender needs to know the purpose of the loan and this cannot be for property purchase or deposits.
• Maximum of 50% of your annual salary. So if you wanted the maximum £25,000 loan, you’d have to earn £50,000 a year. If you want more than £25,0000, it is then classed as a commercial loan (mentioned below).
• I’ve called all the main Irish banks, as well as UK banks.

Commercial Loans

• Must be for business purposes, so the mortgage would have to be Buy to Let. Irish companies class me as a non-resident (as I don’t live in Ireland) and will only accept non-resident applicants who earn over €75,000 a year, plus you must have around 50% deposit for a Buy to Let property as apparently there is more risk involved on the lender’s part versus a main-residence property.

Releasing equity on my parent’s property

Mum, dad and I have chatted at length about other possible options and although we are hugely against the idea of risking their house, we thought it would at least be worth finding out about what’s involved with re-mortgaging and trying to squeeze out some cash from their property which is worth £200,000 and has no mortgage.

• If they give me their house, this is known as “gifting” and requires that they then move out, by law.
• There is something called a “second charge” mortgage which could start a new mortgage against my parent’s house…..using the “spare” cash to buy the Ireland property, BUT… ridiculously, you have to still have an outstanding amount left of your first mortgage for this to be considered. Basically, if you have no first mortgage, you can’t have a second mortgage. So that’s not an option either, as they’ve paid theirs off. Even if it was an option, it would all have to be done in my parent’s names and I would then pay them monthly……which means they would get taxed due to additional “income” from me.

Secured loans against parent’s property

• UK Lenders aren’t interested in lending for property purchases in Ireland full stop.
• Irish lenders don’t want to secure a loan against a property in another country, because if they needed to get hold of my parent’s property, due to defaulting on payments etc, it would be too much of a hassle for them.
• Plus, having something to secure the loan against (regardless of my parents property being about 4 times the value of the loan wanted) is apparently not what they care about – they look primarily at the hard cash being paid to them every month by the borrower.

Overseas mortgages (lenders based in UK)

One of the UK’s largest overseas mortgage broker companies have told me it may be possible for me to arrange finance, but the criteria they have given me is again not what I was hoping for! It would mean that a lot of property is too CHEAP for them to consider lending!

• Min Purchase Price is €150,000 throughout Southern Ireland
• Min loan €50,000
• Deposit of 50% for Buy to Let.
• Deposit of 20% for Main Residence (not possible currently due to the fact I’m not living in Ireland).
• I most likely won’t be able to borrow €150,000 as a single applicant – it would mean a joint application from me and my dad. This means that the duration of the loan repayments will be short due to maximum age restrictions of the oldest applicant (cut off point is age 70 in most cases).
• After doing number crunching on the above, we’d be borrowing about £90,000.
• I can’t understand how lending me MORE money makes things less of a risk for the lender.

The ONLY option remaining, it seems, is to be physically in Ireland, in person. Then get a job. Then get a mortgage as a resident. NOTE: Residency does not mean Citizen.

If I use a rough rule-of-thumb and say that if I was to do a job in Ireland which was comparable to my current UK job paying £18,500 (€24,000 approx.), I would expect the mortgages offered to be comparable too. I was previously offered £72,000 in the UK, meaning €100,000 may be offered in Ireland, so this would be a viable option, as long as there are decent properties for this type of budget, in good-enough locations.

Let’s have a look……