Navigating the Irish Housing Crisis on Screen

Addressing the housing market directly requires nuance, particularly in a landscape where standard property shows can easily feel tone-deaf. Unlike RTÉ’s Cheap Irish Homes—a title that tries to get out of the debate around privilege by essentially saying, relax lads, these homes are cheap—Virgin Media’s series focuses heavily on tangible outcomes, even if participants must secure large mortgages and stretch themselves financially.

According to buyer’s agent and presenter Liz O’Kane, out of 12 participants featured in the upcoming run, nine have already gone sale agreed on the programme, with two additional participants securing sale agreed status after filming concluded. The financial standing of these buyers is remarkably diverse. All of the participants are pretty broad and varied. To be frank, some of them are coming with cash, O’Kane notes, adding:

Some of them are coming with significant levels of cash, and some of them are first-time buyers, and some of them are trying to get themselves back into the country, and the budgets are broad and varied.

Diverse Buyer Profiles and Practical Guidance

O’Kane’s day-to-day role involves researching properties and handling negotiations for clients. On the show, she works with a spectrum of individuals, ranging from first-time buyers to a 78-year-old woman downsizing following a divorce. Explaining the inclusion of diverse life stages, O’Kane shares:

I felt her story was really, really important because it’s not all about first-time buyers. There’s other phases of life as well, and other things that come along and sometimes surprise us at that stage of life, being divorced and selling a family home and having to rehouse yourself is unbelievably stressful.

Beyond house hunting, the series tackles practical administrative hurdles by pairing participants with mortgage brokers and exploring available grants. For the second series, PJ Kirby and Kevin Twomey from the I’m Grand Mam podcast guide viewers through these foundational steps. This role was previously held in the first series by comedian Michael Fry, who faced online scrutiny simply for interviewing then-minister Darragh O’Brien during an episode.

O’Kane highlights this administrative focus as the show’s primary strength, describing it as the only programme that really delivers on showing the practicalities and difficulties administratively of purchasing in a housing crisis. When assessing current market conditions, she is blunt, stating that conditions are not improving and suggesting that the term asking price should be updated to launch price.

The Role of Government Schemes and Returning Emigrants

While economists and politicians debate whether initiatives like the Help to Buy scheme actively assist buyers or merely inflate property values, O’Kane advises clients to focus on practical utility rather than public discourse. Though she concedes these supports are certainly not reducing the price of property, she encourages buyers to utilize available resources:

I would always say to people, don’t be listening too much to what other people have to say about those schemes. There’s always somebody who’s going to give you the negative, always. Paddle your own canoe, right? If that’s what it takes to assist you purchase a property, why wouldn’t you use it?

After three seasons, O’Kane observes that while her core client base remains steady, she has noticed an influx of Irish emigrants returning home alongside an unusual demographic: Yanks who are calling themselves political refugees. She reports assisting approximately 30 this year from the United States. Commenting on these international clients, she notes:

What I do find, particularly with those who are coming from the US, is that America being as vast and as wealthy as it is, and so service-driven as it is, people listen, they take advice, and they pay you, and they buy services.

O’Kane clarifies that these American buyers possess generational wealth and are not competing for standard three-bedroom semi-detached homes or relying on the Help to Buy scheme. Meanwhile, returning Irish emigrants typically begin their property search through family:

If you’re living in another country and you are endeavouring to get your foot onto the residential property market, the first step will be the parents and your siblings to go and start looking at properties for you. They then get bored out of their brains, and they also don’t know what they’re doing, and they step back. So you’ve made no progress at all. Then they’ll go ‘Googly, Googly, Googly, How do I buy a home in Ireland?’ and hopefully they’ll find me.

The third season of Help Me Buy a Home premieres on Virgin Media Television in early autumn.