This is part one of a seven part series (click here for part 2 of 7)
There have been three recent studies into vacant residential property in the State, the latest being from UCD today. The two others are a NIRSA study from January 2010 (which has several sources from irelandafterNAMA blog) and a report by DKM Consultants in September 2009. Although the three reports adopt slightly different methodologies, all begin with the results of the 2006 Census which showed 1,769,613 total homes in the State, of which 1,503,291 were occupied and 266,322 were unoccupied. Of the 266,322 unoccupied homes, the Census revealed that 49,789 were holiday homes leaving 216,533 other unoccupied. So said the Census of 2006 and the next Census will not be undertaken until 2011. The three organisations DKM, NIRSA and UCD then adopted different approaches in updating the figures for the present day and their results can be summarised as follows:
To this author, each of the reports appears to have made very broad assumptions, for example (and each report contains several examples) with respect to holiday homes (DKM), mortgages as an indicator of occupancy (NIRSA) and how vacancies have changed since 2006 (UCD who say “The numbers vacant and unoccupied have been estimated by use of data on population and population to stock ratios over this period allied with discussions with financial and market sources indicating that over one third of additional stock in the period [2006-2009] remains vacant”, page 16 – how the 37.52% figure is arrived at in any defensible way is unclear).
NAMA Wine Lake 
Nama will never get to the end of next year I predict as it will collapse on the heavy weight of the debts it will have to carry and its own exorbant interest rates and they will go even higher
There is no way that the Irish property will recover to the levels it has to with 300,000 odd houses empty, and a lot more on the way because of the net emigration that is now getting underway .
When will these gobshi** learn the sooner they shut down this immense fraud the sooner we can get on with a recovery of sorts for Ireland.
The UCD report predicts an unquantified drop in population, which is in line with my prediction for year ended April 2010 when the CSO gives us the numbers. I will be revisiting the three reports (the NIRSA “report” is more a briefing on the irelandafternama blog) over the weekend to try resolve what the overhangs mean for property prices.
NIRSA has never said there is an overhang of 302,625 (as made clear on the link to the post used above). That is an estimated vacancy rate minus holiday homes as in the 2006 census. NIRSA has estimated an overhang of 122K as per this link – http://irelandafternama.wordpress.com/2010/01/24/an-estimation-of-oversupply-of-housing-units-2006-09-by-county/ This uses a base vacancy rate of 6%, a holiday home rate of 5% and an obsolence rate of 6/1000. In fact exactly the same methodology that UCD used but with slightly different rates in line with DKM/DEHLG.
Very happy to correct the spreadsheet comparison between the DKM, NIRSA and UCD study. Can I confirm NIRSA’s numbers to be A – total stock of homes 1,981,513
, B Occupied 1,629,099 (1,981,513 less (302,625 plus 49,789)), C Vacant holiday homes 5% of 1,981,513 or 81,455, E base or normal vacancy rate of 6% of 1,981,513 or 118,891, and F Obsolescence 30,291 (balancing figure) and G Overhang of 121,777. Column D, total other vacancy is the sum of E,F and G
Would also be grateful if you could supply a working definition of “base vacancy”, “obsolescence” and “overhang” – I work in property and I am not familiar with a standard definition of these terms in this context. Lastly if there is a link to a full NIRSA report that I could link to I would be grateful if you could provide it.
[…] competition distortion). There's an analysis of the three main studies into vacant property here. Vacant property DKM v NIRSA v UCD (Part 1 of 2) Nama Wine Lake __________________ To view links or images in signatures your post count must be 10 or greater. […]
Thanks Jina, as time permits but I try to put an update on each day and the Date of First Loan Transfer which to many will be the point of no return for NAMA is updated daily (sometimes twice daily).
We wrote a reply to the above but it became too long and the table wouldn’t go in this reply box, so we just put up as a new post (which I see you’ve already found!)
Many thanks for the response – I note your new post which is very helpful can be found at
http://irelandafternama.wordpress.com/2010/03/08/comparing-housing-vacancy-estimates/
[…] unwanted or distressed (in some cases unfinished) property assets in Ireland (see Ronan Lyons and Namawinelake for discussion). The smart-money players (foreign-owned banks with Irish property assets) might […]