Would you buy a house at a big discount if it came with a catch?

Last year, Sherry Fitzgerald Reynolds put a house on the market in Donegal for €299,000. It’s a substantial six-bedroom multi-unit property in Letterkenny, and it comes with an adjoining three-bedroom townhouse and stationary mobile home. In need of refurbishment, it nonetheless offers “immense potential to a savvy purchaser”, according to the agent and is still on the market at a heavily discounted price.

The catch?

Someone is still living in the property and will be there until they die.

Known as a “life interest”, this gives a tenant (usually the current owner of the property or a close relative) the exclusive right to live in the property either until they die or move out and thus relinquish the right. It’s different from a “right to reside”, which allows someone to live in a property but doesn’t give them an exclusive right to do so, which means that other people can move in with them.

While rare, when such properties do come to the market, they typically do so at a heavily discounted price. It’s a transaction that’s more common in France, particularly along the French Riviera, where under the viager system, a homeowner sells a pr...
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