Dessie Ellis (Dublin North West, Sinn Fein)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

100. To ask the Minister for Finance if there is a timeframe in which a person's entitlement to the first-time buyers status for the purpose of availing of the 10% deposit rule as opposed to the 20% rule could be reinstated (details supplied). [18530/16]

Michael Noonan (Limerick City, Fine Gael)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

The Central Bank, which has an independent mandate to preserve and protect financial stability, introduced macro prudential mortgage lending regulations to increase the resilience of the banking and household sectors to the property market and to reduce the risk of bank credit and house price spirals from developing in the future.  These measures apply proportionate lending limits, including certain loan to value restrictions, to such lending.  For primary home mortgage lending, an 80% loan to value limit generally applies, but for first time buyers a 90% loan to value limit applies to the value of a property up to €220,000 and an 80% limit applies to any excess value above that amount.

A first time buyer is defined in the relevant statutory instrument (see the following: )as "a borrower to whom no housing loan has ever before been advanced".  Where the borrower under a housing loan is more than one person and one or more of those persons has previously been advanced a housing loan, none of those persons is regarded as a first-time buyer for the purpose of the regulations. I am informed by the Central Bank a borrower(s), if they have been advanced a housing loan previously, cannot revert to a first time buyer status after a period of time.

However, it should be noted that the regulations also provide a certain flexibility to lenders, based on their own commercial considerations and subject also to compliance with consumer protection rules, to provide a certain amount of mortgage lending in excess of these LTV thresholds.