Empty Houses

The CSO has released figures stating almost 1/6 of private dwellings in the state are unoccupied. The 2006 census found there are 1,769,613 homes in the State, and of those, 174,935 were vacant houses, 41,598 were vacant flats or apartments and 49,789 were holiday homes. The number of vacant homes amounts to 15 per cent of the total. It seems that while supply is forthcoming, presumably on foot of perceived demand the reality is buyers are not realising their demand due to deteriorating affordability conditions. What impact the abolishment of Stamp Duty will have on these figures will be interesting to see. I would be interested also in seeing the number of commercial properties which are unoccupied - the commerical property market we are told is consistently bouyant. Link to CSO press release here.