A prominent Clare auctioneer believes the Help to Buy scheme could be contributing to first time buyers here paying more on average for houses than others in the market.
It comes as new CSO stats revealed the average price of a transaction here was around the €179,000 mark when a property was legally transferred between January and April – though when just first time buyers are looked at, it’s around €203,000.
It’s also a jump on the same timeframe in 2020, when the average price of all transactions in the same four months was around €157,000, and first time buyers stood at around €181,000.
Speaking to Clare FM’s Josh Prenderville, Diarmuid McMahon, of Sherry Fitzgerald McMahon Auctioneers based in Ennis, believes there are several contributing factors to those stepping on the property ladder paying slightly more.