There has been a stark fall in the number of new homes being built in Ireland with the housing boom now a trend of the past, the latest official data shows.
The Housing Ireland report from the Central Statistics Office using data from last year’s Census shows that total housing stock grew by just 8,800 or 0.4% between 2011 and 2016. This is in sharp contrast to the growth of 225,232 rise between 2006 and 2011.
The data also reveals a decline in home ownership. The number of owner occupied households fell between 2011 and 2016 from 1,149,924 to 1,147,552 causing the overall home ownership rate to drop from 69.7% to 67.6%, a rate last seen in 1971.
The rate in rural areas fell from 84% in 2011 to 82% in 2016 while the percentage of urban homes owned outright or with a loan has fallen from 61.6% to 59.2% in 2016.
When examined by age the results show that renting was more common than owning before the age of35. Beyond this, more householders owned rather than rented their home. The equivalent age in previous censuses was 32 years in 2011, 28 years in 2006, 27 years 2002 and 26 years in 1991.
The average weekly rent paid to private landlords in April 2016 was €199.92, up from €171.19, a rise of 16.8%, in 2011. The highest growth in rent was in Dublin city which increased by almost 30% while Dún Laoghaire–Rathdown recorded a rise of 26.2%, Fingal was up 22.8%, South Dublin up 22.7% and Kildare up 20.3%.
The number of occupied apartments increased by 11.4% to 204,145 over the 2011 to 2016 period. This accounted for 12% of all dwelling types in 2016, up from 10.9% in 2011. Within the Dublin city local authority area, apartments at 74,537 were the main home type for the first time replacing terraced houses which accounted for 74,446 of homes.
The data also shows that was a 15% drop in the number of all vacant homes, including holiday homes, from 289,451 in 2011 to 245,460 in April 2016. Some 62,148 of these were holiday homes, leaving 183,312 other vacant dwellings.
For the first time in Census 2016, the type of dwelling was captured for vacant homes. The results show that of the 183,312 other vacant dwellings 79,966 were detached houses, 60,154 were semi-detached or terraced while the remaining 43,192 were apartments.
At individual town level, and excluding holiday homes, Blacklion in Cavan had the highest vacancy rate at 46.4%, followed by Keshcarrigan at 45.6%, and Kilgarvan in Kerry at 43.1%. Among larger towns with a population of 10,000 or more Letterkenny had the highest vacancy rate at 14.9%, followed by Longford at 14.6 % and Ballina at 14.3%.
Almost 10% of the population were in accommodation with less than one room per person.
There were 95,013 permanent households with more persons than rooms, at an average of 4.7 persons per household. This is a 28% rise on the equivalent number in 2011 which was 73,997.
‘We believe this report provides a clear picture of some of the main developments in the Irish housing landscape over the past five years, including new analysis of vacant properties, such as type of dwelling and distance to the nearest town, said Deirdre Cullen, CSO senior statistician.
