Even at the best of times, there is something dispiriting about house viewings.
All those vases of lilies and tables set for breakfast no one will ever eat, screaming that if you would fork out only €410,000 for this non-descript three-bed semi in Ballymacnothingspecial, you too could have a lifestyle that involved a daily supply of fresh flowers, plus the time and inclination to be setting tables for breakfast. All that ostentatious knocking on surfaces and peering at suspicious stains, and all those heavy looks and furious whispers. All that talk of breaking through here, opening out there, extending this and converting that.
The hope. The desperation. The greed. The nauseating sense of deja vu.
It was a solid, unassuming house, a bog-standard three-bed semi but for someone it was quite plainly home.
This was definitely not the best of times. The house itself wasn't the problem. It was nothing fancy – this wasn't Fran Rooney's Nirvana which featured in a recent Irish Times property supplement, with its handpainted murals in the pool area. There was a distinct absence of Gerald Kean-style windowless cigar rooms. It was a solid, unassuming house, the kind of property known in the business as a bog-standard three-bed semi but for someone it was quite plainly home.
Taking possession
The tenant had been given her notice so that the new owners could take possession unencumbered by existing arrangements. She seemed to be making her feelings about this known in the piles of stuff that occupied every available surface – the couch, the dining table, the beds. A collection of My Little Ponies was arranged in a row on top of the mirror over the fireplace. In her bedroom, a bra – a lacy, padded number, a “good bra” – was suspended like a sign at a protest march from a hanger on the door of the en suite.
The agent – a decent, fair man, who was doing his best to help us navigate the property market as returned emigrants – explained that the vendor was planning to sell the property using a new platform called BidX1.
BidX1 is like a high-stakes, high-speed eBay auction. It is "the next step in property innovation" the website declares, designed to speed up the sales process and maximise the price – oblivious to the objections of those of us who might feel the last thing the Irish property market needs is a heated-up sales process, or that the only innovation it actually requires is a bit of sense and a dose of humanity.
If you’re interested in a property, you register in advance, prove you have finance in place, pay a security deposit – in this case, €10,000 – have a survey done, and pay a solicitor to do the conveyancing before the auction. The winning bid is binding. Contracts are signed instantly. There’s no cooling off period. The website promises fast closing, “transparency, efficiency, certainty and compliance”. What it doesn’t add is that being a vulture fund with a legal team on standby would be a definite advantage.
I felt like one of those vulture funds myself, easing my way around the detritus of someone else’s life, and trying to imagine the detritus of my life taking its place. I couldn’t see it.
Lack of mortgage
As it turned out, the bank couldn't see it either. One thing nobody tells you when you're a returning emigrant is that you can forget about getting a mortgage, at least for a year or two. If you have notions about self-employment, you can forget about it for longer than that. The same banks that, 10 years ago, were foisting euros at people like us in bundles of €100,000, practically tied with ribbon and sprayed with scent, won't be able to help you now. "The computer says no," the nice woman at the bank said apologetically. "Central Bank rules."
I pointed out that we had a substantial deposit saved and a good credit rating: we never missed a repayment on our previous home, and sold that house when it crawled back out of negative equity a couple of years ago, repaying the mortgage in full. The computer made a sound like a guffaw.
We are relatively lucky. We are renting a beautiful home. We have an accommodating, understanding landlord. We have supportive family nearby. We will never be homeless, unlike those poor souls on RTÉ's Ireland's Property Crisis.
We can wait. It’s just as well. Between computers that laugh in the face of your “good credit rating” and bidding against vulture funds, we don’t have much choice.
We kept an eye on bidding. There were 11 bids in five minutes, and the house eventually sold for €35,000 over the asking price.
If you're a vulture fund, though, you've got it made
Yes, folks, the boom is back. Just not for the likes of us. Not for returning emigrants, caught between our Game of Thrones-style rental market or a computer that keeps saying no. Not for the woman with the My Little Ponies. Not for couples who are paying so much in rent they can never save for a deposit. Not for the families living in hotel rooms. Not for people still trapped in negative equity, who will be paying an interest-only mortgage until they're 70. If you're a vulture fund, though, you've got it made.
joconnell@irishtimes.com