Househunting in Ireland couldn’t be more frustrating. Honestly, if you’ve been looking at the housing market recently you might feel like pulling your hair out.
Enter PJ Kirby and Kevin Twomey, of I’m Grand Mam fame, to make finding your dream home just a little bit easier. They have teamed up with Buyers Agent Liz O’Kane for the new season of Help Me Buy A Home.
VIP Magazine caught up with the dynamic trio to help find out what they’ve learned about the housing market, what they’re manifesting and trying to stop Kevin getting his phone stolen for a third time!
Hey guys! PJ and Kevin, how did you get involved with the new season of Help Me Buy A Home?
PJ: So basically we got approached to come on the show and be like Liz’s little helpers so at the start of every episode she’s doing the actual heavy lifting, the main work. She’s the expert and we’re wrecking her head with loads of questions and she sends us on a different mission every week. When they pitched that idea to us, we were like “gorgeous” hook it to my veins. Now, I can build a little team for when I want to buy a house, so I was in it from the get-go.
Kevin: We were manifesting making the transition from podcasting to TV we were putting the feelers out there. I said from day dot, from when we started back in 2019, I said I’d rather podcast but I definitely have a face for telly! It’s all about putting that energy out there and I think it was only a matter of time and then we got the call and I said “Okay, let’s do it!”
Speaking about putting energy out there, Kevin, what have you done to be targeted so many times? How many times has your phone been stolen now?
Kevin: So in the last six months I’ve had my bike stolen once, my phone stolen twice, I now have like a security kind of strap for it so I’m hoping it’s the last time. In the last week, now I’m not sure if its cause of my clip going viral or what, they announced in the UK that if you can track your phone if it’s been stolen and if its showing up at a particular address they don’t need a warrant now to search the gaff for it so. I’m a philanthropist, I’m an activist, I’m a TV host, fingers in all the pies, I just like helping people.
@imgrandmamx Phone robbers you have been warned 👀💕 #podcast ♬ original sound – I’m Grand Mam
Liz, this a show all about housing. So tell me what do first time buyers need to know…because it’s scary out there!
Liz: You’re right, you do have no idea what you’re doing, and how would you know? Because if you’re a first-time purchaser, this is a transaction that you’ve never had to go on before. It’s not like going out and trying on a pair of winter boots, or even a car you know. You buy a car every second year or every two or three years, something like that. But you might buy a house, maybe three times in your lifetime, at worst! But certainly once, maybe twice. We do not have a pretty process in this country, it is rather unkind and it is a little bit like playing poker. Now, there are two distinct ways of purchasing. The stock is so low in the new homes market, but if you’re going into the new homes market, you’re buying at a fixed price, right? So a three-bedroom semi-detached house in whatever it happens to be, €480,000, €500,000, You go in, you stick your name on the stick, you’re buying something that hasn’t yet come out of the ground but you know exactly what you’re purchasing.
When you go into the second hand market, which brings about lots of other issues like insulation, solar panels, heating, new gas boilers, you’re going down into a completely different world, into a completely different cauldron of bidding. It is like playing poker. So all of our very good, concrete built ex-corporation houses that were built around the city are now becoming very gentrified areas now for young professionals by the fact that are so close to the city centre. You’ve parking and a huge big garden out the back to grow your veg. Lots of room to expand, lots of room to extend and where by now we have these really strong social communities of social housing, these properties now are predominantly private, the tenants may have bought them out and these properties are making well eye-watering amounts of money. I can tell you right now, because of the lack of stock, that you are going to pay in excess of between 10-20 per cent above market value to achieve that.
And most buyers out there, because they failed in the market place so often they know that now and they’re pulling on every possible resource to try to get them over the line, whether that means a gift, Credit Union loan, anything they can get their lamha on to purchase another property.
PJ, you’re a married man now, congratulations. So are you thinking of the next chapter with your husband – buying a house?
PJ: Before the show I was like, “Yeah let’s set up a gaff now,” but then from literally doing the show and watching it back every week you do see the extent of the housing crisis we have. Even in episode one, we had a viewing party and that poor couple had like €400,000 approved for a mortgage, they’d a huge chunk of a deposit and then they couldn’t get a proper gaff. Of course, they were very specific about where they wanted to live and stuff like that. But I’m not ready for that mental warfare so I’ve decided I’m just going to learn how to drive this year and the next year I’m going to move into a gaff! I have realised I want to get a fixer upper because I do want to put my own stamp on things. You don’t realise how much energy you are consuming so I do want to like do stuff like get solar panels, that’s better for the environment and work with Bord Gáis to power them up and get them into my home. You do have a chance to take an old gorgeous house that has a lot of character and then make it more environmentally friendly when you do it up and also make your own little mark on it!
Kevin, you’re based in London. Has this show made you homesick? Are you thinking of moving back to Ireland?
Kevin: Oh my god absolutely. I think anytime I go back to Ireland now, especially in the last two years, I think it’s since hitting my thirties and also since having a niece, the lure of Ireland is definitely stronger. Obviously the market is outrageous in Ireland at the moment but over here [in the UK] it’s even more traitorous and you’re getting way less of a bang for your buck. We’re at that age with a lot of my buddies who I would have moved over at the same age as a lot have made the move home. I still don’t feel like I’m done yet with London, but the series was really great just it kind of opened my eyes to the prospect of it and I think everyone’s dream and everyone’s ambition ultimately regardless of how much you love another city, is to come back to your roots and to be near family and to be near buddies. I adore London I’ve been here the last ten years and its treated me very well, but a city is only as good as the people that are in it. All my Irish buddies are feckin off, I don’t want to be palling around with the Brits [laughs]. I’m a lot more open to it. I’m following a few more home accounts and there’s a property that came up in Cork in the old sporting building. It was just like a one-bedroom apartment, bang near the city centre, near the train station, I was like, “Oh my god that would be great if it was mine”. That would be a nice little project/starting point for myself if I was to go back to Cork. So my eyes are opened to the possibility.
Liz, it’s safe to say the housing market isn’t ideal right now. How do people stay optimistic while house hunting?
Liz: That’s a tough question, it really is. And you know what is really very fascinating for me, particularly with young people who are really trying to get on the ladder? They still have that appetite to still purchase even though we are right at the top of the property market. We’re beyond where the property market was when we all went belly up in 2008, we’re beyond those prices now and we still have this appetite to purchase. It’s like it’s in our genes, it’s like John B Keane’s The Field. We’re not renting, we want our patch of grass. We’re not letting anybody look out at the back garden, and by hook and by crook, nobody’s taking my steak out of here. Because our property crisis also addresses the rental crisis, you are better off purchasing and drawing down a mortgage as opposed to sitting in highly expensive rental accommodation. So the appetite is still there, it’s still highly competitive. But how do you advise and how do you stay optimistic?
I think you really have to have a really broad, open mind about what is achievable and sometimes what’s achievable is within a 3km radius because every little pocket of every city and every location has something. You know we found it in Galway with a young professional couple who wanted to buy in Galway and places like Salthill, and you know you think this is only a Dublin problem, this is a national problem. All the young professionals in Galway can’t afford to buy in Salthill now, so they’re all pushing out into other areas like Oughterard and Moycullen where there is good new housing available. If you’re willing to just search a little bit further and just jump over the hump of where you really think you want to be that’s where you’ll find your solution.
PJ and Kevin, between touring, podcasting, writing your book and getting married, you’ve been very busy over the last few years. How have you been managing it?
Kevin: It’s been a lot. We’re really motivated and it’s been really reassuring having each other to lean on, so you know if one person is feeling very overwhelmed. We’ve gotten to a point where our communication is very very good because it has to be because we’re best friends but we’re also business partners so it always kind of comes back to that, so just keeping in check with each other and to be honest. We also recognise, even though it is an awful lot of work we’re conscious and hyper aware of how fortunate we are and privileged waking up and actually doing something that is very exciting for us every day. So even when I am wrecked from flying over and back and we’ve to go and record a podcast episode and sometimes even between filming for the TV series, I’m grateful! We’d wrap up at six and we’d have to bang out two episodes for I’m Grand Mam before going back home the next morning. We were exhausted, it was exhausting work it was the busiest January for us on record. I think going home at night I had to be like, “Oh my god, if Kevin at 19 could see that I had these issues and problems about being exhausted because he’s having to read a briefing doc about the couple we’re about to meet the next day, he’d have been delighted.” I think it’s just about checking back in with yourself, checking back in with each other and really recognising we’re having a bit of a laugh as well. We’re not in the ER, you know what I mean, the work that we do is of great value and we’re really proud of the work that we do, but we’re podcasters. We’re having a bit of a ball!
Now you mentioned manifesting more telly at the start of this chat. So could we see more of PJ and Kevin on our screens in future?
Kevin: Absolutely! This was a really nice introduction for us, and the terms we were picking up. It was just a really nice comfortable thing, the team that we worked with. We were really fortunate from the offset because it can be a bit daunting coming in as lads who didn’t really have any telly experience bar the odd interview.
PJ: We’d like a bit more hair and makeup. And our own trailers next time! [Laughs]
Bord Gáis Energy is the official sponsor of the second season of Help Me Buy a Home on Virgin Media. Bord Gáis Energy is committed to energising a greener, fairer future for its 730,000 customers throughout Ireland, by investing in renewable energy and expanding its services to include everything from deep retrofitting to solar power, heat pumps and EV charging – helping homeowners transition to energy-efficient living, unlocking both financial and energy saving benefits in their homes. For more visit www.bordgaisenergy.ie.