A social media post of Fine Gael said: “Help to Buy helps 500 people buy their first home every week. »

Assessment

Official statistics recorded by the tax authorities show that although in September 2024 there were around 500 applications per week for the purchase incentive scheme, some of these were lodged well before a person decided to buy a house.

In terms of inquiries from people ready to buy property, the figure was 175 per week for the month of September. Data since the program’s inception in 2017 shows the average number of requests per week is 124.

The facts

The Help to Buy (HTB) incentive has been spear on January 1, 2017 and will continue until December 31, 2029, after having been extended in the last budget. The regime, which covers new and self-built properties costing less than €500,000, allows first-time buyers up to 10% of the purchase price as a refund of the tax they paid over the previous four years.

From its introduction until the end of September 2024, 118,080 applications for HTB had been done. Of these, 1,702 were retrospective for a period of 2016. The remaining 116,378 applications were filed over a period of 404 weeks, an average of 288 per week.

Yet a fixed average does not account for the current popularity of the incentive. Monthly figures from Revenue show that there were 2,213 HTB requests in September 2024, an average of 516 per week. Some 1,961 claims were filed in August, with the figure higher than in every previous month of 2024, reaching a peak of 6,654 in January.

However, applications to the HTB are not an indicator of home purchase. A successful application gives compliant taxpayers a summary of the maximum relief available to them, but it is only when a claimant moves to purchase a property that the HTB process transforms their application into a claim.

At the end of September 2024, the total of 118,080 applications filed had been successful in 51,474 applications, of which 1,076 were not approved. Although 1,472 of the total claims were retroactive, it is unclear how many of the unapproved claims involved.

If 50,398 approved applications were distributed evenly over the 404 weeks of operation of the program, this would result in an average of 124 applications per week. Looking only at 2024 data, there were 752 claims in September, or 175 per week.

More than one person may be associated with a disaster, but an analysis of the figures suggests that this would still equate to fewer than 500 people per week. Data provided by Revenue to the PA news agency covering the period from July 1, 2020 to October 19, 2024, which has not been made public, shows that during this 224-week period, 32,062 HTB claims were made. been filed by a total of 58,505 applicants. This represents an average of 1.8 people per disaster. Therefore, 175 claims per week would represent 315 people using the HTB to purchase or finance a self-built home.

Asked by PA how it had arrived at the figure of 500 people per week, Fine Gael cited numbers from the Banking & Payments Federation Ireland (BPFI) on mortgage levies which showed that 25,591 first-time buyers obtained a mortgage in 2023, an average of 492 per week. However, this concerns a total of first-time buyers, and not exclusively those benefiting from the HTB incentive.

More recent figures on mortgage drawings with the BPFI cover the second quarter of 2024. These to show that first-time buyers took out 6,300 mortgages in the 13 weeks from April to June, or 485 mortgages per week on average. However, only 2,404 of these mortgages were for new properties. Because the HTB incentive does not cover For second-hand homes, this equates to around 185 first-time buyer mortgages per week that could have benefited from help from the HTB.

The BPFI also published numbers for mortgage draws in the third quarter of 2024 which were not publicly available at the time of the initial request. During this quarter, 2,489 mortgages were used by first-time buyers, or around 190 per week.

Fine Gael added: “The Help To Buy scheme has helped almost 50,000 first-time buyers since it was introduced by Fine Gael. Although not all first-time buyers apply for this program, a significant number of first-time buyers take advantage of it across the country.

Links

Original post on (archive)

Help to purchase (HTB) incentive statistics as of September 30, 2024 – Turnover (PDF) (archive)

Purchase assistance program – Information for citizens (archive)

Help with purchasing requests and claims per month (CSV) (archive)

How to apply for HTB? – Income (archive)

Mortgage Approvals – December 2023 – Banking & Payments Federation Ireland (archive)

BPFI Mortgage Withdrawals – Q2 2024 – Banking & Payments Federation Ireland (archive)

BPFI Mortgage Withdrawals – Q3 2024 – Banking & Payments Federation Ireland (archive)