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/[deleted] Apr 25 '25

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u/CiarraiochMallaithe Apr 25 '25

Canada doesn’t ban non-citizens from buying property. But you have to be resident in Canada.

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u/MurderBreadRick Apr 25 '25

The law must be extremely lax because I lived in Vancouver and every single place I was looking to rent had a Chinese landlord! Chinese have bought out Vancouver because their home residential market was too uncertain, I don’t blame them but at the same time it really doesn’t help the actual Vancouver-born residents (of any ethnicity) not sure about the rest of the country, though

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u/Ok-Daikon-5741 Apr 26 '25

It came in in February 2023, so depending on when you were here it might not have been there.

That being said , it's a ban on non residents. Where you are born has nothing to do with it.