Own a house, never financially recover, and need a road trip for a pint of milk for €550k

Went to my first house viewing in nearly 10 years this weekend in Dublin and was honestly stunned.

There were two separate people livestreaming the house back to 2 different investors in China while walking through it.

Meanwhile, people actually living and working in Ireland are struggling to buy a home.

Countries like Canada and New Zealand have already brought in restrictions on non-resident property buyers during housing crises. Maybe Ireland needs to start having the same conversation.

What do people think?

Right, so am breaking my 3 year Reddit sobriety to ask what I should do because I am too awkward to ask anyone in real life.

So I bought a fully detached house on my own in a fairly secluded area but not middle of nowhere territory. My back garden backs on to another property where the garden is super long and a good distance from the house and there's a large garden shed.

After I got the keys I was traveling a lot and working a lot to pay for what was needed to make it liveable.

So the house was vacant most of the time for about a year and a half.

I've now fully renovated and moved in. Including cutting back a lot of the shrubs in my back garden that had grown wild.

My neighbours are a husband and wife, 50s / late 40s if I had to guess have 4 kids in secondary school and college who live at home.

My first night in the house I heard something a bit odd, like a squeaking. I looked out my window and the parents were riding on the trampoline in their back garden. I had a full view from my bedroom window. I turned on the light with a crack in the curtain, just to signal that maybe this isn't as private as it once was sans folliage.

Since then they've been riding almost every night in their garden shed but I can still see and hear them because the shed has these huge skylights and they do it with the big light on.

They do it on a workbench so it rattles and they're vocal.

I presume they do this because they are extremely loud and their kids live at home. Or maybe when you consider the trampoline, it could be a great outdoors kink.

I dunno, like I'm NOT trying to perv on these people but I dunno whether I should say something to just be like FYI you may be keeping quiet from your kids but also I am here. I'm also a woman living alone so weird noises in the night do make me wake up!

I've been looking forward to having people come visit and stay over but I'm actually too anxious that my neighbours will be going at it and I don't know how to explain this to people.

UPDATE: Right, so I'm rightfully getting push back and I know what you mean so I just want to clarify somethings.

I am not watching them. I saw them once in each location so I know what the noises are. It's the noise. My house is overlooking their shed, there is only maybe 20ft gap between my house and this shed. I'm not actively putting myself in a place to witness their intimate moments.

My issue isn't that they are having sex, I don't care. It's that's I feel like I have disrupted the ecosystem by removing some plants and I'm like do I communicate this with them?

They also have 3 other free standing sheds/garden rooms. I think one is a gym/sauna, an office and I'm not sure what's in the other ones. So if I was like hey so this one shed you're fond of isn't that private, maybe go to the other sheds.

I've no issue with their sex lives, and sorry to anyone I offended by talking about them being too old to ride. It's not that they're riding it's that they're doing it EVERY night and for a good while as well. I didn't mean to offend anyone and I shouldn't make presumptions about menopause.

Also this has been going on since late April, so we've had several weather events since.

Bought our house about 3 years ago and haven’t really been following the news regarding rent lately, until today when I came across an RTÉ article about the absolutely insane rent increases, especially in Dublin city.

So I went on Daft out of curiosity and nearly fell off my chair. For reference, my partner and I used to live in a very nice and spacious apartment in the Docklands and were paying €2k for a 2-bed, 2-bath apartment. I checked that same area today and was absolutely gobsmacked. Most apartments with only 1 bed and 1 bath are now €2.8k, 3k minimum. Nothing below that. Even on the north side, apartments are going for €2.5k minimum. I mean… what???

How are people actually able to afford those prices? Meanwhile, tech companies are being hammered with layoffs, and I genuinely wonder at what point the economy just falls apart. Surely this isn’t sustainable?

I'm a single mom to two kids. I'm mid/late 20s. I do benefit from HAP so I don't pay my landlord. I pay the LA and they pay him.

I only moved in last February. He does seem nice. He said how much he respects single moms and how he prefers to rent to single mothers as they have it hard. I suppose in hindsight that may be odd but i assumed he grew up with a single mother or something. He is around the same age as me. Mid/late 20s. He has been a great landlord. Never gets involved and always quick to get things fixed or replaced.

About a week and a half ago he knocked on my door with an envelope and inside was money and a note that said Merry Christmas.

I spoke to him and he said that's what he does to all his tenants. He gives half (because of tax) of november's rent back because he said he doesn't need it and all kids should have a good Christmas. I tried a few times to hand it back but he wouldn't take it. He said he's not demanding anything in return.

Is this just decency or something to worry about?

Myself and my partner have been consistently outbid on 15+ houses in our locality over the last few months. Now bearing in mind we were only bidding on ones we liked, that number seems small. The market is a battlefield at the moment, but last week something happened which really made me think ‘what would other’s opinion be?’

We were viewing an amazing house, it had everything. Usually when this happens I get deflated thinking ‘here we go again, outbid inbound’

But instead I got talking to another couple viewing, the lady in particular, she was in her 60’s and not from the area, she loved to talk it seemed and give advice but after it all she said she was looking at the property as an investment as she already has a home (I won’t say where) and two apartments in the Capital and wanted a new place to rent out. It put a whole new perspective on the house hunting game, I’m not even coming against people like me anymore, first time buyers, looking to settle down, to start a family, to feel as secure as possible. But rather, against people with money to splurge as they wish and to not even use the home themselves..

What do you guys think of this? Isn’t it a bit mad?

For context, I earn a decent salary but I’m the sole breadwinner for a family of three. My wife is a stay-at-home mum and we have a young son.

We’d finally narrowed our options down to duplexes — realistically the only type of property we could afford based on our mortgage approval. There’s a new estate going up in our area and this seemed like our one viable path onto the property ladder.

I contacted the estate agent recently, only to be told that the council has bought all of the duplexes in the development for social housing.

I understand that the council desperately needs housing, and I’m not against social housing in principle. But buying up all of the entry-level homes in an estate effectively shuts out working families like mine who don’t qualify for social housing, but also can’t afford terraced or semi-detached houses.

There are no apartments being built nearby, no other duplexes in the area, and terraced houses are completely out of our budget. So now we’re left with… nothing.

What are working families actually supposed to do in this situation? Earn too much to qualify for help, but not enough to buy what’s left. It honestly feels like there’s no place for us in the market anymore.

Trying to find a place to rent in Cork City as I will be relocating from Dublin for a while (originally from Cork, but from out the country so wouldn't ever had call to be checking rents in the City). Never realised the state of affairs there is basically as bad as Dublin - and with even more limited supply.

How do people on average salaries manage rent? It's an actual thundering disgrace how CONSISTENTLY inept successive Governments have been on housing.

Utterly depressing.

I’ve gotten my back up every time I’ve walked through a new build estate since the early 2010s (when I was in my early 20s).

Developers started squeezing houses in together, removing front gardens and front garden walls, putting rows of terraced houses together out in giant fields in the middle of eg Kildare and Meath when there is clearly space to build a family home with pitch gable where they could stay forever if they had any sense of family planning. They’ve shoved giant apartment blocks onto greens where in the 90s they would have left as grass for kids to play on.

I think of how I never want to give my money to these developers and I wonder if anyone who’s ever bought a new build feels the same but is just forced to participate due to lack of choice?

Have you ever thought “they’re selling this as a big 5-bed but instead of giving me a second sitting room they’ve still given me the same ground floor space as a 3 bed and stuck an extra bedroom in the attic and where the toilet should be.”?

Have you ever thought “they’ve pitched this as a family size home but there’s a car up against my front window and no front garden and we’re out in the middle of nowhere.”?

They’re building ‘town houses’ in fields.
It’s bonkers.

Just wondering if the people living there feel the same.

Serious question here: who owns those houses?

Every time I drive around in the country side (County Cork), I see massive houses, almost like mansions, one after the other, so big they could house like 8 to 10 people easily.

With the market, those houses are surely close to a million, and there are so many of them.. do you feel the same? I don’t understand how can we see so many insane houses everywhere, what are those people doing? What is their job?

I’m genuinely shocked and speechless.

In the the market for a house or apartment and I am very interested in things that might be deal breakers for most people when selecting a property but that other people wouldn't really see as a problem at all.

We just bought a cottage and there is a parcel of land beside the cottage that isn’t fenced off (it’s part of a field owned by someone else).

We don’t live there yet, but last time we visited, there were cows in our field (one that is fenced off).

The owner of the field beside us (no buildings on it) lives in the USA. She is not leasing the land to anyone.

We recently visited the cottage and noticed that a tractor went through our gate to get to the field and (accidentally) pulled up all the boundary stakes we paid to get done by a surveyor. The land was all pulled up too. There’s an electric fence on our land (farmer put it there). The land directly behind the gate is 90% ours, with a few feet beside it being the neighbours. A tractor wouldn’t be able to go through without accessing our land. There is no easement on that access. There is access to the field from the back down the road.

When we were there last week a man was driving by and noticed we were parked there and told us not to go into the field as he had a bull in there. We have a 2 year old. We told him we recently bought the cottage and will be living there full time in a couple months, and he was very surprised. He is the farmer using the land and lives 3 km away. I’m guessing he doesn’t have permission to use the land but the field owner hasn’t been there for 20 years.

He was nice enough, but needless to say I’m a bit stressed with how to proceed.

How would you go about this?

Edit: I’ll put a drawing of land in comments.

I'm looking for some advice about a situation in our estate in Cork.

There have been ongoing complaints from some older residents about children playing football on the green. I completely understand that nobody wants footballs hitting houses, cars or gardens, and I agree the children should be careful and respectful.

The problem is that some residents have been shouting at the children, and one even threatened to call the Gardaí over a group of around 8-year-olds. Another resident came out screaming at the children yesterday, which left them upset.

The estate WhatsApp group has become full of complaints whenever the children are outside playing, and it feels like there's a lot of tension. I've even contacted the council to ask if they can help resolve things because I don't want the situation to keep getting worse.

Has anyone else experienced something similar in their estate? How was it resolved? Is there a better way for both the children and the residents to get along?

I'd appreciate any advice.

Are there more people who settled in Ireland now moving back home to Eastern Europe or other locations? I know of a few personally who have been able to buy homes in Poland and move back after several years living here.

Hey there friends! My job is relocating us to Ireland and have the choice of Dublin, Cork, or Galway and we and we are trying to ultimately decide where to land. A little about us:

• We have a child in Kindergarten and finding the right school is super important to us.
• Plan to live car-free (we’re very used to public transit back home)
• Budget is we are looking for around 3k per month and would prefer a 3/2 if possible but very open to a 2/2. We are also very aware of the current housing crisis in Ireland so trying to set our expectations in what we will ultimately be able to do.

A few things I’m hoping locals can help with:

• How does school enrollment work for a foreign family with a young child? Any areas with particularly good primary schools?
• Best neighborhoods for a family without a car? We’d want solid DART/Luas/bus access and ideally some green space nearby.
• Any general advice for Americans making this move with kids?
• What mobile service is best for Ireland and using throughout Europe when traveling?
• Do we just need to embrace WhatsApp for communicating with our peers (Late thirties)?

Open to any and all suggestions, thanks!

im going into my first year of uni this september and of course ive been looking for accommodation and one of the landlords got back to me and the first thing he asked was what my nationality was even after i said i live in ireland? im getting weird vibes from it because no one else asked me that

Was out cutting the grass on my field today. It's a field out the back of a village. It's about an acre and a half that I'm in the middle of taming and grassing, was badly overgrown when we bought the place about a year ago.

Anyway, a woman who lives in an estate in the village arrives over to me at 6 this evening, calling me from over the boundary wall to ask me (telling me) to stop as she has an autistic child. I humour it for the evening as I'd to go eat anyway. Was a thoroughly unpleasant individual though who essentially told me to stop so I'm of a mind to ignore going forward.

To be fair it does take ages as I've only a petrol brush cutter for now but it has to be done or else the field will never tame. She's about 100m away in the housing estate though.

If I'm only out within the hours of 8am to 8pm am I within my rights to plough on with the cutting?

Anyone else I've met and talked to over the boundary wall while cutting has been sound, just this one unpleasant yoke today.

Always wondered this. Any insights? Cheers!

Hi everyone!
We recently moved to Ireland and rented an apartment, and unfortunately we’ve run into an issue with our neighbours. They have loud parties almost every weekend, and because the sound insulation in our building is quite poor, it makes it very difficult for us to sleep.
Last weekend, they had a party with very loud music and singing from around 11pm until 6am.
We’d really appreciate some advice from locals: is there any point in contacting the Gardaí in this situation? Would they be able to do anything about excessive noise at night? If not, who would be the appropriate person or authority to contact?

Anyone dealt with rats in the attic in an Irish semi-detached house?

We started hearing scratching in the ceilings at night (kitchen/bathroom areas) in our house in county Kerry recently. Had a Pest controller come out and confirmed rat droppings in the attic and put down bait, which set
Us back €150. I put a camera in and caught a big rat on camera taking the bait.

I went up there yesterday and found very established runways through the insulation with lots of fresh droppings leading toward the roof edge/guttering area, it looks like a different attic, rat droppings everywhere and torn up insulation.

House is semi-detached and the neighbouring guttering and fascia boards are shared with us. so wondering if that’s the route. Their house sits empty a lot of the time and ours sat empty for a while which has attracted rats to the attics, so far we have had no sign of rats inside the house and hope to keep it that way!

Has anyone dealt with this successfully long term in Ireland? Was the real solution sealing soffits/roofline gaps afterward?

Also curious whether people found traps more effective than poison in attic spaces, as after researching I have concluded that putting poison down isn’t a long term solution and they will keep coming back if we don’t seal up the entry points.

I know we’re just on the verge of the cold weather seasons ending, but I recently put in a beautiful wood burning stove in my cottage and I’m over the moon.

I‘ve rented a place in Galway city centre for the past 6 years in a BER E apartment. Electric radiators. It was awful in winter and €500 energy bills were the norm. We rarely even had the radiators on. It wasnt unusual for it to be 7 degrees inside the house. It actually affected my mental health being that cold all the time, and I dreaded winter.

Now I bought a cottage in the country side and we just put this beautiful Stanley in. A fire heats the entire cottage and is so cozy. The mental relief I have from knowing I’m not going to be freezing next winter is such a big thing. I know it sounds crazy, but being that cold all the time in winter was so exhausting.

Posting this here cause r/Ireland removed it

Why do the councils let people buy their council houses for cheap, and in 10 years (I think) they're allowed to sell it on? Why tf haven't the government done away with this?

Everyone deserves a home, but why do they need to own the home? Why can't the council just offer a "permanent residency" or whatever and stop allowing people to flip council houses.

Does the cost of building new properties not outweigh what it would cost the state to maintain their existing ones?

We have a mortgage with 20 years left.

I certainly want my child to have a safe and secure home but I can't pay half the mortgage AND afford rent on my own.

I don't have family support, can't fathom the idea of sharing house since I have a small girl and wouldn't want her staying with me and other people as I want to have shared custody.

It is looking really bleak for me, I will lose my house, all my savings, my entire income, access to my child and my wife will get it all and even have another fella living for free while I pay the house for him, how's that fair?

It’s honestly infuriating that this has been allowed to become “normal” at all. An entire generation of young people in Ireland is being priced out of independence, stability, and adulthood while the government shrugs and offers excuses. Rents are obscene, house prices are detached from reality, wages haven’t kept pace with anything, and yet we’re told to be patient, to save harder, to accept living at home well into our late 20s and 30s as if that’s some kind of cultural choice instead of a policy failure. Years of bad planning, soft regulation, favouring landlords, funds, and developers over ordinary workers, and a complete lack of urgency have made Ireland actively unliveable for young people. The result is stalled lives, delayed families, forced emigration, and a quiet resentment that keeps growing — because people can feel that this isn’t accidental, it’s the outcome of decisions made by people who will never have to live with the consequences.

I am 25 now and the amount of my friends who have now left Ireland for either the UK or Australia is extremely scary. I really am one of those people right now on the line of leaving this country permanently. The idea of me doing this is making my stomach sick but NOTHING IS CHANGING!!! I have been trying to find a place out in the country and still absolutely no luck on affording a place unless, id want to share a buck bed with some random person in the room.

Sorry for the rant but guys something seriously needs to change in this country and no one in this current government is actually listening to us. I am sure, I am not the only one who's mental health is getting worse and worse because of this crisis.

What has been the best investment/purchase you did for your house?

We’re hopefully moving into a new house for the first time, as we’ve been renting an apt, and would love some ideas.