Daft Property - Irish Property News

The term ghost estates colloquially refers to the list of 2,000 unfinished housing developments  compiled by the Department of the Environment. Dublin doesn’t do too badly in the 2011 rankings with 95 estates identified in the city council area, compared to 149 in neighbouring Fingal. The other two Dublin councils also returned quite positive figures; Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council has 60 unfinished developments and South Dublin County Council 50. It’s clear the capital has escaped lightly when some of the numbers recorded in sparsely populated counties are considered. Sligo has 237 unfinished developments, Roscommon has 235. Dublin also has a low number of estates considered the most problematic. These are the developments where residents’ living conditions are such that they are not required to pay the household charge, generally where the developer has abandoned the unfinished estate. Only 19 estates in the city council area are on this list. Elm Park was on the depa

Bulldozers send boomtime buildings crashing down... TWO unfinished houses that would have fetched €200,000 each during the boom have been bulldozed because of public safety fears. The unoccupied houses -- and foundations for three more -- were levelled at Church View in Clongeen, Co Wexford, at a cost to the taxpayer of €28,000. Other residents of the estate last night said they were relieved that Wexford County Council had taken action against the developers, Impulse Construction Ltd, by knocking down the houses. They said the unfinished houses had attracted vandals and encouraged anti-social behaviour for some time, and were unsightly at the entrance to the estate. This was the first time houses had been demolished in a new estate in Wexford, but the Department of the Environment confirmed other houses had been demolished on a small number of occasions. Wexford County Council confirmed it has more plans in the pipeline to carry out "public safety works which may involv

National group to oversee efforts to deal with ghost estates... A NATIONAL co-ordination group is to be established within weeks to oversee action by local authorities in dealing with the most problematic ghost housing estates, according to Minister of State for Housing and Planning Willie Penrose. Addressing the Irish Planning Institute’s annual conference in Galway yesterday, he said one of his top priorities was that “clear, decisive and proactive actions are taken to progressively resolve the issues with unfinished housing developments”. It has emerged that the National Asset Management Agency (Nama) has 10 per cent of about 150 of the worst ghost estates that are unfinished and pose health and safety issues. The vast majority of the ghost estates that require the most work were financed by the foreign-owned banks operating in Ireland. About 28 per cent of the loans at Nama relate to land and development and about 16 per cent are in the Dublin area, where there is a great

Ghost estate builders got €870m tax breaks... But no cash to finish 'eyesores' as 33,000 houses stand empty: DEVELOPERS got almost €870m in tax breaks to build thousands of houses that no one wants , the Irish Independent has learned. And the Government yesterday admitted there was no money to finish off the 2,800 ghost estates in which 33,000 houses and apartments are lying idle. Local communities will be stuck with these eyesores for years as bulldozing them has also been ruled out. And planners will not face any sanction for their role in fuelling the property bubble. The first official audit of the number of unsold and half-built houses and apartments in so-called ghost estates published by the Department of the Environment yesterday showed the full extent of the problem. The report found: * There are 2,846 ghost estates containing 33,225 empty units ready for sale. * Cork has the most unsold homes, 3,427. Limerick City has the least, 119. * Planning permission

'The estate is shabby now. I don't know how they'll sell anything' Unfinished roads, stalled sewerage systems and dangerous empty houses: welcome to a housing nightmare... CIARÁN DOYLE lives in a well-designed, highly insulated, nicely finished three-bed house which he describes as “perfect”, yet everyone in town refers to where he lives as “the building site”. Rinuccini, incongruously named after a 17th-century Italian cardinal, is just one of several unfinished estates which encircle Portlaoise town but, on first sight, it’s the worst. Four storeys of bare grey concrete criss-crossed with rusting scaffolding, intended to house up to 70 apartments, fronts straight onto the Dublin Road. “The apartments are a holy show. Because we’re on the Dublin Road, it’s one of the first things that hits you coming in and it looks shocking bad for the town. I’ll never understand why they didn’t start building at the road first and work in.” Ciarán has plenty of opportunity to ponder

Problems at 'ghost estates' identified... So-called “ghost” housing estates are posing serious health and environmental dangers through problems such as incomplete sewerage systems, water contamination, unfinished roads and open manholes, a study has found. The issues have been identified in a pilot study in Co Laois, ordered by the Department of the Environment, on the likely effects of the sudden end to the building boom, particularly in rural areas. The study, which assessed housing developments that were granted planning permission in the county in the last five years, found a quarter of them had health and safety problems. It also emerged that local authority requirements for builders’ bonds are in many cases seriously inadequate. The bonds are supposed to be taken out to ensure estates are completed. In some cases the requirements appear to have been ignored completely. Minister of State with responsibility for planning Ciarán Cuffe said it was expected that most of the u