The gross estimated vacant housing stock in Ireland currently stands at 345,000 or 17% of all housing, according to an evidence-based report published by the UCD Urban Institute. Allowing for holiday homes, obsolescence and an expected market vacancy rate, over 170,000 of the housing stock in Ireland can be categorised as an excess vacant supply.
The findings in this study, part of the research undertaken for the Urban Environment Project by researchers at UCD and Dublin Institute of Technology, show a striking difference between vacant housing stock in Dublin and the rest of the state, particularly rural areas.
Demographic and statistical analysis by Brian Hughes of DIT developed in the report indicate that vacancy levels in the Greater Dublin Area remain at 11.5% in 2009/10 compared to 20.83% in the rest of state.
“The identified vacancy levels have major consequences for the future prospects and valuations of development land,” says Dr Brendan Williams from the UCD School of Geography, Planning and Environmental Policy and UCD Urban Institute, the lead author of the report.
“Valuations of development land based on the expected sale of completed developments will need to be revised severely downward to reflect their current use and limited development potential.”
"Suppliers and vendors were unwilling in the short term to adjust prices, but such shifts become inevitable. In the light of an excess supply of 170,000 this shift is expected in the near future.”
“Public policy interventions aimed at maintaining price levels in such circumstances can prove ineffectual and wasteful. Interventions including those of the National Assets Management Agency (NAMA) which attempt to prevent downward price corrections can often delay rather than prevent the normal market recovery process occurring," says Dr Williams.
“It is evident that the current zoning/rezoning processes operating in the Irish planning and development process have failed. The largely unregulated property finance industry combined with a development-led planning process contributed to an outcome that is unsustainable in terms of oversupply and quality of development”, Dr Williams concluded.
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