• Home
  • NAMA property for sale
  • About
  • The Developers
  • The Tranches

NAMA Wine Lake

Click the green link above for latest news and over 2,600 related articles. NAMA – National Asset Management Agency – part of Ireland's response to its banking crisis and property bubble

Feeds:
Posts
Comments
« UK residential property up 0.4% in March 2012 (down 1% on seasonally adjusted basis)
Stop press: NAMA publishes new foreclosure list of properties »

Census figures on vacant Irish housing published.

March 29, 2012 by namawinelake

The choreography of information releases following the Irish Census 2011 undertaken in April 2011, continues this morning with a glossy release of selected statistics which includes important new information on vacant Irish housing. Of course vacant housing has risen to prominence after the unfettered building boom of the early 2000s where our annual new housing construction numbers rivalled those of theUK which has 15 times theRepublic ofIreland population. In summary, we overshot and built far more homes than we needed, and today we are still unwinding that legacy by which I mean the available supply of vacant homes nationally outstrips the demand for homes.

This morning’s publication confirms that we still have a significant problem nationally with 289,451 vacant homes of which 59,395 are classified as “holiday homes”. This compares with 49,789 holiday homes recorded in 2006 which is interesting given the colossal economic contraction that occurred between 2008-2011 – you might have thought that holiday homes would have been amongst the first victims of the recession though perhaps the increase is driven by foreign purchases.

The overall level of vacant housing including holiday homes is put at 14.5% – 289,451 as a percentage of 2m total dwellings – which is double that of our neighbours in Northern Ireland. There were 266,331 vacant homes – including holiday homes – in the State at the time of the last Census in 2006, so the number of vacant homes has increased but because the number of homes overall has also increased proportionately more, the vacancy rate has actually dropped by 0.5% from 15% to 14.5%.

So we have 230,056 vacant homes which are not holiday homes. This is out of a total housing stock of 2m homes. Any country will have a “normal” level of vacant homes, be they second homes or vacant homes for sale. The most recent estimate from Ireland’s “National Institute for Regional and Spatial Analysis”  that I have seen, is that we still have an overhang of vacant property of 80-100,000 homes nationally and by “overhang”, this means a vacancy level above the long term normal vacancy level.. And on a national basis, this overhang is likely to be a drag on any house price recovery, and is likely to be a factor in future price declines. It should be said that although the national picture still shows an extraordinary level of vacancies, the picture at a county level (shown below) is less clear. We see thatDublin and surrounding counties have vacancy levels of 5-10% whereas much of Connacht andUlster have vacancy levels of 15-22%. And although the report doesn’t zoom in further to locations within each county, it stands to reason that there will be variations which may mean there is little if any overhang in some specific locations within counties.

But overall, nationally we can still say we have a problem with vacant housing.


UPDATE: 29th March, 2012. There is a helpful note on the approach taken in counting vacant homes, the note is available in the Appendix published by the CSO today to accompany its main release and says “Vacant Dwellings In identifying vacant dwellings, enumerators were instructed to look for signs that the dwelling was not occupied e.g. no furniture, no cars outside, junk mail accumulating, overgrown garden etc., and to find out from neighbours whether it was vacant or not. It was not sufficient to classify a dwelling as vacant after
one or two visits. Similar precautions were also taken before classifying holiday homes. Dwellings under construction and derelict properties are not included in the count of vacant dwellings. In order to be classified as under construction, the dwelling had to be unfit for habitation because the roof,
doors, windows or walls had not yet been built or installed.”

Advertisement

Share this:

  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • Reddit

Like this:

Like Loading...

Related

Posted in Irish population, Irish Property, Northern Ireland, vacant property | 4 Comments

4 Responses

  1. on March 29, 2012 at 12:15 pm Damian O'Broin (@damianobroin)

    You can zoom into to ED level with this mapping tool.

    http://www.airo.ie/mapping-module/census

    I think it only has overall vacancy rate though – it doesn’t seem to exclude holiday homes/


  2. on March 31, 2012 at 10:44 am Rob Kitchin

    I’ve put two posts on IrelandAfterNAMA on housing vacancy and the new census. The first concerns oversupply, the second vacancy at the new small area level. Both have detailed maps at small area level (for 18,488 areas) – nationally and for Leitrim and Dublin City (which has surprisingly high rates). Oversupply is 110,365. I’ve also put up a graph of oversupply per county. There’s a bunch of other graphs about proportion of small areas per county at different vacancy rates. As per comment above – interactive maps are available on our AIRO mapping site.

    http://irelandafternama.wordpress.com/2012/03/29/census-2011-housing-stock-and-vacancy/

    http://irelandafternama.wordpress.com/2012/03/30/housing-vacancy-at-the-new-small-area-level/


    • on March 31, 2012 at 11:02 am namawinelake

      @Rob, thanks very much, both the analysis at IrelandafterNAMA and on AIRO are highly recommended, there’s a lot of work that has gone into these analyses and there is very good, well-presented information there.


  3. on March 31, 2012 at 11:00 am Rob Kitchin

    Also see our interactive graphs of all the housing data released in the Census plus some derived data. Just use the drop down menu to change the data view. Gives a very good overview of county data

    http://www.airo.ie/spatial-indicators/view/919



Comments are closed.

  • Recent Posts

    • Test – 12 November 2018
    • Farewell from NWL
    • Happy 70th Birthday, Michael
    • Of the Week…
    • Noonan denies IBRC legal fees loan approval to Paddy McKillen was in breach of European Commission commitments
    • Gayle Killilea Dunne asks to be added as notice party in Sean Dunne’s bankruptcy
    • NAMA sues Maria Byrne and Graham Byrne in Dublin’s High Court
    • Johnny Ronan finally wins a court case
  • Recent Comments

    Wisemama on Eddie Hobbs’s US “partner” fir…
    Dorothy Jones on Of the Week…
    Sean Bean on Eddie Hobbs’s US “partner” fir…
    John Foody on Of the Week…
    Wisemama on Eddie Hobbs’s US “partner” fir…
    otto on Of the Week…
    Frank Street on Of the Week…
    Wisemama on Eddie Hobbs’s US “partner” fir…
    John Gallaher on Of the Week…
    John Gallaher on Of the Week…
    who_shot_the_tiger on Eddie Hobbs’s US “partner” fir…
    Sean Bean on Eddie Hobbs’s US “partner” fir…
    otto on Of the Week…
    Brian Flanagan on Of the Week…
    Robert Browne on Gayle Killilea Dunne asks to b…
  • Twitter Updates

    • Funniest case in Irish legal history? 1. ex-Cllr Fred Forsey convicted of RECEIVING a corrupt payment 2. developer… twitter.com/i/web/status/1… 4 years ago
    • Really looking forward to this at 9pm tonight, esp the first Garda on the scene. Well worth reading this background… twitter.com/i/web/status/1… 4 years ago
    • Tea time on the day the president of the ECB tells us we [in Ireland] are paying more interest on our loans than th… twitter.com/i/web/status/1… 4 years ago
    • “I am grateful for you to refer to Mr Sugarman...on the specific question of Unicredit, responsibility at ECB lies… twitter.com/i/web/status/1… 4 years ago
    • @JMcGuinnessTD now confronts ECB about "the honest whistleblower" @WhistleIRL and his disclosures of liquidity issu… twitter.com/i/web/status/1… 4 years ago
    • Details, including court documents of class action in New York against Ryanair and CEO Michael O'Leary.… twitter.com/i/web/status/1… 4 years ago
    • Draghi tells @paulmurphy_TD the ECB doesn't remove govts, the people do, that's democracy. Bet the people will be m… twitter.com/i/web/status/1… 4 years ago
    • Wow! Draghi says there is no net interest cost for the Anglo bonds whilst they're held by the Irish central bank. T… twitter.com/i/web/status/1… 4 years ago
    Follow @namawinelake
  • Click on date for that day’s posts

    March 2012
    M T W T F S S
     1234
    567891011
    12131415161718
    19202122232425
    262728293031  
    « Feb   Apr »
  • Blog Stats

    • 5,113,856 hits

Blog at WordPress.com.

WPThemes.


Privacy & Cookies: This site uses cookies. By continuing to use this website, you agree to their use.
To find out more, including how to control cookies, see here: Cookie Policy
  • Follow Following
    • NAMA Wine Lake
    • Join 1,326 other followers
    • Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
    • NAMA Wine Lake
    • Customize
    • Follow Following
    • Sign up
    • Log in
    • Copy shortlink
    • Report this content
    • View post in Reader
    • Manage subscriptions
    • Collapse this bar
 

Loading Comments...
 

    %d bloggers like this: