Government focused its budgetary firepower on housing but reaction suggests it may not have done enough to keep any group happy
Government targeted landlords, homeowners and tenants with different Budget 2024 measures but not everyone will gain from it. Illustration: Paul ScottPearse Doherty, Sinn Féin spokesman on finance, was clear that the budget favoured those renting out properties.
The amount of offer has been criticised as not being sufficient to deter landlords from selling; Pat Davitt, chief executive of the Institute of Professional Auctioneers and Valuers, said: “It’s unlikely to be significant in stemming the flow of private landlords from the market.” In the past, the amount of interest eligible for relief was capped, although these caps tended to be generous. For example, in 2018 married first-time buyers had a threshold of €15,000. But this made the scheme expensive for the State to operate; at its height, in 2005, some 587,800 homeowners benefited from it at a cost to the exchequer of €279 million.
The interest rate differential means the relief is largely confined to those on trackers or other variable rate mortgages, who will have seen a sharp rise in the cost of servicing their mortgages, or customers on fixed rates, whose term may have ended during 2023, forcing them to lock into a new term at a higher rate.
Latest figures suggest that just 290,000, or fewer than three-quarters of the 400,000 or so people who are eligible for the credit, have claimed it thus far.
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