# Good report on Vacant Houses in the North West



## Brendan Burgess (13 Mar 2022)

Research reveals 199 vacant properties in one Irish town and nowhere to rent
					

Research by NWRA revealed 44,905  derelict and vacant properties in the West, North-West and Border areas along with highlighting 199 residential derelict and vacant properties in Ballinrobe, a town with no properties to rent.  Video: Enda O'Dowd




					www.irishtimes.com
				




In Ballinrobe, there are 199 vacant properties and no homes available to rent. 

One of the contributors made a very good point that bringing an existing building back into use emits far less carbon than building a house from scratch.

If I owned a property in Ballinrobe, I would be worried about the cost of bringing it up to the very high standards for rental accommodation and I would be worried about the restrictions placed on me as a landlord. 

I wonder if these were eased would people bring property back into use? 

For example, give a tenant a 5 year lease of the property in its present condition, but let them bring it back to the standard they want. 

Brendan


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## peemac (21 Mar 2022)

Athy is similar. Huge number of empty town centre properties. You could repeat that for numerous towns around the country

Ideally you get an entity leasing the properties long term for the value in the current condition and doing the improvements to a decent standard and renting them out. The difference between what they are paying and the market rental effectively pays for the improvements over a period of a few years.

But for such a scheme to work, an entity would need to have a decent number of properties in a town to have economies of scale.


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## Purple (22 Mar 2022)

The populist view is that the most important thing is that landlords don't make a big profit.
If we had a Section 23 type scheme for getting existing properties back on the market there might be some significant movement.
A grant to the landlord to bring the property up to spec for fire safety and energy ratings etc would also help.
That and a guarantee that Rates would not be increased due to the improvements to the property for 5-10 years and there might be some movement.

If there were 50,000+ more properties on the market nationally the cost of renting would decrease and therefore the cost of HAPS would decrease.


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## Peanuts20 (22 Mar 2022)

I think it is more then just bringing the properties up to spec. In some cases, the home owner is in nursing care and the structure of the fair deal scheme is more concerned with recovering the cost of that care then thinking the bigger picture. Aside from the fact that house owner may not be in a position to make an informed decision, the family don't and wont want the hassle of tennents and the hassle of trying to sell the house with a sitting tennent when the time comes. I know at least 3 families in that position and 3 houses that could be let out but wont be because there is no incentive for the family to do so. 

There are also people who were waiting for the housing market to recover. House across from me was inherited by someone 10 years ago, he did nothing with it and is only now doing it up a bit to sell it on. 

What I am seeing in the local paper, is more planning application to change town centre property usage from retail/fast food to residential or to change "over the shop" from retail storage to residential so there is some movement there but not enough.


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## Purple (22 Mar 2022)

Peanuts20 said:


> What I am seeing in the local paper, is more planning application to change town centre property usage from retail/fast food to residential or to change "over the shop" from retail storage to residential so there is some movement there but not enough.


Yea, that's what I was thinking of when I posted above.


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