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RTE: Plan for unsold affordable housing units

SkepticOne · 2009-01-30 19:54:52

http://www.rte.ie/news/2009/0120/housing.html Can anyone really defend these schemes at this stage? Builders can't sell at made up inflated prices so councils helpfully step in and purchase a load of them with tax-payer money to sell at a slightly less but still overvalued price. Then more tax-payer money is spent paying…

30-01-2009 7:54pm

#1

SkepticOne

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http://www.rte.ie/news/2009/0120/housing.html

[...]Dublin City Council is planning to use some unsold affordable housing units for temporary social accommodation.
They are also planning to further reduce the price of affordable housing by 25% to offload a backlog of 630 unwanted residential units.
The council's housing committee heard this evening that the council is paying €330,000 a month in loan charges.[..]

Can anyone really defend these schemes at this stage? Builders can't sell at made up inflated prices so councils helpfully step in and purchase a load of them with tax-payer money to sell at a slightly less but still overvalued price.

Then more tax-payer money is spent paying interest on loans for empty property.

If it were not for the nice local authorities, builders (or their banks) would be forced to sell at prices people can afford. Better to have some money than no money.

There have been a fair few threads recently about whether or not people should take up their offer of 'affordable' housing. This is why you should not. The councils themselves can't sell them at their 'affordable' price.

Better to wait for a genuine seller. The shame is that money has now been wasted that could have been spent on services to help people including, ironically, actually housing the homeless.

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