# Apartments, Apartments everywhere.....



## Grizzly (16 Jun 2006)

I see that a number of petrol stations, small businesses, pubs, hotels, private houses etc are being sold off and the land used for apartment developments. Just look at the Sandyford Industrial estate for example. Will we be able to buy petrol, bread etc locally without having to travel to the out of town Mall in the future?


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## Superman (16 Jun 2006)

Bread - yes.  Very easy for a Centra etc. to open up. (Of course it will be expensive).

Petrol - no.  afraid not. Try getting petrol in centre of Dublin.


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## beattie (16 Jun 2006)

At least in Sandyford you will be beside the M50 and can use the luas, at last there is some semblance of what would pass for planning in developed countries.  
It will be interesting to see how much rentals drop by out here when they are all built. I forecast 2 beds for less than €1,000 in thenext couple of years


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## polaris (16 Jun 2006)

There isn't a need for petrol stations in the centre of Dublin or any other city, but the number of petrol stations closing in the suburbs is worrying. With the current high oil prices we need as much competiton as possible.


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## Itchy (16 Jun 2006)

Shell and Esso I believe are leaving the petrol retail market.


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## beattie (16 Jun 2006)

i have heard that esso make no money from petrol in the uk and only from the shops do they make any mula

Probably the same over here


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## MOB (16 Jun 2006)

There is a problem with petrol sales:  unless you do huge volumes, the margins are just too thin.  This is leading to the wholesale closure of rural petrol stations.  In the long run, this will be detrimental to country life.  It occurs to me that rural stations have another option, as follows:

1.  They could drop their price per litre to being practically at cost;
2.   They could charge a flat fee "service charge" of, say, €2 or €3 on every petrol sale - you could simply set the pump to start at €2 instead of zero.  

Petrol would still, obviously, be dearer overall in rural petrol stations, but the rural customer - instead of having an incentive to just buy five litres of petrol to get into the Tesco station in town - would now have an incentive to fill up, so as to minimise the per-litre cost.

I don't see any other way for rural petrol stations to remain economically viable; frankly, I am surprised this hasn't already been tried.


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## bearishbull (17 Jun 2006)

MOB said:
			
		

> There is a problem with petrol sales: unless you do huge volumes, the margins are just too thin. This is leading to the wholesale closure of rural petrol stations. In the long run, this will be detrimental to country life. It occurs to me that rural stations have another option, as follows:
> 
> 1. They could drop their price per litre to being practically at cost;
> 2. They could charge a flat fee "service charge" of, say, €2 or €3 on every petrol sale - you could simply set the pump to start at €2 instead of zero.
> ...


People would still work out price per litre and in future would ensire they filled up at tesco etc for week. Even if people did buy because of this the margins would still be too small for the place to be economically viable without selling other things like food drink etc.But theres plenty of land available in country regions so i dont know how it can be that uneconomically viable,its more likely tesco etc are attracting people and smaller retailers are attracted by the development potential of their sites.


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## Grizzly (19 Jun 2006)

Having purchased petrol in the Tesco station in Dundrum I have to say that it is the most difficult petrol station to access. A roundabout in front, then a drive through a car park negotiating bollards and ramps as you go and finally ending up down a hill before trying to negotiate your way back out on to a roundabout.
For those of you who live in apartments can I ask the following question. When you do your shopping and arrive back at your apartment, how far do you have to walk from your car space to your front door and did you have to pay for your car space? Can you bring your shopping in one trip from your car to your apartment or does this procedure  require multiple trips? Do you find yourself purchasing smaller lots of groceries as a result and as a result of purchasing smaller lots do you end up buying in the more expensive convenience stores?


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## Grizzly (19 Jun 2006)

Grizzly said:
			
		

> Having purchased petrol in the Tesco station in Dundrum I have to say that it is the most difficult petrol station to access. A roundabout in front, then a drive through a car park negotiating bollards and ramps as you go and finally ending up down a hill before trying to negotiate your way back out on to a roundabout.
> For those of you who live in apartments can I ask the following question. When you do your shopping and arrive back at your apartment, how far do you have to walk from your car space to your front door and did you have to pay for your car space? Can you bring your shopping in one trip from your car to your apartment or does this car require multiple trips? Do you find yourself purchasing smaller lots of groceries as a result and as a result of purchasing smaller lots do you end up buying in the more expensive convenience stores?


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## lff12 (19 Jun 2006)

Grizzly said:
			
		

> I see that a number of petrol stations, small businesses, pubs, hotels, private houses etc are being sold off and the land used for apartment developments. Just look at the Sandyford Industrial estate for example. Will we be able to buy petrol, bread etc locally without having to travel to the out of town Mall in the future?


 
True, back where I'm from in Swords a bunglalow with a big garden is being replace by not 1, but 36 new units!  Its pure, unadulterated, naked greed - why build one house and sell for 800k when you can build 30 apartments and sell for 250k each!  Even taking into account building and sales costs the profits per unit still give the developer a return of 3-4 times what they get from building larger units.

Plus they can come back and try to redevelop any unused land at a later stage.  This is because a lot of apartments are mainly bought by investors, and they don't generally give a fig about what happens in the vicinity as long as they get their pound of flesh!


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## Purple (19 Jun 2006)

lff12 said:
			
		

> True, back where I'm from in Swords a bunglalow with a big garden is being replace by not 1, but 36 new units!  Its pure, unadulterated, naked greed -


Would you turn down a pay rise if it was offered?
If you were selling you house would you give it to the highest bidder or to a person/people who you thought needed it most for 50% less? 


			
				lff12 said:
			
		

> why build one house and sell for 800k when you can build 30 apartments and sell for 250k each


 A good question. Can you answer it?
It is up to the planners to set the rules and decide what is acceptable, not the builder.


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## dam099 (19 Jun 2006)

lff12 said:
			
		

> True, back where I'm from in Swords a bunglalow with a big garden is being replace by not 1, but 36 new units! Its pure, unadulterated, naked greed - why build one house and sell for 800k when you can build 30 apartments and sell for 250k each! Even taking into account building and sales costs the profits per unit still give the developer a return of 3-4 times what they get from building larger units.


 
I don't know where the bungalow is but replacing 1 bungalow with 36 units can be a good thing in an urban area especially if it is close to public transport links. One of Dublin's problems is that it does not have high density housing adjacent to public transport links.


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## Superman (19 Jun 2006)

Exactly - higher density allows for better transport infrastructure.

There are international calculations for what density is required to support  buses, luas, metro etc.  Low density cities like Dublin cannot support integrated high density transport systems (like metro).


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## conor_mc (19 Jun 2006)

lff12 said:
			
		

> True, back where I'm from in Swords a bunglalow with a big garden is being replace by not 1, but 36 new units! Its pure, unadulterated, naked greed - why build one house and sell for 800k when you can build 30 apartments and sell for 250k each! Even taking into account building and sales costs the profits per unit still give the developer a return of 3-4 times what they get from building larger units.
> 
> Plus they can come back and try to redevelop any unused land at a later stage. This is because a lot of apartments are mainly bought by investors, and they don't generally give a fig about what happens in the vicinity as long as they get their pound of flesh!


 
Fingal County Council have an awful lot to answer for imho, along with the other Dublin local authorities. 

The major problem with Irish-style "high density" is that our planning authorities allow the average unit size to be miniscule. If you really want to increase housing density in a sustainable way, you've got to make apartment living attractive by offering the floor-space and bedroom-count which allows people to raise their young families in these apartments. As it stands, apartments are merely a means to an end for a single/couple to get their foot on the ladder. A very small percentage ever intend to stay in their apartments long-term.

By rights, you'd never even see 1-bed apartments, as pointless as they are. 2-beds shouldn't make up much more than maybe 10% of housing stock, maybe 20-30% in urban areas. 3- and 4-bed apartments would be the norm in urban areas, while making up maybe 20-30% of housing stock in suburbs such as Swords. The majority of housing in the suburbs should be semi-d or detached, especially the further from Dublin you go. People should be able to trade distance-to-commute for living space, and vice-versa.

Of course, all that would rely upon a somewhat sane housing market...


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## Superman (19 Jun 2006)

Planners in Dublin are beginning to enforce higher standards.  They can (and do) force 2 1 bed apartments to be turned into a three bed. They sometimes require that a certain percentage be X% larger than the minimum etc. and requiring particular ratios of 1 to 2 to 3 bed units.
Especially in areas that are not designated for "rental" but where the Planning objectives are for long term owner occupiers.  


It is however that particularly Irish (and English/U.S.) attitude where one rents in one's twenties (and so the property is owned by someone else who doesn't care about size, and the renter doesn't mind as he's moving on) and then buys in one's thirties (or now earlier as the case might be), that is behind the uninhabitability of many of the apartment complexes.


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## Calina (20 Jun 2006)

Superman said:
			
		

> Planners in Dublin are beginning to enforce higher standards. They can (and do) force 2 1 bed apartments to be turned into a three bed. They sometimes require that a certain percentage be X% larger than the minimum etc. and requiring particular ratios of 1 to 2 to 3 bed units.
> Especially in areas that are not designated for "rental" but where the Planning objectives are for long term owner occupiers.



Having seen a lot of the new one bedroomed apartments being built lately, i sure as hell would not want to live in a three bedroomed one made from the floorspace of two one bedroomed apartments. 

I'm of the opinion that the planners in the Fingal CC area have been guilty of a slight lack of joined up thinking, particularly with respect to the area beyond Applewood in Swords. The place looks like a child with a bundle of bricks was involved in modelling the apartment blocks that went in on the banks of the river down there.


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## lff12 (20 Jun 2006)

Calina said:
			
		

> I'm of the opinion that the planners in the Fingal CC area have been guilty of a slight lack of joined up thinking, particularly with respect to the area beyond Applewood in Swords. The place looks like a child with a bundle of bricks was involved in modelling the apartment blocks that went in on the banks of the river down there.


 
At least Applewood has a "village centre."  The new place beside Airside looks like one of the tougher West Dublin council estates, circa 1979.

While I'm at it, I should mention the banks of the Owenacurra river in Midleton - not too far from public transport but considerably less of it than Swords (Swords has a bus roughly every 10-15 minutes, Midleton has about 1-2 per hr).  Almost every single bit of the Riverbank is now either an apartment block or has PP for one.  It is currently a pretty sight, but getting increasingly uglier as the skyline is littered with blocks.

Even the notorious Trellis Tower in West London is more attractive than some of what is being built in Ireland now!


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## polaris (20 Jun 2006)

lff12 said:
			
		

> Even the notorious Trellis Tower in West London is more attractive than some of what is being built in Ireland now!


 
[broken link removed]

You'll find plenty of people on this forum who'll agree/disaree with you!


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