We’ve been working to try and identify the location of ghost estate developments around the country. To do this we have been using a script to mine an address database that records details on 1.98m residential units in the state to identify all properties built post-2005 where 10 or more units share the same estate/street address and more than 50 percent are coded as either vacant or under-construction. We have then been through the resulting data to clean it with respect to multiple entries relating to the same estate and undertaken some preliminary cross-checking with house sale websites.
The overall number of post-2005 developed ghost estates identified by this method is 621, and in total includes 19,312 units, 11670 are vacant and 3823 are under-construction (average vacant/under-construction rate of 80%). These figures are preliminary results and need to be validated through ground-truthing, but we feel it is an accurate portrayal of the data as recorded in the database. If anything, we believe that this is probably an under-count as we know that the database under-records vacancy and under-construction as they have to maintain this status for quite a while to be coded as such and they are still in a rolling process of identifying vacant properties. There will also be some noise in the data because they are only collected twice a year in urban areas and once a year in rural areas meaning that units in some of the estates listed will have been sold although this might not move them under the 50% threshold.
There are 86 estates with more than 50 properties (of which more than 50% are vacant/under-construction), 253 with between 21-50 properties, and 282 between 10-20 properties. The number would certainly increase if we were to change the parameters down to a 30% vacancy/under-construction rate, depending on how we want to define a ghost estate. As the map reveals, using this method of calculation, there are multiples of ghost estates in every county in the state, ranging in size from quite small developments to some consisting of tens of units.
Justin Gleeson, Rob Kitchin, Peter Foley
Ireland after NAMA 
January 25, 2010 at 11:57 pm
undead houses and zombies flick to go with the map of the infection
January 26, 2010 at 1:33 am
Hi,
It might be worthwhile doing a parallel map showing only the vacant houses.
“Post 2005 ghost estates of more than 5 vacant or under-construction houses” is more accurate than “Post 2005 ghost estates of more than 10 houses with >50(%) vacant or under-construction” as you are artificially excluding certain developments.
Another option is to show total number of vacant properties, thereby avoiding the problem of lots of vacant one-off houses not being reported.
Colm
January 26, 2010 at 10:50 am
Hi Colm, thanks for your comments.
It’s hard to know what should qualify as a ghost estate.
For now we are only looking at estates/developments with more than ten houses and a vacancy/under-construction rate of over 50%. Have you any suggestions yourself?
Vacant one-off houses is a bigger task but it’s maybe something we will look into.
Justin
January 26, 2010 at 12:45 pm
Would it be possible to post a list of all the ghost estates represented on the map?
January 19, 2011 at 3:34 pm
You can find a list here and this links directly to Google Maps
http://ghostestates.com/main.php
January 20, 2011 at 3:18 pm
For clarification – there is no direct correlation between the NIRSA map and the ghostestates.com list which is a partial list of NIRSA 620 ghost estates and the DEHLG 2846 unfinished estates.
January 26, 2010 at 2:13 pm
Colm Moore said, “Another option is to show total number of vacant properties, thereby avoiding the problem of lots of vacant one-off houses not being reported.”
I agree with Colm. I live in North Roscommon/South Leitrim and the number of smaller developments that have half or more houses vacant (which do not add up to ten houses) are common and i’m sure not exclusive to this area, but your map ommits this info and so for alot of the country the map will be by no means accurate.
January 26, 2010 at 3:11 pm
This map shows estates of ten houses or more, it’s accurate in that sense.
We can change the parameters and perhaps look at smaller developments. How low should we go? 5 or 6 houses?
Justin
January 26, 2010 at 8:39 pm
My solution to the house mountain is to give the empties to people who have paid lots of stamp duty. They have been funding the country for years and they will then have the amount of property corresponding to the huge mortgage they have (I do not have a large mortgage).
To take one group, people in suburban flats with 40 year mortgages and massive negative equity would now have a spacious weekend and holiday home in the country. They could sell it or rent it out if they wish. Huge employment too in local economy from their spending. Huge employment for builders in maintaining the properties. Justice for the people with huge mortgages.
Why not?
January 26, 2010 at 9:40 pm
That made for VERY interesting reading. Thanks.
January 27, 2010 at 6:04 am
“To take one group, people in suburban flats with 40 year mortgages and massive negative equity would now have a spacious weekend and holiday home in the country. They could sell it or rent it out if they wish.” – who would they sell or rent it to?
“Huge employment too in local economy from their spending.” – there would be no new spending, you would merely be moving spending from one place to another – at a cost
“Huge employment for builders in maintaining the properties.” – but they would need to be maitained anyway.
Overall you post seems to have some of the naivety that has us where we are.
January 27, 2010 at 9:29 am
Large estates won’t be maintained if the builders have gone bust and the banks left with them don’t believe they can be sold. they’ll just end up in use for a short while as squats/drug users residences, then as burnt out shells and eventually demolished.
As for empty houses, have some care, some people woudl actually want to live in their house but have been forced out to find work. Having bought my own house in Dec 2007 just before the economy really went down the tubes, then becoming unemployed in Sep 2008, I’ve had to move to England to get work and leave it empty since Dec 2008. Renting it out would have attracted Stamp Duty clawback, which with falling rental prices I’d never actually cover: it was cheaper to leave it empty!
Bonkers really, the government gets no tax from any stamp duty at all, I get not rent to help me cover the mortage, but then the Irish government is pretty useless when it comes to making taxes so high people actively avoid paying them (legally) and it ends up costing more than would hav been raised (VAT and the shoppers heading north a prime example)
January 27, 2010 at 9:44 am
If you have evidence of a ghost estate in your own area (IE a photo ) then it is really really easy to put it up on the Ghost Estates website which is helpfully called ghostestates.com
Go here
http://ghostestates.com/upload.php
January 27, 2010 at 4:37 pm
Colm Moore:
We have a house mountain. If we give the houses to those who have paid lots of stamp duty many people will keep them as holiday homes – taking them off the market. It’s a lot better than knocking them down. Those who have to sell will do so and can use the proceeds to stay in their main residence. Rent to whom? Give Michael O’Leary Dublin and Shannon Airports – problem solved.
On your other points:
Spending would be moved from Barcelona and France and Spain – where people take short breaks and holiday and buy holiday homes – to Ireland.
The houses won’t be maintained anyway. Many will be knocked down or left unfinished and then knocked down when people aren’t looking. We will be told that all these houses have to go because they are “on flood plains” and the definition of a flood plain will be extended as far as possible. By that logic lots of Britain’s houses would be gratuitously demolished.
As for not being adequately serviced by public transport – you would have to knock down the entire United States (not to mention most of suburban Dublin) with that logic.
January 27, 2010 at 6:53 pm
Tony: There are actually quite a lot of houses over here in the UK that are built on flood plains. Large parts of the Thames Gateway area for starters, and many areas around Norwich. There are just too many people not to build in these places.
It’s not new either, the big storm of 1952 that killed thousands in the netherlands due to a dyke collapse also killed several hundred people in SE England whose council houses were built on areas at risk from high tides.
February 18, 2010 at 7:36 pm
One I know well. I am not the wise Mr Brendan O Connor referred to in this article who correctly predicted it would be a Ghost Town ( in DECEMBER 2004)
http://www.kerryman.ie/lifestyle/anatomy-of-a-ghost-estate-2068762.html
Oh and NIRSA is “OFFICIAL” …at least in Kerry. Nice 🙂
“According to the National Institute for Regional and Spatial Analysis (NIRSA) 21 of these ghost estates were built, or at least commenced, in Kerry since 2005.
A ghost estate is officially classified as a development of more than ten houses where more than half the estate remains either empty or unfinished”
March 5, 2010 at 9:26 pm
[…] Unstable Housing Market” (summary here.) It supports earlier calculations from NIRSA (see this post from the Ireland After NAMA blog) suggesting a very large stock of empty […]
April 4, 2010 at 2:17 pm
Any chance ye could put up some maps of the ghost estates with town & village locations included?
August 19, 2010 at 3:30 pm
[…] with 18% for Ireland – Ireland has an estimated 350,000 vacant properties out of a total of 1.98m properties, in fact strip out obsolescence from Ireland’s 350,000 “empties” and we get even closer to […]
March 25, 2011 at 10:07 am
The Irish Government claim that each national census will provide information for the requirements of the irish people for the future. Seems they really overlooked the census information when it came to the actual number of houses required. Maybe there should be a section in the census to find out how much money is enough to satisfy greedy developers and corrupt councillors.