Council sells off house for €11,750

Cork County Council sold off six houses last year which it deemed economically unviable to repair, including one semi-detached which went for the knockdown price of €11,750.

The local authority offloaded a detached property for €27,000 and another semi-detached home for €31,000.

The biggest price it got was for another detached house at €70,000.

Cllr Des O’Grady (SF) questioned how the local authority had let these houses get into such a deplorable state that they could make so little money on the open market.

The house which fetched the least money was at Allow Place, Freemount; the second cheapest was at Taur, Newmarket.

The house at Allow Place was badly damaged. A house in that estate recently sold at auction for €75,000.

One auctioneering source said even if the house had to be completely demolished, he maintained the fully-serviced site it was on should have fetched more.

Five of the six homes sold by the council last year were in north Cork with the other at Tanyard, Rosscarbery, which went for €70,000

Mr O’Grady said he simply couldn’t understand why the house at Freemount was let go for such a price and how it could fall into such a condition that it was deemed to be worth so little.

Council chief executive Tim Lucey said that the local authority had spent €2.5m last year bringing 165 of its vacant houses up to a standard that they could be rented out again to tenants.

He said it was clear those sold for small money needed substantial work, but said he didn’t know how long the property at Freemount had been unoccupied.

Mr Lucey said it was normal for the council to employ the services of a local auctioneer to value a property before seeking to sell it on the open market.

Mr O’Grady was told the council didn’t sell any of its social housing stock in the previous two years.

However, it did enter into seven tenant purchase scheme agreements in 2012, 74 in 2013, and just one last year.

For those three years, it made €4,273,989 from these purchase agreements.

It also sold off nine of its ‘affordable housing’ units in 2012 for €1,091,000 and a further one for €57,500 in 2013. None were sold last year.

Mr O’Grady said while he welcomed the tenant purchase scheme, the reality was that the council was losing a lot of its housing stock and this was not being replaced and the Department of Environment should fund replacement costs.