Terms of Use

1. Who we are

ÉireHome Flow is run and based in Ireland, trading as ÉireHome Flow. In these terms, "we", "us" and "our" mean ÉireHome Flow, Ireland. "You" means anyone who uses the website.

You can contact us at eirehomeflow@gmail.com.

2. Accepting these terms

These terms set out the rules for using ÉireHome Flow. By using the website, you agree to them. When you create an account, you confirm that you have read and accept them.

If you do not agree with these terms, please do not use ÉireHome Flow.

Our privacy policy explains how we handle personal data. It applies alongside these terms.

These terms are available in English only.

3. What ÉireHome Flow is

ÉireHome Flow is a free, educational website for people buying their first home in Ireland. It includes:

• a step-by-step guide to buying a home, in 31 steps;
• My journey, a tracker where you can mark steps as done;
• a buying power calculator that gives rough estimates; and
• optional free accounts, so you can keep your progress when you use another browser or device.

ÉireHome Flow is free to use. We do not take payments, show ads or earn commissions, and we do not refer you to lenders or brokers.

You can use the guide, the journey tracker and the calculator without an account. Without an account, your progress is saved only in the browser you are using.

ÉireHome Flow is intended for adults.

4. Not financial advice and not regulated

ÉireHome Flow gives general educational information only. It is not financial, mortgage, legal or tax advice, and nothing on the site is a recommendation about what you should do.

• We are not regulated by the Central Bank of Ireland.
• We are not a credit intermediary, mortgage broker or lender. We do not arrange mortgages or any other credit.
• We do not know your full circumstances and we do not give personal recommendations. Nothing on the site tells you which mortgage, lender, property or price is right for you.

Buying a home is a major financial and legal commitment. Before you make a decision, such as applying for a mortgage, making an offer or signing a contract, get advice from:

• a mortgage broker or lender regulated by the Central Bank of Ireland. You can check a firm on the Central Bank of Ireland registers;
• a solicitor, for the legal side of buying a home; and
• a tax adviser, for questions about stamp duty, tax reliefs and your own tax position.

5. Calculator estimates and accuracy of content

The calculator

The buying power calculator gives rough estimates to help you plan. It is not a mortgage offer, an approval in principle or a quote.

The calculator uses simplified rules. For example, it uses:

• a loan limit of 4 times gross income for first-time buyers and 3.5 times for other buyers;
• a minimum deposit of 10% of the price;
• stamp duty at Revenue's residential rates (1% up to €1 million, 2% up to €1.5 million and 6% above), worked out on the price without VAT for a new home;
• a simplified Help to Buy check: first-time buyers of a new home up to €500,000, with a mortgage of at least 70% of the price; and
• typical figures for costs such as solicitor, survey and valuation fees.

Your real figures will depend on your circumstances, the lender, the property and the rules in force at the time. A lender will make its own assessment and may lend you more or less than the calculator shows. Monthly repayment figures depend on the interest rate and term you enter.

The figures you enter in the calculator, such as your salary, savings and target price, stay in your browser. They are not sent to us.

The guide and other content

We try to keep the content accurate and up to date. However, rules, rates, schemes and procedures change, sometimes at short notice, and the site may not reflect the latest position. The content is also simplified and may not cover every situation.

Before you rely on anything, check it with official sources, such as:

• the Central Bank of Ireland, for mortgage lending rules and to check whether a firm is regulated;
• Revenue, for stamp duty, Help to Buy and other tax matters; and
• Citizens Information, for general information about buying a home and your rights.

If you spot something that is wrong or out of date, please tell us at eirehomeflow@gmail.com.

6. Your account

Who can have an account

Accounts are optional and free. You must be 18 or over to create one.

Each account is for one person only. Do not share your account or create one for someone else. If you are buying with someone else, each of you should use your own account.

Your details

Give your real name and an email address that you control. We use the email address to confirm your account and to help you reset your password. You can also sign in with a Google account; we then use the name and email address on it. You can see and change your name on My profile.

Keeping your account safe

• Choose a strong password that you do not use anywhere else, and do not share it with anyone. If you sign in with Google, keep your Google account safe in the same way.
• Sign out when you finish using a shared or public device.
• We never see your password and we will never ask you for it.
• If you think someone else has used your account, change your password straight away and tell us at eirehomeflow@gmail.com.

You are responsible for what happens in your account, unless it happens because of something we did wrong.

Your progress

While you are signed in, the steps you mark as done are saved to your account. When you sign out, your progress is cleared from that browser, but the copy in your account stays. You can reset your progress at any time.

Closing your account

You can stop using ÉireHome Flow at any time. To close your account, use "Delete my account" on My profile: it deletes the account and the progress saved in it straight away, and cannot be undone. If you cannot sign in, email eirehomeflow@gmail.com from the email address linked to your account and ask us to delete it. If you can no longer use that address, tell us and we will find another way to check that the account is yours. We will delete the account within one month of your email.

7. Acceptable use

You agree not to:

• use ÉireHome Flow in a way that breaks any law, or for any fraudulent or harmful purpose;
• try to get into another person's account, or into any part of the service, our systems or our providers' systems that you are not allowed to access;
• interfere with, overload or disrupt the service, for example with attacks or excessive automated requests;
• introduce viruses, malware or other harmful code;
• create an account with false details, in someone else's name, with someone else's email address or by automated means;
• use automated tools to copy content from the site in bulk, other than search engines indexing pages in the normal way;
• copy or republish our content in a way that section 8 does not allow; or
• suggest that we endorse you, your business or your products.

If you find a security problem, please tell us at eirehomeflow@gmail.com instead of testing it further.

8. Intellectual property

The text, images, design and code of ÉireHome Flow belong to us or to people who have allowed us to use them. They are protected by copyright and other intellectual property laws.

You may view, print or save pages for your own personal, non-commercial use, and you are welcome to share links to the site. You may not copy, republish, sell or adapt our content, or any substantial part of it, without our written permission.

The Nunito font used on the site is copyright 2014 The Nunito Project Authors. It is licensed under the SIL Open Font License, version 1.1. Nothing in these terms limits your rights under that licence.

Names such as Daft.ie, MyHome.ie and Revolut, and the names of other companies, products and public bodies mentioned on the site, belong to their owners. We mention them only for information. This does not mean that they endorse ÉireHome Flow or that we have any commercial arrangement with them.

9. Third-party websites and services

Other websites

The site mentions, and may link to, websites run by other people, such as property portals, banks and public bodies. We do not control those websites and we are not responsible for their content, availability or practices. Their own terms and privacy policies apply when you use them.

Our service providers

We use other companies to run ÉireHome Flow:

• GitHub Pages (GitHub, Inc.) hosts the website;
• Supabase (Supabase Pte. Ltd., Singapore) runs our accounts, on Amazon Web Services servers in Ireland;
• Google's Gmail service currently sends account emails, such as confirming your email address and resetting your password, and Google confirms who you are if you choose to sign in with Google; and
• jsDelivr, a content delivery network, delivers the code library we use for accounts when a page loads.

If one of these providers has a problem, parts of ÉireHome Flow may be slow or unavailable. Our privacy policy explains what personal data they handle.

10. Availability and changes to the service

We provide ÉireHome Flow free of charge. We try to keep it working and accurate, but we cannot promise that it will always be available, uninterrupted or free of errors.

We may change, add or remove features and content at any time, for example to update a step when the rules change. We may also suspend the service for maintenance or for security reasons.

If we decide to close ÉireHome Flow for good, we will give at least 30 days' notice on the site, and by email to account holders where we can.

Progress saved without an account, and your calculator figures, live only in your browser. They will be lost if you clear your browser data, and they will not appear in another browser or device. Keep your own records of anything important.

11. Suspending or ending accounts

We may suspend or delete an account if:

• its owner seriously or repeatedly breaks these terms;
• it was created with false details, in someone else's name or by automated means;
• we need to do so to protect the security of the service or other users; or
• the law requires us to.

Where we can, we will email you to explain why, unless the law or a security risk prevents this. If you think we have made a mistake, contact us and we will look at it again.

We may also delete accounts that nobody has signed in to for 3 years. Before we do, we will email the account's address. If nobody signs in within 30 days of that email, we will delete the account and its progress.

If an account is closed for any reason, sections 8, 12 and 14 of these terms continue to apply.

12. Our responsibility to you

Nothing in these terms limits or excludes our liability for:

• death or personal injury caused by anything we do or fail to do, including our negligence;
• fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation; or
• anything else that cannot be limited or excluded under Irish law, including the Consumer Rights Act 2022.

Nothing in these terms affects your statutory rights as a consumer. The Competition and Consumer Protection Commission and Citizens Information have information about your rights.

Subject to the points above:

• If we break these terms or fail to use reasonable care and skill, we are responsible for loss or damage you suffer that is a foreseeable result. Loss is foreseeable if it was obvious that it would happen, or if both you and we knew it might happen when you started using the service.
• We are not responsible for loss or damage that is not foreseeable.
• ÉireHome Flow is for personal use. We are not responsible for business losses, such as loss of profit, business or business opportunity.
• ÉireHome Flow gives general information, not advice (see section 4). Decisions about buying a home, borrowing money or making an offer are yours. We are not responsible for losses that arise because you relied on the guide or the calculator instead of getting professional advice.
• We are not responsible for delays or failures caused by events outside our reasonable control, such as an outage at one of our service providers.
• We are not responsible for the loss of progress or calculator figures that were stored only in your browser, when the loss is caused by something outside our control, for example when your browser's stored data is cleared.

13. Privacy

Our privacy policy explains what personal data we collect, why we collect it, how long we keep it and what your rights are. In short, we do not use analytics, advertising, tracking pixels or profiling, and we do not sell or rent your data.

14. Governing law and courts

These terms, and any dispute or claim arising from them or from your use of ÉireHome Flow, are governed by the law of Ireland.

If you live in Ireland, you can bring a claim in the Irish courts. If you live in another EU country, you keep the protection of the mandatory consumer laws of that country, and you can bring a claim either in Ireland or in the courts of the country where you live.

If you have a problem, please contact us first at eirehomeflow@gmail.com. We will try to sort it out with you informally.

15. Changes to these terms

We may update these terms from time to time, for example to reflect changes in the law or in how the service works. The date at the top of this page shows when they last changed.

If we make a significant change, we will show a notice on the site at least 30 days before it takes effect, unless the law requires the change sooner. Minor changes, such as corrections or clearer wording that does not change the meaning, may take effect straight away.

If you do not agree with the new terms, you can stop using ÉireHome Flow and ask us to close your account. If you keep using the service after a change takes effect, the new terms will apply to you.

16. General

• If a court decides that part of these terms is invalid, the rest of the terms stay in force.
• If we do not enforce a right under these terms straight away, we can still enforce it later.
• We may transfer our rights and obligations under these terms to another person or organisation, for example if ÉireHome Flow changes hands. We will tell you if this happens, and it will not reduce your rights. If you are unhappy with the transfer, you can ask us to close your account.
• You may not transfer your account, or your rights under these terms, to anyone else.
• Nobody other than you and us has any rights under these terms.

17. Contact us

If you have any questions about these terms, email us at eirehomeflow@gmail.com. We aim to reply within 14 days.

ÉireHome Flow, Ireland.