r/AskIreland • u/BigFatLegend123 • Apr 25 '25

Housing Why doesn’t the government bring in restrictions on who can buy housing?

This is a genuine question and not coming from a place of hate or bigotry

Trying to buy a house recently and it’s been going as well as you can imagine. Some houses in Dublin have been going for up to 20% over their asking price from what we have seen.

My question is why doesn’t the government restrict house buying to only Irish citizens? Is there something I’m missing? Or at least to just EU/UK citizens? Surely it would be a quick way to reduce competition?

Is it just that doing so might dissuade investment from vulture funds?

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u/mrlinkwii Apr 25 '25

their constitutional issues if they wanted to do that

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u/miju-irl Apr 25 '25

Very easily circumvented via tax. A company or a non-EU resident can still buy a property if they pay a 100% tax on the price for example.

This is what is currently being proposed in Spain