I spent 12 hours yesterday doing some fieldwork, driving round the Irish countryside looking at the phenomena of so-called 'ghost estates'. A long but interesting day. I visited a diverse set of estates, the majority of which were in pretty good order. Not necessarily perfect, but certainly livable (and often not far off being completed in terms of landscaping, etc). Their main issue is simply that very few people live on them and given the present state of the Irish economy and housing market they may remain that way until the corner is turned. They ranged from apartment blocks, to terraced housing, to semi-detached, up to very large, exclusive 5 or 6 bedroom properties. There were some though that were a bit of a mess and have been abandoned halfway through the build. All the estates had a vacancy/under-construction rate of over 50 percent (with an average of 80 percent). It can be quite strange to be walking round an almost fini
shed estate of 60 plus houses and apartments that are all
vacant. I also came across a 'firesale' where prices had been dropped to 100K (at the height of the boom the most expensive property on the estate was 399K). These were very nice houses, on a nice estate, in a nice village. If one had a spare 100K and a job was near by, one might be tempted!
I spent 12 hours yesterday doing some fieldwork, driving round the Irish countryside looking at the phenomena of so-called 'ghost estates'. A long but interesting day. I visited a diverse set of estates, the majority of which were in pretty good order. Not necessarily perfect, but certainly livable (and often not far off being completed in terms of landscaping, etc). Their main issue is simply that very few people live on them and given the present state of the Irish economy and housing market they may remain that way until the corner is turned. They ranged from apartment blocks, to terraced housing, to semi-detached, up to very large, exclusive 5 or 6 bedroom properties. There were some though that were a bit of a mess and have been abandoned halfway through the build. All the estates had a vacancy/under-construction rate of over 50 percent (with an average of 80 percent). It can be quite strange to be walking round an almost fini
shed estate of 60 plus houses and apartments that are all 
vacant. I also came across a 'firesale' where prices had been dropped to 100K (at the height of the boom the most expensive property on the estate was 399K). These were very nice houses, on a nice estate, in a nice village. If one had a spare 100K and a job was near by, one might be tempted!
1 comment:
We have a similar situation here in the States--in some communities (especially in Florida, California, and Nevada, where the real estate bubble didn't just pop, it exploded) over 50% of the properties are in foreclosure and remaining homeowners are "upside-down" (owing more on their mortgage than their property is worth, which doesn't provide much incentive to keep up the monthly payments). I'm not sure even $100,000 is a good value if you're living on an abandoned estate with few neighbors and no prospects for a job.
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