Boom decade sees cost of home loans soar by 370%

HOME-BUYERS who bought at the end of the housing boom had to take out mortgages at more than three-and-a-half times the size of those who got on the property ladder a decade earlier.

The average new housing loan in 1997 was €62,000, but by 2006 buyers were getting in debt to the tune of €229,200 to get in the front door — a rise of 370%. Latecomers benefited from a significant fall in interest rates over the same period but the 42% reduction — from 7.22% to 4.2% — was dwarfed by the increase in the size of their loans.

A look back by the Central Statistics Office at how things improved, or didn’t, since the late 1990s shows an upward trend in most aspects of Irish life — most notably in population which rocketed by some 17% to almost 4.34 million people, the highest rate of growth in all 27 EU member states.