€18m to be spent on Dublin City Council housing renovation
Only a few days ago we were discussing the real estate situation in Ireland concerning the ghost estates.
Dublin City Council have now decided to invest €18 million in the renovation of housing. This money will be used over the following three years to repair apartments and council houses which have suffered vandalism or which have just deteriorated over time.
Every year the council gets around 50,000 new requests from tenants who are looking for somebody to renovate their houses.
The work will be completed by the staff at the council’s eight housing maintenance depots.
In order to finish the work quicker the council is looking for external building contractors.
Fortunately in some cases the renovation work is slight, small things such as cleaning, changing of carpets, repainting or the service of applications.
However other properties, especially the ones which were vacant for a longer period of time, need bigger improvements such as plumbing, new insulation, plastering or the refitting of kitchen and bathrooms.
In some cases, the houses need to be torn down, as we mentioned in our previous blog “The ghost estate dilemma after the bubble burst”. 
The average time a council house is vacant is around 18 weeks. We can see a decrease in the number of unoccupied houses in comparison to a couple of years ago. There are roughly 20,000 applicants which are currently on waiting list. Looking back to 2011, out of the 14,512 households with social needs, around 6,000 did not need to be housed by the council and could stay in the private sector.
Hopefully there will be a solution for every property. Let us know your thoughts on today’s Blog.