Charity ‘stunned’ as almost 4,000 city homes lie vacant

By CIARAN TIERNEY

A city housing charity has said it is stunned by latest figures which show that there are almost 3,900 houses and apartments lying vacant in Galway city with an estimated market value of well over €825 million.

While the 2011 figure of 3,839 is actually a 3.6 per cent decrease on the corresponding figure for 2006 (3,984), housing charity Threshold say they are shocked that there are so many dwellings lying empty in the city at a time of such pressing need.

This means that one in every nine houses in the city is unoccupied at a time when there is no money for Galway City Council to build new local authority homes.

House prices have continued to free-fall, with figures released by Ireland’s largest property website, daft.ie, yesterday showing a fall of 5.6% in the second quarter of this year.

“The average asking price in Galway city in the final quarter of 2010 was €215,000, a fall of €180,000 from peak levels in 2007,” says daft.ie in its latest report.

Taking this figure as a rough guideline, this means that the value of unoccupied dwellings in the city is €825m.

House prices in the county, where there are 15,113 vacant dwellings (up 11.3 per cent on 2006), have fallen to an average of €165,000, compared to €308,000 at the peak of the property boom.

As the number of homeless people and those on local authority housing lists continues to rise, Threshold has called on the Government to introduce measures which would allow empty dwellings to be put to use by people with housing needs.

Threshold in Galway has seen demand for its services increase by 16% in the first six months of this year. Staff are bracing themselves for an even greater surge in demand if banks start repossessing homes from people who are struggling to meet their mortgage payments.

“I am astounded that there are so many vacant houses, but I guess you only have to drive around the city to see how many new properties have been left vacant,” said local Threshold spokesperson Deirdre Murphy.

“We would be looking for the Government to make real use of these homes at a time when there are going to be no new local authority houses built in the country for years.”

Read more in today's Connacht Sentinel