True, and potentially a number of enumerators who used Garda-like methods for recording visits!
I suspect that a lot of people for whatever reason dodged the enumerators when they were doing their rounds.
The small village of Kilnaleck, with a population of around 100 (which houses a small immigrant community who work in local food production) is supposed to have 91. There are barely 91 buildings in Kilnaleck, let alone empty dwellings. .
. The CSO were questioned on the numbers at the time, and they defended them saying houses were only classified as vacant if neighbours were unable to confirm whether anyone was living there and they showed signs of being unoccupied such as overgrown gardens after multiple visits including over weekends. The numbers reported in the CSO tables includes surrounding townlands as well though, so with Cavan as the axample, every dwelling in the county is covered by one of the 100 regions.
The figures are still a mile wrong. They state 233 empty homes in Virginia, as per the census a year ago. There are currently no houses or apartments available for rent in Virginia and the situation wasn't much different 12 months ago. No way is there 233 empty properties in or anywhere near the town. There might be a dozen vacant commercial properties and there are a few long-derelict houses on the Main Street. That's about it.
I don't believe for a second that the CSO are repeatedly calling to houses with overgrown gardens up and down the country to check whether or not they are occupied.
The houses being recorded as unoccupied are just that, unoccupied. For the most part they are not being rented, and the CSO make no differentiation between empty houses that are on the market for sale, up for let, or just plain left empty for the long term by the owners for whatever reason.
The Virginia region covers 1,866 properties, so a lot more than just the town, I'm not there that often and I know a few that are empty. I can't speak for everywhere, but the enumerator in my area called to me several times trying to confirm a couple of unoccupied properties over a few weeks.
This is how the CSO counts housing? Someone is physically calling out to areas and talking to neighbours. Surely a list of every house with electricty and usage or non usage would immediately tell you this information. This reminds me of Irish water and them not able to figure out one house from another and one mad story about identifying them by the colour of the door or some other madness.
Leo the houses you know that are empty, are they up for sale, why are they empty, in general? How does the enumerator get your phone no?
Mr Coveney said his statistics were based on the same criteria as has been used by governments for decades, which is the number of new ESB connections.
That's very interesting Tommy, so the figures are wrong. On empty houses around the country. How do they count them I wonder.
Virginia's population was 2,282 per the 2011 census. It has about 5 pubs, a Supervalu, a recently-opened Lidl, a Costcutter convenience store, a newsagent and maybe a dozen or two more shops. It no longer has a bank nor, bizarrely, a filling station.Today there are 3 houses for rent in Virginia. A one bed, a three bed and a 4 bed. There are 85 properties for sale (surprisingly large houses on a cursory glance). But one would assume there are people living in those houses. And we're supposed to believe there are anolther 233 empty houses as well. How big is Virginia?
I only used Daft.
Coveney is some joker!The Irish Times ran a similar story yesterday about the lack of advertised rental properties in Blanchardstown and other west Dublin suburbs -
http://www.irishtimes.com/business/...lation-75-000-properties-for-rent-3-1.3060939
Minister Coveney's rent caps are having the perverse, but entirely predictable, effect of actually reducing the supply of rental properties.