Stage Payments on Housing Estates to be abolished

Junior environment minister Noel Ahern has announced that the practice of stage payments in housing estates is to be ended. Stage payments are common practice for once-off self-build houses, i.e. you're building a house on your own site and instead of getting your mortgage cheque all at once you get it in stages as work progresses on the build.

But in certain parts of the country (rarely in Dublin for some reason) developers building housing estates were asking for stage payments from purchasers, so you'd end up paying a partial mortgage before your house was near completion. This practice is now being abolished where contracts are entered into from June 30th 2007.

Stage payments for people building their own homes will not be affected.

This is good news - it always struck me as cheeky that a developer could end up getting interest-free development finance for a housing estate - it was the purchasers who paid interest on the stage payments.