ACCOMMODATION

Where you live will be one of the biggest factors in the success or failure of your move to Ireland or Northern Ireland. Beyond the comforts of day-to-day living, it involves affordability, convenient access to desired social contacts, shopping and other lifestyle factors. Even where proximity to work or an educational institution limits your choice of location, a wide range of rent or buy choices awaits you.

The Property section is a mainstay of Irish newspapers and will quickly provide a feel for the availability and costs of properties for sale in the area in which you are planning to locate. Estate Agent, Letting Agent and other Web sites such as www.daft.ie and www.let.ie are also available. However, sales occur fairly quickly and rental properties (which, typically are furnished) are taken up even faster. Indeed, many rental properties never make it to an ad. If at all possible, you should come to Ireland in advance of your move to find your accommodation.

Choices
You'll be able to buy or rent a modern home or apartment with all the latest conveniences, a cottage without central heating, or one of the variety of alternatives in between. You'll find significant differences between the Irish and Canadian approaches to architecture and grounds. Irish homes and apartment buildings come in a variety of styles, but there is a bias toward traditional Irish architecture. And you'll find that the Irish treasure their gardens like Canadians pursue the perfect lawn. More importance is given to 'the Irish back garden' rather than to 'kerb' appeal; often, walls of stone, trees and/or shrubbery conceal the front of a property. Timber frame construction is far from the norm, which makes altering an existing home more complicated and costly than in Canada.

Depending on your reasons for moving from your Canadian home, you might well want to choose a setting more rather than less like it, at least for your first year. The separation factor (which would be the same if moving to a southern clime or within Canada) will be a big adjustment all by itself; a new setting that has familiar characteristics will ease the adjustment. And, one thing that happens to retirees (even those who don't relocate) is that they rediscover themselves. They may have expected to spend a lot of time doing 'X' when they retired, only to find themselves preferring to do 'Y'. S0, if you were a big-city type in Canada, you will probably want to live in Dublin with reasonable access to the city centre. If you lived in the country or holidayed extensively in cottage country in Canada, you might want to try a smaller city or even a rural setting. (The second largest city, Cork, has a population of some 125,000).

Focusing on Dublin
Since the greater Dublin area is home to more than a fourth of Ireland's population, and probably a greater than that percentage of those who move to the island, finding accommodation there is the focus of the comments that follow. The considerations raised can be pursued for other areas in Ireland and Northern Ireland through the types of information sources referenced above.

As with large Canadian cities, the cost of accommodation in Dublin's commuter belt areas is lower than in the city itself and especially 'the leafy suburbs' near to the city centre. But Dublin's commuter belt traffic gridlock problem is at least as bad as the worst of it in Canada. Before the Celtic Tiger boom, Ireland was a relatively poor country with huge housing stock and infrastructure deficits throughout the country. Much of the 'highway' infrastructure was based on patterns set in the simpler times of hundreds of years ago. Construction projects to remedy the housing and infrastructure deficits have been going on for several years. There is still a long way to go, however, and the trade-off between commuting problems and lower house prices will prevail for sometime. (Of course, traffic problems are not confined to Dublin. Indeed, there are still cases where a 'highway' goes through a town - as its narrow main street!)

Buying a Home
In Dublin, the Canadian $ equivalent of the cost of a house or an apartment is two to four times as much as the cost of similar accommodation in a similar location in Canada. There are also stamp duties upon purchase. On the other hand, there are, at present, no property taxes or water rates on household accommodations in Ireland.

A different approach must be taken to the foreign exchange factor when buying an Irish property as compared to the purchase of goods and services that will be consumed rather than ultimately sold on to someone else. In the case of accommodation, assuming stable selling prices and exchange rates, the initial foreign exchange involved will be recovered when the property is sold. Of course it is unlikely that either prices or exchange rates will be stable. So purchasing involves both housing market and foreign exchange market risks. Taking those risks would have provided large rewards in recent years: house and apartment prices have soared, as has the foreign exchange value of the euro.

Those in favour of buying cite the needs of Ireland's young population and net immigration and the lessened but continuing deficit in the kind of housing contemporary purchasers want as signals that housing demand will not abate for some time. They also cite forecasts of continuing weakness in the US dollar relative to the euro. It is crazy, they say, not to get in on the gains that owning will provide.

The Irish Government's www.oasis.gov.ie provides valuable discussion of the legalities and other aspects of buying a home in Ireland.

Renting
Proponents of the rental alternative focus on concerns that there's no assurance that prices will continue to rise and that the euro will maintain its current premium long term. They prefer to have financial assets the income from which will pay the rent and they like having someone else having responsibility for insurance and upkeep. They say that much of the current demand is from investors and that it, along with demand of those buying to occupy, will drop significantly if interest rates rise. They also take a dim view of the costs, delays and restrictions of the 'planning permission' requirements that are central to the development and alteration of property in Ireland. They're just not worth the hassle, they say.

Saying "Try to buy a paper as soon as it comes out." the Irish Government's www.oasis.gov.ie underscores the need to be 'on the spot' when looking for rental property. It also provides valuable information on the legalities and other aspects of renting in Ireland.

Making Your Choice
To help in making this most personal of decisions, it's worth repeating the earlier advice that "it is absolutely essential to actually come to Ireland before moving to it to pick your first Irish home".