State supports are increasingly vital for new home buyers

First Home Scheme and Help to Buy play a significant role in making a new home purchase possible, especially for first-time buyers

Spring greenery and daffodils in Marina Park in the foreground, with construction cranes and a major residential development rising in the background. The scene highlights the balance between expanding urban housing and the preservation of accessible public green space. Photo: Chani Anderson

Government supports for first-time buyers, and other purchasers of new homes, continue to take on increasing importance, as house price continue their upward trajectory, as the once-traditional, ‘starter’ staple, the three-bed semi-d, heads to and past the €500,000 mark – that’s half a million euros to you and me – in many cases.

Against that upward movement, economists and critics of the State’s financial supports who argue that they help underpin high prices and drive them further, might argue that increasing the support thresholds (as they did last July in the First Home Scheme) is the chasing equivalent of catching a falling knife … prices will go only one way.