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Breaching the Limits of Owner Occupation? Supporting Low-Income Buyers in the Inflated Irish Housing Market

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  • Michelle Norris
  • Dermot Coates
  • Fiona Kane

Abstract

The Republic of Ireland broadly has relatively high rates of home ownership compared to the rest of western Europe, which are related to the longstanding, broadly targeted state subsidization of home purchase provided as part of an implicit tradition of asset-based welfare. During the 1980s, however, several of these generalist subsidies were abolished and the remainder reoriented towards enabling low income households to purchase a home, while the last ten years have seen unprecedented house price inflation. This article, which examines the operation of these low income home buyers' supports in five case study areas, reaches largely negative conclusions about their efficacy in the current housing market context. Despite efforts to increase transactions by introducing new schemes of this type, levels of use have remained static since the early 1990s. These measures have failed to stem the recent fall in the proportion of Irish households that own their homes. More seriously, widespread arrears on mortgages held by scheme participants casts doubts on the sustainability of the home ownership they facilitate. Thus, the Irish case demonstrates that even when heavily subsidized home ownership does have structural limits and highlights the problems associated with attempting to breech these limits by lifting low-income households into this tenure.

Suggested Citation

  • Michelle Norris & Dermot Coates & Fiona Kane, 2007. "Breaching the Limits of Owner Occupation? Supporting Low-Income Buyers in the Inflated Irish Housing Market," European Journal of Housing Policy, Taylor and Francis Journals, vol. 7(3), pages 337-355.
  • Handle: RePEc:taf:eurjhp:v:7:y:2007:i:3:p:337-355
    DOI: 10.1080/14616710701477979
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    Cited by:

    1. Michelle Norris, 2013. "Varieties of Home Ownership: Ireland’s transition from a socialised to a marketised policy regime," Working Papers 201306, Geary Institute, University College Dublin.
    2. Michelle Norris & Nessa Winston, 2011. "Housing wealth, debt and stress before, during and after the Celtic Tiger," Open Access publications 10197/4923, Research Repository, University College Dublin.
    3. Michelle Norris & Michael Byrne, 2015. "Asset Price Keynesianism, Regional Imbalances and the Irish and Spanish Housing Booms and Busts," Working Papers 201514, Geary Institute, University College Dublin.
    4. Richard Waldron & Declan Redmond, 2016. "Stress in Suburbia: Counting the Costs of Ireland's Property Crash and Mortgage Arrears Crisis," Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie, Royal Dutch Geographical Society KNAG, vol. 107(4), pages 484-501, September.
    5. Kristin Aarland & Anna Maria Santiago, 2023. "Serious Mortgage Arrears among Immigrant Descendant and Native Participants in a Low-Income Public Starter Mortgage Program: Evidence from Norway," Societies, MDPI, vol. 13(5), pages 1-28, May.
    6. Lenarčič, Črt, 2022. "Drivers of household arrears: an euro area country panel data analysis," MPRA Paper 114558, University Library of Munich, Germany.

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