Buying is €500 less a month than renting in the capital

BUYING a house is almost €500 a month cheaper than renting in parts of Dublin, a new report has found.

And most people do not realise repaying a mortgage is ‘significantly cheaper’, according to Joey Sheahan of mymortgages.ie.

A mortgage on a three-bed home is also cheaper than paying rent in Cork, where it is €160 less, and in Galway, where it is €177 less.

Buying a three-bed home in Dublin 10 will cost around €1,300 a month repaying a mortgage, but renting a similar home in the area costs almost € 1,800 a month, according to research from Info Lab. Mr Sheahan said: ‘Most people don’t realise their mortgage repayments could, in fact, be significantly lower.’

And housing campaigner David Hall, of the Irish Mortgage Holders Organisation, said: ‘How do we solve this problem? More property.’

There is expected to be a rush of mortgage applications in the new year as new exemptions to the Central Bank’s lending rules restart.

Under the rules, borrowers can only borrow up to 3.5 times their income and 80% of the house price, although first-time buyers can borrow up to 90%.

However, each year, the banks can make an exception to the rules of up to 20% of the mortgage value to first-time buyers and up to 10% of the mortgage value to second and subsequent buyers.