http://ghostestates.com
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I totally agree that the conventional social housing model has failed utterly when benchmarked against housing trusts such as Peabody, Look Ahead or Iveagh. You got to love Mayfair with its probably close to 1,000 housing trust units being able to project an image of global exclusivity whilst having a varied social mix on income grounds.
here is no point in farting around with a strategy on foreclosure
I hear what you are saying, but my view is somewhat different, foreclosure for the sake of foreclosure solves little if there are no net assets to foreclose i.e. take total debt with vehicles with inter-linked obligations and limited if any personal guarantees.
My view of the key problem is wider than just ghost estates and it is that shareholders in management companies in large developments have limited protection; this issue is a lot more obvious when an insolvent developer holds say 40-50% of the voting rights due to not being able to shift the units. This sector needs to be regulated to protect people regardless of the ghost estate issue which throws up a quantum of hard case examples for the negative equity generation.
I have a feeling that Nama to date has been very much reacting to events and viewed as a holding vehicle pending assessment of their portfolio. Once the assessment has been carried out they will need to beef up their resources to deal with many urgent and pressing issues such as ghost estates. To many Nama is perceived to have been a bail out for the banks, if structured and resourced properly Nama could do a lot of good to mitigate the unforgivable mandate they were handed thanks to FF & F & F and lets not forget the FR
You have probably heard it all before but thr Deparment of the Environment have gone and counted them all (estates and number of houses). So its offeeeecal now. Very sad, and will leave scars on our towns and environment for years to come. 🙁
@wiseowl wrote:
You have probably heard it all before but thr Deparment of the Environment have gone and counted them all (estates and number of houses). So its offeeeecal now. Very sad, and will leave scars on our towns and environment for years to come. 🙁
“The Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government initiated a field based survey of all housing developments of two or more dwellings that had commenced by the time of the survey,”
A person near where I live knocked a big house and built three smaller ones. 1 remains unsold. By the terms of this typically shoddy RTE reporting I now live near a “ghost estate”.
The – effectively 1 page – report itself is meaningless statistics – it would fail a first year geography student. You cannot lump developments that are 99% complete in with those 10% complete. A perfectly functioning estate where phase 4 of 4 was canned does not equal a “ghost estate”. This report might have been meaningful if each “estate” was afforded an individual completion / dereliction percentage and indicated existing occupancy density versus that envisged. It also makes no mention of intended infrastructure or amenities completed or otherwise.
also “While is difficult to be precise about the exact numbers of housing units approved “ equates to “we couldn’t be arsed”. Planning records are quite clear
Myhome.ie sent me an e-mail with the following statistics in brief:
Ghost EstatesA new report commissioned by the Department of the Environment revealed yesterday that there are 2,846 ghost estates in Ireland in which they say, 43,000 houses and apartments are either unfinished or vacant.
The survey found:
* There are 2,846 ghost estates containing some 43,000 unfinished or empty units
* 23,000 units are completed but unoccupied
* A further 20,000 are at various stages of completion
* 8,000 houses have permission but have not been builtBefore the boom when indigenous demand was low we produced circa 20,000 houses a year if memory serves me right.
If the above figures are correct, despite rising up to IIRC 80,000 house starts at the peak, we have only over shot by two years worth of homes.
Given the rate at which the economy was steaming along, that’s not a horrendous overshoot in pure figure amounts.
In the current year, with twice the number of houses required for a flat year on the market, everything else being equal and use not in recession, it would normally put pressure on house prices to reduce to half normal level.
One or two bad years for the housing industry, then a return to indigenous low demand of 20,000 PA.No worries.
Except that people are fearful of buying at all because of the anticipated drops in house value and the propping up of prices artificially high by fools in developers and estate agents offices.
As has been noted above, priced attractively, anything will sell, even an empty site or a half-finished house.We have far too much greenwash gobbledegook fudging the issues these days.
Let’s see what has to be done to clear up this mess – price-wise, completion-wise, community-wise, and then let’s get on and do whatever completion and/or remedial work is requried to get the houses certified and brought to market, if we can.Defer Gormleys Carbon Neutral by 2013 Balderdash if necessary and lets plug this hole.
Remember any strategy can be made to work, if you make the first decision to start.
Granted, some will work better than others, but some benefit is better than none.And I don’t think we should be looking at penalty clauses for out of town developments.
We don’t need sny more stupid comments by RIAI presidents berating people becauae their passive haus is down the bog and they use petrol commuting to it.
Rather we should be looking at bringing in electric-only and hydrogen cell vehicles to Ireland and reducing the cost of travel and reducing our dependency on fossil fuels to zero.
Why aren’t we doing THAT, instead of waffling around trying to use less of the stuff that’s causing the problem – why haven’t we simply stopped using the stuff and use other sources of energy?Because somone doesn’t want us to.
And we’re beign distracted by the moral smugness of the Greens.Part of this recession mentality is the moral superiority of the Green Meenies towering over us.
If we took their disastrous strategies to the ultimate we’d still be in wattle and daub huts insulated with sheepswool and goign around on bicycles.
Its time to look at the wider implications of following a Green Agenda as opposed to discovering and developing sources of energy that are cheapr, plentiful and reduce, not imcrease global warming.But that requires a vision of enterprise, playing to people’s desires, not a good housekeeping guide.
In other words, almost the opposite of the Green vision.Yes, cycling out to Bray from South Dublin gave me a great sense of freedom and achievement.
It was nothing compared to travelling to Galway on a college site visit in October 1980 on my CD 175A.
And that was nothing to driving across the north of Italy two years ago in our hire Ford C Max to visit Venice.These are things I like doing – I stil cycle – but I’m tired of living in a world dominated by the save, save, save mentality – I was raised to be a Good Capitalist ferchrissakes!
SAVING WON’T STIMULATE THE ECONOMY BACK TO RUDE HEALTH – ITS THAT SIMPLE!
I like to spend money! I like to buy things! I had authority figures who say “no” all the time and “its for your own good” when it patently isn’t.
We should be inventing ways to sell each other things that run on cheap alternative fuels and energy harnessed from the sun, wind, water, and earth as opposed to highly processed fossil fuels.
Too much of this Green Mentality and energy saving will cripple our economy and our capitalist mindset – it could be argued that they’re practically hardline communists under amother name and colour.(that should flush a few of them out of cover)
ONQ.
@wearnicehats wrote:
A person near where I live knocked a big house and built three smaller ones. 1 remains unsold. By the terms of this typically shoddy RTE reporting I now live near a “ghost estate”.
The – effectively 1 page – report itself is meaningless statistics – it would fail a first year geography student. You cannot lump developments that are 99% complete in with those 10% complete.
It is hardly empirical however it did show county by county breakdowns and that was useful; what in God’s name was Dick Roche doing when all of these planning applications were being approved in places like Cavan, Monaghan, Leitrim; locations that could clearly never bear that level of supply without a catastrophic crash?
Dick was no doubt “being Ministerial” and staying “above reproach” and being seen not to interfer with the duties of the several p-lanning authorities involved.
Him getting invovled might have attracted charges of improper conduct.
ONQ.
I don’t think he can walk away from this his mandate was to regulate development; lets look at who failed in the creation of ghost estates
1. The developers – they over-estimated demand – they are mostly insolvent and have therefore mostly paid the price.
2. The banks – there was no-one watching what other lenders had already funded in terms of competing schemes – they have been mostly nationalised and their shareholders have paid the price.
3. The councils – Meath being a prime case in point in re-zoning enough land for centuries of real demand but assumed to be developed in 5 -10 years – there are elections coming and many of these clientist councillors will most certainly pay the price
4. The minister – who failed to read any of the new development plans whilst these crazy revisions were not only approved but praised for removing ‘blockages in the system’ or if he did read the plans didn’t possess the analytical ability to understand the basis of land markets. He has yet to pay the price, still holds office and if rejected by Wicklow electorate gets to inflict his clear shortcomings on the UCD student body who we hope to become the next generation of captains of industry and entrepreneurs.
Where is the equity in that?
there was a report in the last month on rte and another in the irish times about an app for locating nama properties.
however, i cannot find it on itunes.
anyone know anything about it?Rights bid on apartment maintenance
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NormalLargeExtra LargePlans for tougher laws to give apartment owners more rights over building maintenance will be brought up by Kieran McCarthy
Sunday November 14 2010Plans for tougher laws to give apartment owners more rights over building maintenance will be brought before the Assembly.
Alliance MLA Kieran McCarthy is to introduce a Private Member’s Bill that aims to support residents who pay hundreds of pounds a year to rogue housing management firms.
Mr McCarthy believes the Apartment Developments’ Management Reform Bill will address current inadequacies in the laws governing aspects of private properties which comprise parts of multi-unit developments, including townhouses and apartments.
Mr McCarthy said this change would make it easier for owners to ensure their management company keeps common areas of buildings in good order.
“I have been told of apartment blocks where fire doors were not in a working manner for months and could have had disastrous consequences if a fire had broken out,” he said.
“But I have also been told of the more day-to-day problems such as the grass in the common areas not being cut for months in the summer, despite a management company being paid fees to do so.
“This Bill will regularise the conditions of property ownership and management to ensure that owners know all the facts about the maintenance of the common areas and will have easier legal remedies in case they are not being kept in good order.”
Mr McCarthy said the current laws are not strong enough, with many owners complaining common areas are not being well maintained despite paying high fees.
He said he wanted his Bill to give confidence to those who sign up to buy a property in a shared building to understand the contract with the management company.
“This Bill will ensure that apartment owners have better rights and will know that they can do something instead of paying hundreds of pounds a year for a service that may not be carried out to a sufficient extent,” he added.
Press Association
The Alliance showing the way once again; if this were extended to all new developments in Ireland that would be a very useful piece of legislation.
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