Each year up to 15pc of new mortgages are granted exemptions, with applicants allowed to borrow up to 4.75 times their income. So who makes the cut, and who doesn’t?
Loan-to-income limits depend on several factors. Photo: Getty
Derek Reilly remembers buying his first Irish home two decades ago. “I dealt directly with one of the big banks and there was a personal relationship, it wasn’t just about the computer crunching the numbers,” he said.
Now, after nearly a decade renting in Dublin, Mr Reilly and his partner Patrycja Jurkowska found a transformed market: impersonal, tightly regulated, and structurally stacked against them.