Ireland's housing crisis has become a moving crisis, and we must begin treating it as such. We rightly talk about new supply, affordability and the challenge facing younger buyers. But a healthy housing market does not work only by adding homes at one end. It also depends on people being able to move through it at every stage of life. Today, too many households are stuck because the right alternative does not exist. Movers hold the key to freeing up vast swathes of housing stock, but they are not being assisted or incentivised to move.
In Galway, first-time buyers now account for approximately seventy per cent of home purchases. The highly incentivised new-homes market is also dominated by first-time buyers, supported through Help to Buy and the First Home Scheme. Those measures have helped stimulate new-build supply, which now accounts for approximately one quarter of housing transactions. There is no doubt that the Government deserves credit for creating such momentum in the new-home category.
There is, however, a rather large elephant in the room. Second-hand home sales, which represent three-quarters of the market, have fallen off a cliff. Transactions are down by half since 2020 and are continuing to decline year on year, with a further four per cent reduction this year alone. Building new homes remains essential, but we must bring focus to trading the homes that already exist.
Sit in any of our offices for a week, and you will meet the same person again and again. A widow in her late seventies in a four-bedroom house on the edge of town. A retired couple heating rooms they have not used in a decade, climbing stairs they have come to dread, minding a garden that has become a chore rather than a pleasure. They are not looking for sympathy. They are simply living in a house that has become entirely unsuitable for their needs.
Ireland has one of highest levels of under-occupied housing in the western world. Many older people live alone, or as couples, in houses larger than they need.
They would readily consider a smaller, warmer and more manageable property if a suitable option existed nearby and the cost of moving was supported.
The alternative must be genuinely attractive. Older people should be able to remain close to family, friends, shops, healthcare and public transport. Homes should be energy-efficient, low-maintenance and designed for changing mobility, with level access, lifts where required and adaptable space. They should sit within real communities, not isolated schemes. The objective is choice, not pressure.
I am calling on the Government to create a Help to Move grant for older homeowners who purchase an appropriate new property and release a larger home for sale. It could offset professional fees, moving expenses and the price gap involved in buying a well-designed new A Rated home. There is nothing wrong with supporting first-time buyers, including recent arrivals. Our falling birth rate, ageing population and growing economy require inward migration
But people who have worked and paid taxes here throughout their lives deserve assistance in at least equal measure, particularly when their move will unlock badly needed housing for the next generation.
This is not about taking help away from anybody. It is about applying the same policy imagination to older citizens. If the State helps a buyer enter the market, it should also help a homeowner make a move that releases a family home.
A €250 million mover fund, matching the scale of current Help to Buy incentives, would represent only a fraction of the State's €11.8 billion housing intervention. At €30,000 per grant, it could support approximately 8,300 moves and potentially release another 8,300 family homes on to the market. One incentive can therefore activate two linked homes: the new age-appropriate property purchased by the older person and the larger second-hand home returned to market. Significant grants are already available to the purchasers of second hand homes such as the ‘One Stop Shop’ Grant which are equivalent in monetary terms to the Help to Buy.
A first-time-buyer grant supports one purchase. A Help to Move grant supports a purchase while also freeing the seller's previous home. In practical terms, it can unlock twice the housing stock from the same intervention.
The grant will not work if there is nowhere appropriate to move to. We must urgently reorient our construction model to deliver private housing for senior citizens in every town and city across the country.
Planning policy, development finance and housing incentives should reward builders who provide compact, accessible homes in age-friendly communities. A visible pipeline would make moving a realistic option rather than an abstract promise.
Whisper it... but inflation is pushing new-build sizes downwards, below the limits of what growing families require. Many compact, low-maintenance and energy-efficient homes are now better suited to downsizers. Instead of treating every smaller unit as a first-time-buyer product, policy should encourage the industry to design part of that supply specifically for our ageing population. The result would be a better new home for an older resident and a more suitable existing home for a younger family.
We need a joined-up national policy: a Help to Move grant, a programme of age-friendly construction and incentives that make those developments viable. Success should be measured not only by new homes completed, but by appropriate moves enabled and family homes released. The solution is before us. Help older people move, and the entire housing market moves with them.
Johnny Gannon is the founder of Fair Deal Property, Auctioneers & Estate Agents, Galway. For advice on buying, selling or developing, call 091 394593 or visit www.fairdealproperty.ie
