Our monthly workshops are aimed to educate first time buyers about purchasing a home. We will be providing information on the purchase process and hopefully making it less daunting. We will be giving you useful tips and pointing out pitfalls you should avoid. And all for free!

We will be covering the following topics:

– Getting the cash together
– The banks, the brokers and the special deals
– Assistance from family and avoiding a tax liability
– Understanding the Market
– New v second hand properties
– Auction v Private Treaty purchase
– Sale by owner or sale by bank
– Cash Purchase v Mortgage Backed Purchase
– Entering the Market
– The agents, the bidding, the bargains
– Buyer Beware!
– You’re on your own! The agent is not your friend..
– Surveys and checks
– Talk to your neighbours!
– Getting the deal done
– Lining up “your ducks”
– The legal process
– Deposits
– Contract
– Title
– The financial process
– Bank Conditions
– Guarantees
– Understanding “all sums due” mortgages
– Certificates of Title, our responsibility to your bank

There will be a question and answer session at the end where you can ask all the questions you like!

Here’s what people who attended our last workshops had to say:

“Many thanks for the workshop, a great tool to learn how to buy in Ireland” – COL

“Very informative and interesting workshop. Highly recommended for all first time buyers.” – SB

“I learned so much!” – ML

“I’m so really glad I went along!” – PO’R

“I finally wanted to say thanks you for the helpful and comprehensive First Time Buyer workshop. I will definitely recommend it to anyone who is in the same boat as me!” TA

If you are interested in coming along we would love to see you. Even if you are not interested in coming along, you may have family or friends who may like to attend. You don’t need to be in the market right now but by attending you will have banked the knowledge for when you are ready to make that move.

The workshop is open to anyone, it’s free, but places are limited to ensure the quality of the experience.

Just click the following link to reserve a place! https://ec323.infusionsoft.com/app/page/register1

If you can’t make this workshop but would like to know about upcoming workshops, just click the following link – we will keep you posted.
https://ec323.infusionsoft.com/app/form/keepmeposted

This is a huge and prestigious honour for us again this year having been finalists in 2014 also.

The awards will take place on 30th April in the DoubleTree by Hilton, Burlington Road, Dublin 4.

The Bill deals with the following matters among others:

• The rights of children living in different family circumstances
• parentage and paternity, including in assisted reproduction and donor conceptions
• the rights of children to be adopted by nonmarital families
• increased access arrangements
• introducing the concept of “best interests” for children.

Guardians of children have their duties obligations and rights enhanced, and for the first time a nonmarital father will automatically become a Guardian, if he has been cohabiting with the child’s mother for a defined period.

A cohabiting partner of a child’s parent will now be able to apply for guardianship, as will persons who have cared for a child in the absence of another Guardian for a period of a year.

This is a hugely significant piece of legislation which will ultimately provide increased security and protection for the children of modern Ireland.

Contact us for straightforward, honest advice in relation to family law.

Types of Companies

The intention of the drafters is to make dealing with companies simpler and two types of private company limited by shares are provided for:

1. The LTD Company which will have a one document constitution and will have full and unlimited capacity. A LTD company needs only to have one director.
2. The DAC or designated activity company. A DAC will continue to have two constitutional documents; its articles and its memorandum which sets out its objects. A DAC will require at least two directors.

The Act provides for an 18 month transition period after commencement for companies to opt into the new regime as an LTD company, or to opt out of the new regime and reregister as a DAC. Directors of private companies that have not opted out are obliged to prepare a new constitution derived from its memorandum and articles of Association, deliver a copy of it to the members and file it in the CRO.

If a company has not taken any action by the end of the transition period, it will be deemed to have adopted a new constitution in the standard form provided in the Act, and it will become a LTD.

Directors’ Duties

The Act introduces a new regime in directors’ duties and imposes an obligation on the directors to ensure compliance with the Act. Duties and requirements of directors will apply to all directors whether or not formally appointed. The obligation on secretaries to comply with the act has been removed. Directors of companies of a certain size will be required to provide Compliance Statements.

Fiduciary Duties

For the first time, the Act sets out the fiduciary duties which are required of directors. A director of a company shall:

(i) act in good faith in what the director considers to be the interests of the company
(ii) act honestly and responsibly in relation to the conduct of the affairs of the company
(iii) act in accordance with the company’s constitution and exercise his or her powers only for the purposes allowed by law
(iv) not use the company’s property, information or opportunities for his or her own or anyone else’s benefit unless:
a. this is expressly permitted by the company’s constitution; or
b. the use has been approved by a resolution of the company in general meeting
(v) not agree to restrict the director’s power to exercise an independent judgment unless:
a. this is expressly permitted by the company’s constitution
b. the case concerned falls within subsection (2)
c. the director’s agreeing to such has been approved by a resolution of the company in general meeting
(vi) avoid any conflict between the directors’ duties to the company and the director’s other (including personal) interests unless the director is released from his or her duty to the company in relation to the matter concerned, whether in accordance with provisions of the company’s constitution in that behalf or by a resolution of it in general meeting
(vii) exercise the care, skill and diligence which would be exercised in the same circumstances by a reasonable person having both:
a. the knowledge and experience that may reasonably be expected of a person in the same position as the director; and
b. the knowledge and experience which the director has; and
(viii) in addition to the duty under section [224] (duty to have regard to the interests of its employees in general), have regard to the interests of its members.

Directors Loans

Directors are incentivised to ensure that all loan details are noted in writing – otherwise there will be a presumption that the loan is repayable on demand with interest.

Penalties for non-compliance

There are four categories of offences. Category four offences provide for a potential fine of up to €5,000. Category one offences provide for a penalty of up to 10 years imprisonment and/or fine of €500,000.

If you would like us to assist you, or if you would simply like to have a chat to discuss your options, don’t hesitate to get in touch.

For many first-time buyers the hope of owning a home of their own is further away than ever. In the Dublin area, there are little or no properties available for less than €220,000 that are suitable for a young family. The reality is that a first-time purchaser is going to have to come up with a minimum deposit of €45,000 to have any hope of purchasing a new home. Even families with modest equity in their current home will find it almost impossible to trade up to a property which meets their growing family’s needs.

The new rules are a crude and uncaring attempt to manage the mortgage market. It is not unlike solving the problem of a leaking water main by simply turning it off. They even got the figures wrong. Today’s Irish Times reported that the figure of €220,000 was arrived at using data provided by the banks which related to the first half of 2014 when house prices were significantly lower than they are now.

In late 2014, we met clients who were approved for mortgages at that time, but who would not have been able to purchase their homes if they were subject to the new regime. Young professionals earning excellent salaries simply cannot save large deposits while they continue to pay exorbitant rents. If people cannot purchase their own homes, rents will rise, yields will rise and house prices will spiral.

Could the Central Bank not have come up with a more appropriate plan? People who have paid tens of thousands of euro in rent are given no credit for their track records. If a couple’s parents want to help them out why can’t they guarantee a percentage of the loan if they are in a position to do so?

Pension funds, hedge funds and property investors will purchase the properties that our young people cannot afford to purchase themselves. Young families will be faced with rising rents payable to prosperous landlords and excessive levels of tax to pay for a national debt that they are not responsible for.

It’s not fair and it won’t work.

If you would like us to assist you, or if you would simply like to have a chat to discuss your options, don’t hesitate to get in touch.

The ancient orders and proclamations remain on the statute books and are being targeting in an epic clear-out of bizarre and obsolete legislation pre-dating the country’s independence.

It is the largest repeal of outdated laws carried out in any country.

Among those to be revoked is a 1542 proclamation declaring that the English crown shall be ‘king of Ireland’.

An order from 1590 prohibiting the sale of horses out of the Pale ‘upon pain of death’ is also for the chop. The Pale was an English-ruled area on the east, roughly akin to modern-day greater Dublin, but stretched further north.

Ulster King Shane O’Neill will no longer be declared a traitor once a 1561 proclamation to that effect is repealed and Catholic proprietors will no more removal to the western province of Connacht, as ordered in 1654.

The Children and Family Relationships Bill was finally signed off at yesterday’s Cabinet meeting and it will now go to the Dáil, where it will be taken at second stage next week, before going to committee stage.

So who will this Bill affect?

With more than 170 sections, the Bill addresses issues such as extending guardianship, and custody and adoption rights to different family situations. For example, where there is no available or willing guardian, the Bill will allow a relative to submit an application for custody if they have looked after the child for a year.

Guardianship for child’s custody, or day-to-day matters, can also be applied for if a spouse, civil partner or partner has lived with a parent for three years and has looked after the child for two years.

Regulations are also proposed under this Bill for surrogacy, embryo donation; the screening of embryos for serious genetic diseases or for sperm and egg donation; and research in this area.

In addition to setting out parental rights in the area of assisted human reproduction (AHR), provisions have also been made in this Bill for children born through donor-assisted AHR and those being parented by same-sex couples. The Bill will also provide for the establishment of an AHR register for those children wishing to trace their donor.

Guardianship rights will also be automatic for non marital fathers if they have lived with the mother continuously for a year, including three months after the birth.

Civil partners and cohabiting couples who have lived together for three years will also now be able to jointly adopt.

All political parties appear to be broadly supportive of the Bill and it will go back to the floor of the House for report and the final stages and will be enacted by 24th March.

If you would like us to assist you, or if you would simply like to have a chat to discuss your options, don’t hesitate to get in touch.

eConveyancing will make all interactions between solicitors, lenders and the Property Registration Authority (PRA) entirely electronic for the first time and should greatly reduce transaction times and costs while increasing security and transparency.

Home-buyers should see transaction times reduced to as little as five working days once the system is up and running.
eConveyancing will operate via a secure central hub that will see solicitors, lenders and the Property Registration Authority share information in real time. Once the solicitors for both a buyer and a seller are ready to complete a transaction, the closing of the property will happen instantly. The current time lag between completion and the registration of ownership will be removed and all funds will move via electronic funds transfer.