Figures show house building nearing halt
Latest figures from the Department of Environment, Community and Local Government for house completions, registrations and commencements, show the boom house-building of the earlier part of this decade has now almost ground to a halt.
In April of 2011, just 349 houses were commenced. This stands in stark contrast to the 6,783 houses which started up in the same month in 2006.
If these figures continue for the rest of the year, construction will commence on just over 5,000 houses, down from the phenomenally high figures of 77,709 in 2005 and 75,602 in 2006.
A glance through the figures for commencement notices in the past six years shows the scale of the collapse of the house building boom.
From a peak of 77,709, the figures have steadily fallen year-on-year to 75,602 (2006), 48,876 (2007), 22,852 (2008), 8,604 (2009) to just 6,410 last year.
In terms of housing completions, less than 4,500 houses have been built up to May of this year compared to almost 36,000 for the same period in 2006.
For example, in May, just 814 houses were built compared to 7,777 for the same month at the height of the property bubble in 2006.
If this rate of house building was to continue for the remainder of this year, just over 10,600 houses will be built, a huge drop from the peak figure of 93,419 in 2006.
In a similar trend to that of house starts, the collapse of the housing sector can also be seen in the massive fall-off in house completion rates over the latter part of this decade.
From the peak of almost 93,500 in 2006, the number of houses built has fallen continually year-on-year from 78,027 (2007), 51,724 (2008), 26,420 (2009) to just 14,602 last year. House completions had been on the rise every year from 1989 to 2006.
House registrations are similarly stark. In the first five months of this year, there have been just 383 housing registrations compared to a peak of 28,852 in 2006.
Once again, the figures have declined year on year since then from 66,649 (2006), 38,351 (2007), 12,676 (2008), 3,743 (2009) to just 1,680 last year.
Recent census figures indicate that those who permitted such a rapid and large-scale house boom to escalate until 2006, took very little cognisance of the actual need for these homes.
In a staggering statistic, the census found that the growth of new homes in Ireland between 2006 and 2011 (13.3%) was almost double the increase in our population (8.1%).
As a result, there are 294,202 vacant homes scattered across Ireland compared to 266,322 five years ago — a rise of 27,880.
Among the worst affected parts of the country are counties Kerry, Leitrim, Donegal and Mayo, where the vacant property rates stand at an incredible 26.5%, 30.4%, 28.5% and 24.8% respectively.
