Ireland To Demolish 1,850 ‘Ghost Estates’ Built During Property Bubble
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Ireland’s National Asset Management Agency (NAMA), the state agency set up in 2009 to purge banks of their most toxic commercial property loans, has decided to demolish, rather than attempt to sell off, nearly 1,850 housing developments left unfinished after the property bubble burst in 2008, reported Bloomberg News on Friday, given that “nobody wants to live in them.”
Ireland’s National Asset Management Agency (NAMA), the state agency set up in 2009 to purge banks of their most toxic commercial property loans, has decided to demolish, rather than attempt to sell off, nearly 1,850 housing developments left unfinished after the property bubble burst in 2008, reported Bloomberg News on Friday, given that “nobody wants to live in them.”
“There’ll be some places where the most sensible decision that can be made will be to demolish,” told Housing Minister Jan O’Sullivan to Bloomberg on July 10.
[quote]“If nobody wants to live in them, then the most practical thing to do possibly will be to demolish what is there,” she later noted.[/quote]According to the report, nearly 553,000 new houses had been built across the country in the 10 years through 2005, at a pace nearly twice that of the rest of Europe.
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But after the property bubble burst, about 294,000 of these homes were left unoccupied – with average nationwide prices since halved, while the capital of Dublin saw prices drop by 64 percent from the 2007 market peak.
[quote]“There wasn’t proper planning, wasn’t proper control and there wasn’t proper regulation of lending institutions. We have had a very salutary and very hard lesson,” said O’Sullivan.[/quote]“The people that bought into a dream inherited a nightmare,” added Peggy Nolan, a local lawmaker in Longford. “The taxpayers have paid enough, as far as I am concerned, shame on these developers.”
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The NAMA demolished a 12-unit apartment block at the Gleann Riada, about 115 kilometres from Dublin, this week. While 220 houses, and three apartment blocks were planned for the site, only about 90 houses were completed along with a block in part.
The demolition was “great to see because it was an eyesore and brought a lot of antisocial behaviour,” said Alan Hogan, 31, who is renting out his house elsewhere on the estate to cover the mortgage. “For myself, I’d like to have that noose around our necks gone.”
The plan is to “get rid of this blot on our landscape, and this blot on our communities,” added O’Sullivan, while announcing plans to return the land on demolished properties for farming.
