Affordable Housing Scheme - Fingal County Council

Hi, just wondering has anyone availed of the Affordable Housing scheme with Fingal County council. I am thinking of doing it, but their documentaion is a bit ambiguous. I heard from another participant that after 10 years the house is fully yours and if you sell it you don't have to pay the council for its share of the house. But this sounds too good to be true and there must be a catch somewhere. Anyone know about this stuff ?

The property is fully yours from day 1, but if you sell before yr 10, you have to repay in full the percentage discount you originally got, ie if the property market price when you bought was €300k but you only paid €200k, you'd have received a discount of 33% and would have to give them 33% of whatever sale price you achieved.

After year 10 the amount repayable to them decreases by 10% per annum, so that in yr 15 for instance you'd only have to repay 50% of the initial 33% discount, and by yr 20 you pay them nothing if you sell.

Chhers, I was actually looking at the scheme for investment purposes. But by the sounds of it, it is more suited to people who want to commit to a certain piece of property long-term

To qualify it must be your ppr. If you are renting it and it is not your ppr the discount you received is clawed back.

I'd advise ringing Fingal Housing dept section...they don't seem to reply to emails at all.

check out the shared ownership scheme as well...I believe that BOI is supposed to be involved in underwriting the mortgage in the future...

although if you can afford to pay the entire mortgage back...I'm not sure it's worth it...because you are paying a lot of rent to Fingal Co Co

The same info is available from dublincity.ie, sdcc.ie and dlrcoco.ie

Again clawback applies for increase in purchase price if you sell within certain peroid of time.

Also there was info regarding this in the Irish Times property supplement regarding affordable housing...it had some interviews with people who were (un)successful when applying for these schemes. Interesting enough...first property section of the yr...