Sorry robd, I must disagree.
There are many young first time buyers with enough earnings to qualify for a mortgage of €317500.
If you are under 30 and earn a gross salary of €52,000 then you can afford a 100% mortgage of this size on your own for a 2 bedroom property.
Whether they should go into such debt is another question but it can be done.
In fairness €52,000 is at the upper end of what an under 30's person would be earning. Granted there are people who earn this but it's no where near average. €30-€40k would be nearer the mark.
Perhaps in November 2005 a person earning €52,000 could borrow that but not now. See below for my calcs.
€52,000 is a net monthly take home of €3218 for a single person.
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Standard max repayments being 40% of take home means max repayments of €1287. With TRS of €133 I guess that could be max of €1420 before TRS is creditted.
http://www.jeacle.ie/mortgage/ gives repayments of €1423 over 35 years at 5.2% on a €275,000 mortgage. You might get a little better than 5.2% but ECB + 1.2% is a pretty good average. In November 2005 when ECB rates were at 2% a person on €52,000 could have borrowed €360,000 at 3.2% over 35 years.
The Permanent TSB calculator below gives a max mortage of €200,000 for a net monthly pay of €3218.
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are giving a max mortgage for €232,000 for gross annual salary of €52,000
I'm sure there's lenders out there that will give more but I don't think any of them will push to €317,500 at current interest rates.
Unfortunately, most people do not yet realise/understand/see the difference in borrowing power between November 2005 and now. €360,000 in Nov 2005 to €275,000 today on a pretty high salary of €52,000. It's more commonly know as a credit crunch and has been responsible for nearly every crash in history.