A quick scan around the pages of this week's bulging property section will reveal the latest batch of new housing and apartment schemes to be launched on the market.
You will be treated to simulated images of how the developments will look when they have been completed at some stage in 2006 or 2007.
You can even imagine yourself as one of the smiling, handsome figures walking around the fountain or garden at the front of the picture - the bliss of home ownership personified.
The thing with buying a house or apartment that has not yet been built, of course, is that you are effectively buying a promise. And just as you are relying on the builder's contractual duty to finish the job, the builder will be relying on you to come up with the full purchase price when the time comes.
While all newbuild schemes vary, it will be typical for the buyer to "put their name down" about six months before they have any chance of actually moving in.
At this stage, they will hand over a booking deposit, probably of between €3,000 and €5,000. After another few months, they will need to pay over another amount that will often bring their total outlay to about 4-5 per cent of the full purchase price.
In some cases, the deposit could be 10 per cent.
For example, if the property costs €300,000, the buyer will, a couple of months after agreeing to purchase, have paid out between €15,000 and €30,000. The builder should meanwhile be working away on completing the construction.
In the background during all of this wheeling and dealing will be the mortgage that the buyer will presumably need to fund the full purchase.
Unless the buyer has access to a 100 per cent mortgage with an upfront personal loan to fund the deposit, the homeloan does not, in theory, need to be organised at the very start of the process.
It will, however, make sense for the mortgage to be finalised as early as possible, if only so that the buyer can be sure of accessing the money when it is finally needed.
Mortgage broker Liam Ferguson of Ferguson & Associates points out that most loan offers (the document where the lender says, yes, we are prepared to lend X amount to this person) have a shelf-life of between three and six months.
This means, at least in technical terms, that if the mortgage offer goes "out of date" between the point of paying the deposit and paying over the full price, the borrower could need to re-apply for the loan.
In practice, however, according to Mr Ferguson, it should be a bit easier.
"Most lenders will simply look for evidence that your circumstances have not deteriorated since the loan offer was issued," he says.
Typical "evidence" in this situation would be a recent payslip and perhaps a current account statement.
Mr Ferguson says the important message at the back of this is that a lender will be under no obligation to honour a loan offer if the borrower's financial circumstances have "deteriorated" since the offer was made.
In situations where a purchase cannot go ahead because of problems with the mortgage, the would-be buyer would be left facing the loss of their booking deposit, not to mention the shattering of their home-ownership dream.
"So the moral of the tale is: don't sign contracts on an apartment or house that's not going to be built for a long time, unless you're very secure in your employment," says Mr Ferguson.
