Skip to main content

No Brainer – Irish Not Buying Affordable Housing Scheme...

Dublin council to reduce affordable house prices...


DUBLIN CITY Council is to discount its total stock of affordable homes to get rid of a backlog of 300 unsold houses that are costing the council upwards of €300,000 a month in bridging loans and fees.

The council is to offer further discounts of about 25 per cent on houses it had already discounted by up to 35 per cent of the original market price to compete with developers’ discounts.

Developers must provide 20 per cent of any new housing estate or complex for social and affordable housing. A discounted price for the affordable units is agreed on the market price. The discount in Dublin is generally in the region of 30 – 35 per cent.

The council gives the developer names of people who are eligible to buy an affordable house. If two affordable house buyers reject the house or apartment, the council is obliged to buy it from the developer at the agreed discounted price. In a rising market, this system worked well. However, now that house prices are falling, developers are discounting private houses in the same estates to less than the price of the affordable houses. Buyers of affordable houses must pay a “claw-back” to the council of the percentage of discount they received if they sell their house within 20 years.

Private buyers are not subject to such restrictions and so the incentive to buy through the affordable scheme has greatly diminished.

To date, the council has had to buy 300 homes from developers because they were rejected by buyers. The council is paying about €1,000 a month in bridging loans on each of these units. However, the council is facing even greater debts as it has a total of 630 affordable homes on offer to applicants.

If it was forced to buy the remainder of these homes through further rejections from applicants, it would be paying monthly fees in excess of €630,000.

The council releases affordable homes for sale in a number of tranches each year. In its most recent sale last September and October, the council offered 350 affordable homes. These offers were rejected in 283 of cases and half these did not even respond to the council’s offer, according to its executive manager, Peter Ayton.

“In some parts of the city, there is very little difference between the market value and the affordable price. When the two prices merge, it’s a no-brainer – people won’t buy the affordable unit,” Mr Ayton told councillors at a special housing meeting yesterday.

The council could not afford to keep servicing the increasing debts on houses it could not sell, Mr Ayton said. It intended to offer reductions on houses, in the region of 25 per cent, to achieve a quick sale.

To fund this reduction, the council plans to accept cash instead of affordable units in future deals with developers.

While this is permitted under housing legislation, the council has had a policy of not accepting money in lieu of the 20 per cent social and affordable housing to ensure a good social mix was created in any new estate.

If the council has no takers after it reduces the prices of the properties, it will offer them for private sale to people who would be eligible for the affordable housing scheme but who had not applied.

If some units remain unsold after this process, the council proposes to use these as rental accommodation, for people qualifying for rent assistance, until the market recovers and they can be sold.

The council is also seeking talks with the Department of the Environment in relation to introducing a new scheme, whereby people could rent one of the properties for a number of years before buying and have the rent they paid offset against the purchase price.

A number of councillors suggested that some of the 630 homes be used for social housing. However, Mr Ayton said the council had already allocated its full budget for social housing and hadn’t “another bean” to spend.

Price gap: new reduced market prices rival those that are discounted

DUBLIN CITY Council has admitted it is offering “little or no discount” to buyers of affordable housing, because of the fall in property prices.

In general, the discount price at which an affordable house will be offered is negotiated with the developer before the estate or the apartment complex is built. Developers have, in recent months, been heavily discounting private houses in estates. This removes the incentive to buy an affordable house.

The council’s housing department yesterday gave several examples where discounts given by developers have made the price gap between affordable and private housing negligible in the context of a long-term mortgage.

In the Royal Canal Park development in Ashtown, Dublin 15, two-bedroom apartments were originally offered for private sale at €375,000 and at an affordable discount price of €264,000-€111,000 lower.

The same apartments are now being offered for private sale at €266,000, a difference of just €2,000 on the affordable home. For the discount, the affordable home buyer is locked into a deal with the council for 20 years.

A similar situation exists in Clare Village, a development off the Malahide Road in Dublin 13.

There the market price of a three-bedroom unit was €365,000 and the affordable price was €285,000. Now the market price is just €290,000.

The council says similar situations exist across the city. The council intends to further discount affordable homes by about 25 per cent and will shortly be launching a new marketing campaign at www.ahome4u.ie.



Report by OLIVIA KELLY - Irish Times.

Popular posts from this blog

Ireland's Celtic Tiger Excesses...

'Bang twins' may never get to run a business again... POST-boom Ireland is awash with cautionary tales of Celtic Tiger excesses, as a rattle around the carcasses of fallen property developers and entrepreneurs will show. Few can compete with the so-called Bang twins for youth, glamour and tasteful extravagance. Simon and Christian Stokes, the 35-year-old identical twins behind Bang Cafe and exclusive private members club, Residence, saw their entire business go bust with debts of €9m, €3m of which is owed to the tax man. The debt may be in the ha'penny place compared with the eye-watering billions owed by some of their former customers. But their fall has been arguably steeper and more damning than some of the country's richest tycoons. Last week, further humiliation was heaped on them with revelations that even as their businesses were going under, the twins spent €146,000 of company money in 18 months on designer shopping sprees, five star holidays and sumptu

I fear a very different kind of property crash

While 80% of people over 40 own their own home just a third of adults under 40 do. This is disastrous for social solidarity and cohesion Changing this system of policymaking requires a government to act in a way that may be uncomfortable for some. Governments have a horizon of no more than five years, and the housing issue requires long-term planning. The Department of Public Expenditure and Reform was intended to tackle some of these problems. According to its website its remit is to “drive the delivery of better public services, living standards and infrastructure for the people of Ireland by enhancing governance, building capacity and delivering effectively”. So how is the challenge of delivering homes for people in 2024 and beyond going to be met? The extent of the problem is visible in the move by companies, including Ryanair, to buy properties to house staff. Ryanair has, justifiably, defended its right to do so. IPAV has long articulated its views on how to improve supply an

Property Tycoon's Dolce Vita Ends...

Tycoon's dolce vita ends as art seized... THE Dublin city sheriff has seized an art collection and other valuables from the Ailesbury Road home of fallen property developer Bernard McNamara. The collection will be sold to help pay his debts. The sheriff, Brendan Walsh, is believed to have moved against the property developer within the past fortnight, calling to his salubrious Dublin 4 home acting on a court order to seize anything of value from his home to reimburse his creditors. The sheriff is believed to have taken paintings from the family home along with a small number of other items. The development marks a new low for Mr McNamara, once one of Ireland's richest men but who now owes €1.5bn . The property developer and former county councillor from Clare turned the building firm founded by his father Michael into one of the biggest in Ireland. He is the highest-profile former tycoon to date to be targeted by bailiffs, signalling just how far some of Ireland's billionai