Now, it is a concept the whole country is depressingly familiar with. Most Irish people have one on their doorstep - an ugly reminder, says the economist and broadcaster, of wounded national pride.
There are 621 ghost estates across the Irish Republic now, a legacy of those hopeful years. One in five Irish homes is unoccupied.
If the country immediately used them to house every person on the social housing list, there would still be hundreds of thousands left over. The obvious question of who people imagined would live in all these new-builds makes Irish people wince now.
Full story with video here.
5 comments:
They look like very nice houses. One woudl expect taht the answer is more to do with pricing than demand. Probably priced way above what the market would tolerate. I mean, even if there were not enough Irish people, I'm sure if the price was right people would flock from other countries to get a nice house like that at a good price.
I guess the idea is people/companies were building houses as "investment" properties to sell, but nobody was counting...
perhaps they thought people would repatriate. I am one of thousands upon thosands of expats here just in my city alone. more irish here than at home!
This is a simple matter of supply and demand -- Econ 101. Asking prices need to drop to allow the market to clear.
Sure, but there's a point at which you can't give things away, because everyone who wants one already has one.
And, of course, allowing housing prices to drop that far has all kinds of repercussions for the people who went into debt to buy one.
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