To follow on from yesterday’s post concerning the initial Census 2011 results with respect to housing vacancy. In that post we included a table of data detailing housing unit numbers, vacancy levels and change between 2006-2011 by local authority. In the Census 2011 preliminary report the CSO has provide two graphs (vacancy at county level, Figure 1 – see below, and increase in housing stock, Figure 3) and a maps of housing vacancy at ED level (Figure 2). What these figures show is a marked geography to vacancy, with the five Upper Shannon Renewal Scheme counties of Cavan, Leitrim, Longford, Roscommon and Sligo, along with Kerry, Mayo, Donegal, Clare and Wexford, showing significant levels of vacancy (all over 20%). All of these counties had increases their vacancy rates of over 10%, with Donegal, Cavan, Roscommon, Leitrim, Kerry and Clare having increases of over 20%.
Holiday homes are a significant contributory factor to vacancy in for four of these counties. We don’t have the 2011 figures yet, but in 2006 holiday homes as a percentage of all vacancy was 52% in Wexford, 43.5% in Donegal, 37% in Clare and 36.5% in Kerry (as evidenced by the high rates of vacancy along their coastal fringes – Figure 2). So roughly between a third and a half of vacancy in these counties is accounted for by holiday homes. In the other six counties, however, in 2006, holiday homes accounted for less than a third of all vacant houses (Cavan 12.9%, Leitrim 26.7%, Longford 7.4%, Roscommon 15.9%, Sligo 23.1% and Mayo 29.6%). This pattern is unlikely to have altered much in the last five years. In other words, other factors are at play in all ten counties.
Seven of the ten counties increased their housing stock by over 15% between 2006-2011, with the except of Kerry, Mayo and Clare that increased by over 12% (Figure 3). Only in Cavan (13.9%), Wexford (10.3%) and Longford (13.3%) did population increase exceed 10%. In other words, house building was exceeding population growth in all these counties. As Figure 4 shows, many EDs in these counties had decreases in population between 2006 and 2011 and there is a strong match to those EDs with very high levels of vacancy (Figure 2). These are also the EDs with low population densities (Figure 5). Issues such as migration and natural fluctuations (ratio of births to deaths) also contribute. As Figure 6 shows, several of these counties have low rates of natural increase.
Given the decrease in population in some parts of these counties, and the low rates of growth elsewhere in them, the data suggest that there is a significant oversupply of housing stock in them that may take many years to fill given present demographics. We’ll be able to work out the exact levels of oversupply per county and likely length to fill once the full census results are out next year and we have a bit more information.
There has been some confusion across discussion boards since the Census results were released as to what constitutes a vacant house, and whether these figures include houses that were simply vacant on the night of the census and also houses in unfinished estates. The CSO state the following: “‘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.”
In other words, enumerators visited homes several times and talked to neighbours to see if the house was a primary residence of occupation. If the house was temporarily vacant on census night it was recorded as such and these figures are not included in the vacancy rate (as per previous censuses). Houses in unfinished estates were included unless they were at a stage of construction that precluded habitation. In other words, the 10,000 under-construction houses in the DECLG unfinished estates survey, and one assumes the vast majority of the 10,000 near-finished houses, will not have been included.
Rob Kitchin
July 1, 2011 at 5:53 pm
Does anyone else find the vacant housing map bizarre? Specifically in the rural areas of the west?
Yes there was overzoning, but that map doesn’t reflect a pattern I would expect to see in the case of overzoning. What it suggests is that in rural areas at least one in every four dwellings is vacant. Not part of a ghost estate, not a holiday home – a vacant once-off rural house. I find that a bit of a stretch.
So I did some investigation. AIRO didn’t update Sligo for some reason, so I moved next door to the north Mayo coast. Béal Deirg Mór ED.
>25% vacancy according to the map.
2006 Population: 739
2011 Population: 824
11.5% increase.
Then the first surprise:
2006 Total Permanent Households: 63
That’s nearly 12 people per household on average.
But it gets worse. There are 15 single residencies and 11 couples.
Average family size of 19 for the remainder? Pull the other one!
OK, back to vacant housing.
Planning applications From the Mayo CC site since 2006, using townland names read off the map:
geevraun 1
belderrig (beg & mor) 5
cregganbeg 0
belderg (mor & beg) 12
glenlossera 0
behy 18
rathavisteen 0
altderg 0
muinganierin 0
srahlaghy 0
glencalry (upper & lower) 2
That includes phone towers, extensions, etc as well as one-off housing. Didn’t spot any ghost estates. Nor did I count the buildings on the OSI map viewer, I was losing patience at this stage.
Something is wrong with these figures. Something is wrong with that map.
July 1, 2011 at 7:47 pm
Okay, I have checked the CSO and AIRO site. There seems to be a problem with the AIRO site for Mayo. The pop figures have been assigned to the wrong EDs. This is probably because between 2006 and 2011 a pair or more EDs needed to be merged because the population dropped below a confidentially threshold. I will talk to the AIRO team on Monday and get it amended. The other counties I’ve looked at seem fine, and Mayo seems correct for the regional modules, but I’ll get all counties looked at. Trying to get the data up on the same day it was released might have led to a couple of glitches. Sligo 2011 data is there, so I’m not sure why you can’t see that. The absolute definitive source of data is the CSO website.
Here is the data from the CSO – table 8 of the Census 2011 – http://www.cso.ie/census/2011_preliminaryreport.htm
013 Béal Deirg Mór, Co. Mayo
Population 2006 – persons (Number) 179
Population 2011 – persons (Number) 176
Population 2011 – males (Number) 91
Population 2011 – females (Number) 85
Actual change in population 2006-2011 (Number) -3
Percentage change in population 2006-2011 (%) -1.7
As for the map above, I’d be confident that it is correct. In the last census there were 1.76m houses and 1.47m households. In this census, there are 2.04m houses and c.1.71m households (we won’t know definitive total households for a while until we get the absentee data). The total stock of houses pretty much matches the ESB connection data. The 294K difference has to be somewhere. The Upper Shannon Renewal Scheme led to a very large spike in house building in the five counties included that ran way ahead of population growth – see Figure 12, page 26 of the Haunted Landscape report – http://www.nuim.ie/nirsa/research/documents/WP59-A-Haunted-Landscape.pdf. Enumerators visited every habitable house several times. The CSO worked with Geodirectory (An Post/Ordanance Survey) in terms of geocoding houses, so both enumerators, postmen and surveyors think the residences exist. All of the counties with high vacancy counties do have numerous unfinished estates. See http://www.environ.ie/en/DevelopmentHousing/Housing/UnfinishedHousingDevelopments/NationalHousingDevelopmentSurvey2010/ for a full list of estates. They also have relatively large number of unoccupied one-offs, as well unoccupied units on older estates. All of these counties also have massive amounts of as yet undeveloped zoned land and lots of outstanding planning permissions – data is again on the Dept of Environment website – http://www.environ.ie/en/Publications/StatisticsandRegularPublications/HousingStatistics/FileDownLoad,15293,en.xls (a large file). My personal view is that the data matches what’s on the ground and is reflective of the housing policies and construction over the past fifteen years.
July 2, 2011 at 1:06 am
Seeing the Sligo data in Chrome, still not showing up in IE, probably some sort of caching issue.
Glad there is some explanation for the “high density” Mayo data 🙂
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not arguing that the headline figures are incorrect. Nor that the zonings and permissions were appropriate. But the map gives the impression of a general spread across the entire landscape of turn-key unoccupied housing and that seemed… too even.
As mentioned elsewhere some of it may be a higher baseline of older unoccupied housing stock that while not technically derelict, is unoccupied but unavailable. I’m thinking particularly here of “the parents place”.
Likewise, there are plenty of examples of old housing stock that would effectively have to be gutted and rebuilt before they could be occupied.
My surprise was at the uniformity, given that the map was built on EDs and given the variability both of density and population change.
Plus I would have expected some differentials in part because of the tax incentives. Maybe 25% is simply too low a cutoff and the variability becomes apparent at a higher percentile?
However if a key factor is a high rural loading of old rather than new vacant housing stock, stock which would have no debt encumbrances and stock that is more likely to become derelict than be refurbished, then I’d be interested to see that teased out if possible, especially in the context of how a property tax might have an impact.
July 2, 2011 at 10:53 am
Neville, if the impression given to people is that all vacant properties are turn-key (as in you can move in the day you get the keys), then I agree there might be an issue in a minority of cases (and I do think this is very small number for the reasons explained below). Some properties are certainly habitable – roof, windows, water, electricity, etc., but they might need some refresh in terms of repair and decoration or modernising. Anything more than that is being ignored as derelict.
In terms of the housing market, poor habitable and derelicts do form part of the market as do-it-ups or as sites for replacement properties. A look at daft.ie or myhomes.ie shows that a proportion of houses for sale in all rural areas fall into this category.
In terms of variation, there is a little, but the map isn’t a great reproduction and the top two categories are bleeding through into each other a bit. That said, there is a lot of one-off housing in these counties and they are spread throughout every ED and the population trends in terms of out-migration and new settlement has also been dispersed.
In terms of tax incentives what was particular problematic about the Upper Shannon scheme was that they were available regardless of location. In other words, it was not targeted at particular settlements and was available for one-offs as well as estates for all sites.
As with my comment on the post yesterday, I agree that we need to get a much more differentiated picture of vacant housing stock, but at the same time we have to recognise that all forms of vacant stock potentially form part of the housing market and that the really big factor in rising vacancy has been the building of new stock not houses falling into disrepair.
To illustrate this I have been back through the census data to look at total stock and vacancy for Leitrim, as an example, for the past five censuses.
1991 1996 2002 2006 2011
stock 10072 10382 11678 15282 18237
vacant 1820 1954 2579 4473 5553
% vacant 18.1 18.9 22.1 29.3 30.4
pop 25301 25057 25799 28950 31778
What is striking about these data is that whilst there has been growth in population (25.6%) and housing stock (81%) between 1991-2011, growth in vacancy has run way ahead (205%). Counter to what one would expect, at a time when population has been growing, vacancy has risen. In other words, new house build has been progressing way in excess of household growth and this is the main factor for increasing levels of vacancy not marginally habitable stock.
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