Does the Fair Deal Scheme incentivise people to keep houses empty?

Do those figures assume a rent of 2k. Before tax and before expenses? Ifs not profit, and its not average across Ireland either.
You'd also have to allow that you don't get 100% occupancy.
Its not even about breaking even either. The amount of time, you will spend on it, who pays you for your time.
Its likely to be an old house well past its best. You'd want to on first name terms with a plumber.

People don't want part-time landlords. They want REITs and Large Landlords. best leave them to it. Seems to working out well
 
So over €3 billion worth of property locked out of the market, and probably more as old people have the more expensive houses, for a scheme that costs the State about €1 billion a year.
 
jpd said:
It's 4,165 out of 57,276 vacant dwellings where a reason for the vacancy was given

For the other 126,066, no reason was given. I think it's safe to assume that some of them were also because the owner was in a nursing home
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It's consistent with all other estimates on this thread in the 5,000-10,000 range.

What is not at all clear is how many of them can be brought back to market with changes to the Fair Deal incentives

My grandmother might go into a nursing home soon. Her house might fetch €2k if cleaned up but even with 0% clawback the house would not be let out. Renting is a hassle and would have to be co-ordinated between six siblings, one of whom lives in London and needs a place to stay anyway when he visits. The increase in the value of the inheritance from renting for a few years divided by six just wouldn't be worth them bothering either.
 
It's not the value of the houses it's their numbers. The CSO's statistics show thath 4,165 out of 183,312 vacant properties are due to the owner being in a nursing home. That's 3.3%. It's not even an issue. https://www.cso.ie/en/releasesandpublications/ep/p-cp1hii/cp1hii/vac/

Also according to the government's review of the Fair Deal scheme f39a443d0a054c78a548d5fad8711df4.pdf (assets.gov.ie) the overall average length of stay is 35 months. Again it's not an issue.

Houses are unoccupied for a short period of time (35 months) and there aren't that many of them (3.3% of vacant properties).

There also seems to be a misunderstanding that people go into residential care and never return to their homes. This not the case. Residents do return home when suitable end of life care is available. Additionally, there are 1,222 persons under 65 with disabilities availing of Fair Deal and living in nursing homes. The HSE's policy is to have care plans for such people to live in their own homes. When appropriate care packages, and suitable treatment is available such residents of care homes need to return to their homes immediately. Not after the 28 days, assuming the tenant leaves on receipt of the notice of termination. So unless significant changes were made to Residential Tenencies Act to provide for the immediate termination of a tenancy where the landlord is resident in a nursing home it's impractical to rent out these homes. And as other have pointed out the homes are frequently used by family members, caretaker arrangemetns etc.

When a property owner is in a nursing home, the property maybe unoccupied but it's not vacant.
 
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it's not 4,165 out of 183,312 but 4,165 out of 57.276 for which the reason for vacancy is known or 7.3%

The reasons that the other 126,036 homes are are vacant is not known.
 

jpd said:
it's not 4,165 out of 183,312 but 4,165 out of 57.276 for which the reason for vacancy is known or 7.3%

The reasons that the other 126,036 homes are are vacant is not known.
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We don't know what the true figure is but it's reasonable to suggest that it's considerably higher than 3.3%.
 
it's clear from this thread there are pretty solid reasons not to rent out the house, or sell it.

So what's the solution, what could be changed about Fair Deal to mitigate this unintended consequence? Allow the Fair Deal resident to ringfence the proceeds of a house sale made after moving into the nursing home?

If say 7% of all vacant properties are related to Fair Deal, that's 13K properties - is it even worth worrying about?
 
shweeney said:
If say 7% of all vacant properties are related to Fair Deal, that's 13K properties - is it even worth worrying about?
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Plausible estimates (see full thread) are in the 5k to 10k range.

I think ring-fencing sale proceeds might have a small effect. I don't think the rental clawback is really an issue.


Would changing the rules have some impact? Sure. Would it be material? Not clear. And, as always, beware of unintended consequences.
 
Purple said:
We don't know what the true figure is but it's reasonable to suggest that it's considerably higher than 3.3%.
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That's supposition. The CSO is the authorative sources of public information in Ireland. You can't really pass off pub talk / personal guesstimates as 'reasonable'. or as a firm basis for public policy formation.
 
True, but basing public policy on information that is incomplete is just as bad.

I don't think anyone would question the proposition that some of vacant 123,000 properties are vacant because the owner is in a nursing home
 
PMU said:
That's supposition. The CSO is the authorative sources of public information in Ireland. You can't really pass off pub talk / personal guesstimates as 'reasonable'. or as a firm basis for public policy formation.
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Yes, it is supposition, based on extrapolating an overall percentage from the 20% where a reason is given.
 
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