Daft Property - Irish Property News

Number of 'ghost estates' hits 2,881... THE NUMBER of “ghost estates” has increased, figures to be published next month will show. Colm Ó Ruanaidh, senior adviser on social housing at the Department of the Environment, told the housing policy conference that the count for this year was not yet complete, but semi or unoccupied housing developments showed there had been an increase from 2,846 last year to 2,881 this year. A departmental spokesman said Mr Ó Ruanaidh was working from “raw data” that would be finalised and published next month. “The additional 35 developments constitute an increase in the number of dwellings in ghost estates from 179,230 last year to 179,900,” Mr Ó Ruanaidh said. Some 230 unfinished developments have met the criteria to benefit from a €5 million fund to address immediate safety concerns. A guidebook for residents in unfinished estates is to be published in coming weeks. Marian Finnegan, chief economist with Sherry FitzGerald, said the c...

NOTHING BETTER encapsulates Ireland’s property crash than bleak images of “ghost estates”, which is why they have featured alongside the concrete skeleton of Anglo Irish Bank’s putative future headquarters in Dublin’s docklands in so much of the international media coverage of our current travails. What we must not forget, however, is that thousands of people are still suffering from the inevitable consequences of the crash, none more so than the residents of half-built housing estates abandoned by their once gung-ho developers when the bubble finally burst. Yet the feedback from many local authorities to the Department of the Environment indicated that “getting positive engagement from developers, site owners and financial institutions responsible for the loans on such developments was proving very difficult”, according to Minister of State for Housing and Planning Willie Penrose. As the final report of an advisory group set up to deal with this widespread problem made clear, “the...

Millions wiped off value of land in dezoning... DEVELOPERS have taken massive hits on the value of their land banks, as one-in-three local authorities have dezoned land earmarked for development. The moved has wiped hundreds of millions off the value of land across the country -- with taxpayers facing a massive bill for NAMA loans linked to land returning to agricultural use. Planning Minister Willie Penrose said yesterday that 12 of the State's 34 local authorities had made changes to their development plans which has resulted in thousands of sites now being classed as unsuitable for development. Last year, local authorities were ordered to dezone, rezone or forbid development on massive land banks to comply with tough new planning guidelines which set out where houses and commercial units could be built. The move came because councillors had zoned enough land during the boom years to build more than a million homes that were not needed. Councils had previously zoned m...

British housing associations may buy ghost estates... HOUSING ASSOCIATIONS in Britain are considering buying ghost estates in Ireland after meeting former minister for housing Michael Finneran last month before he left office. Mr Finneran travelled to Britain with representatives of the Housing and Sustainable Communities Agency in a bid to get them involved in his social housing leasing initiative. The initiative was introduced by Mr Finneran in 2009 as a solution to the lack of funds available to local authorities to build social housing. But take-up by Irish organisations has been slow. Under the scheme, British associations would buy ghost estates in Ireland from developers or from Nama and they would rent the properties out to provide social housing in Ireland for the estimated 130,000 households on waiting lists. In return, local authorities would pay the associations 92 per cent of market rent for the property and they would also receive a rent from the tenant. Histo...