About two years after securing her first home, Stacey Hawkes found herself on the other side of the housing crisis – as a seller.
“Within the first couple of weeks we had 80 viewings, and it was sold within four weeks,” she says.
Throughout the process, some of those hoping to purchase her house contacted her directly, trying to improve their chances, she recalls, describing it as “absolute chaos”.
After 84 bids, the three-bed house in a new estate in Blarney, Co Cork, was sold in 2023 for €425,000.
“It’s crazy, the value of the house isn’t worth €425,000. I wouldn’t pay that for the materials,” she says.
The house was ultimately bought by a property management company intending to rent it out, she says, despite the couple hoping to sell to a young family like theirs, as she “knew the struggle”.
She had bought it in 2021 for €315,000 after a “nightmare” year-long search with her husband Kieran.
The couple had moved in with his parents to save for a deposit due to “extortionate rent” in Cork city, and were offered the house after another buyer fell through.
They ultimately used the Help-to-Buy scheme, which provides a refund on income tax of up to €30,000 to first-time buyers of new-build properties, though this had to be repaid as they sold the house within five years of purchasing.
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Ms Hawkes, who works as an SME consultant, describes the profit made in just two years as “insane”.
“I did not expect it. My dad’s a builder, and he did not expect it.”
The 35-year-old from Gortnahoe, Co Tipperary, never planned on leaving Cork, having moved there at the age of 19, but says services are not keeping pace with new housing developments.
“We couldn’t find childcare. I tried everywhere within a 30-mile radius,” she says, adding that she was searching for childcare 18 months in advance.
“It was a brand new estate and there was a montessori across the road, and I couldn’t get the kids into it,” she says.
“It’s crazy,they’re building the houses,but the infrastructure isn’t there to keep up with it.”
The couple resorted to moving in with her parents in Gortnahoe near the end of her second pregnancy, having to change hospital and “upheave” their jobs.
Ms Hawkes and her husband subsequently became aware of a house nearby, which was owned by a man living in a nursing home. It had been vacant for several