schmittel wrote: » Yes, of course there are vacant rental properties - take a look at the rent drops thread. The example you gave were not vacant and would not have been recorded as such. Once they all move into the new propertys the old ones become vacant and presumably available for rent or buy. So the village now has 10 properties in total, 5 vacant. Same as on census night. You are criticising the census for recording properties as vacant that are not available as supply meaning for sale/rent in the short term. But the census does not give a damn about the short term movement of housing transactions, or how many ads are on myhome. The whole point of the census is an attempt to measure the big picture so that long term planning decisions can be taken. That's why I used my example of the hypothetical village. The census would record that village as having 10 residents in 5 households with a housing stock of 10 - 5 occupied and 5 vacant. Fingal Co Co (and their fans) would simply look at the village and say there are no vacant properties. Hypothetically the population of the village to grow is expected to grow by 20% over the next ten years. Long term planners (and market commentators) who rely on the census data will say - "that's fine there is already sufficient housing stock for those numbers in that village, it can absorb the 20% growth no problem." Long term planners (and market commentators) who think that the CSO have got it wrong, and Fingal Co Co are right would say "20% growth? There is nowhere for them to live. We better build another house in that village." Fingals approach would compound an already existing oversupply problem.
Marius34 wrote: » "While we don’t have a complete picture, we did note that many of the homes recorded as vacant were for sale, rental properties, had a deceased owner or were being renovated. Many of these may well have been occupied again a few weeks after the Census was completed."
Marius34 wrote: » Regarding to your question, in terms of Census, yes it may be defined as vacant. But its someone property, that intend to live, it can't be done anything about this new property, [/I][/Bso it's not right to add those new properties as a vacant property for the open market on supply side[/I][/B].
schmittel wrote: » According to the methodology of the census I would expect the vacancy rate to be 0. It is 100% occupied. Now I'll put a hypothetical scenario to you to see how you understand the census: Small village of 5 households, 10 residents consisting of 5 couples. They decide to pool resources together and build a new development of 5 houses that they intend to live in - 1 each. Come census night houses almost finished but not connected to electricity or water. i.e doors, windows and roof are intact but nobody has moved in. The couples are all still living in their old houses. In your opinion how should the census record these properties?
enricoh wrote: » Why would you say it was blatant spin? They have a large social housing list in fingal and investigated properties with a view to try renting them. It turned out the vast majority were occupied.https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.irishtimes.com/news/politics/number-of-vacant-homes-may-be-grossly-overstated-1.3220063%3fmode=amp
Marius34 wrote: » Right, so building that is ready for knocking down, is vacant based on Census. Person who has bought his home but haven't moved in is vacand based on Census. Now question to you, how do you understand Census on different scenarios. Assume Rental apartment building with 100 apartments, all 100% rented out. Weekend before census, for 10 of them residendents has not stayed in apartment. During census weekend another 10 was empty, with residents away. After census a different 10 apartments has been empty for the weekend. In your opinion what could be expect vacancy rate for the building in terms of Census?
During the course of their work the census enumerators were instructed to speak with neighbours to determine/verify the status of vacant dwellings
schmittel wrote: » of course there will be errors, it is impossible to measure the entire housing stock without making some mistakes. I am not claiming it is 100% accurate. What I am claiming is: a) it is the best available data we have b) the idea that it is patently false as proven by Fingal Co Co is nonsense and blatant spin
schmittel wrote: » Ok so the old apartments did not reenter the housing stock, but the new ones became fresh housing stock. From a housing stock analysis point of view it does not make a lot of difference. The CSO measures long term vacancies as properties that are vacant on consecutive censuses. Nobody least of all the census is claiming there are 180k long term vacant properties. The point is on census night 12% of the housing stock was classified as vacant, it should be closer to 6%. The conversation the government should be having is why is that vacancy rate double the long term average? By claiming there is nothing to see here, they are in danger of overestimating the long term requirements for additional housing stock.
Mrs OBumble wrote: » And they were vacant - on census night. They have since become occupied again.
JimmyVik wrote: » I found out this year that I live in a vacant property. As do my parents and my brother. We were all away for a family event during the last census so never saw a form. Then I hear from people that since none of us were in our houses, our houses are classed as vacant.
Marius34 wrote: » New Priory was total rebuild, so no, most of old apartments was not used anymore. It was rebuilt, and sold as New property. At least one thing you got right, that CSO vacancy numbers, has nothing todo with long term vacancy numbers. Large portion that was vacant during census, are not vacant anymore I told already few times:
schmittel wrote: » The whole point of the census is to measure the data at given point in time - in this case the entire housing stock. But nobody expects that situation to be frozen in time. So in both cases the properties were unoccupied as in vacant on the night of the census but are now occupied - so by definition they constituted unused supply of housing stock that is now used. Unlike the Fingal Co Co analysis the census aims to count the entire housing stock. So if you have bought a new home but not moved in on the night of the census, the chances are high on that night that you are living in another house, either rented or owned, and when you move out of that house somebody else will move in, and so on and so on. Classifying a house that somebody has not yet moved into as occupied misses that entirely. It makes perfect sense to classify it as vacant, when you are measuring the entire housing stock and the population. Fingal Co Co would classify it as occupied, but that is counting one household as two, which extrapolated out across the entire country and population would vastly overstate the current housing need.
Marius34 wrote: » Don't get me wrong. I think the Census report is a great thing, and it provides lots of useful details. I think the numbers make sense, what i'm not happy, about misusing those number. The vacancy from their data doesn't mean that it has no permanent resident in it, and it is in livable conditions. It simply wrong to use those number as of vacant properties in supply side.
Marius34 wrote: » So apartments in New Priory, that requires to be totally rebuild, how this is vacant as an available supply? nobody could live there. If I bought a new home, but haven't moved in yet. It's obviously will be available for future occupation (for myself), but how this is vacant, as an empty on the supply side?
schmittel wrote: » This debate started again in the main thread so picking it up here to try and keep mods happy. Rereading this thread reminds me of how incredibly mystifying I find this whole debate! Anyway here goes... Re Parkside and New Priory - they are correctly identified as vacant according to the census methodology - "in the case of newly constructed dwellings, that meant that the roof, doors, windows or walls had to be completely built or installed" There seems to be no debate whether or not the buildings exist, just whether or not they are correctly classified as vacant. The census do have a vacant subcategory of "New Build" When posters like myself quote census vacancy rates it is to make the point that according to the CSO on census night there were approx 180,000 vacant habitable dwelllings, or 12.3% of the total housing stock. This is double the normal long term average which seems odd given tight supply. The point we are making is that in time these dwellings are available to be brought in to use with very little effort to house people. The examples of Parkside and New Priory do not undermine this argument rather they reinforce it. In the case of Parkside the properties have been brought into use by connecting the electricity or painting the front door or whatever, and in New Priory by being rebuilt.i,e they formed part of a stock of 180,000 houses that at that date needed to be counted available for future occupation. If they weren't classified as vacant how should they have been classified? Certainly not occupied. The likes of Fingal Co Co suggest there is more like 5400 vacant properties in the country which is ludicrous. That would mean that properties such as Parkside and New Griffin are not counted at all, which is far more misleading than any lazy enumerator rounding error. Again on this argument the census wins out for me!
Marius34 wrote: » Probably none of them has the right vacancy numbers, and everyone has different methodology. But yes better look why other reports are not good, and not Census one. I provided details about areas around me, why Census recorded 50% vacancy, in census thread:https://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2058102792&page=2 but you not interested why Census may result in wrong vacancy rates, but instead searching why some other reports may have wrong results.
Marius34 wrote: » I'm confident census report is not precise at all in the sense of "Empty" properties. I live in Balgrifin (Dublin 13) some areas are recorded 50% vacancy. Couple of main reasons: 1) Parkside Phase 1: many properties was in development/completed, that had address on it already. But houses were not completed, or people have not made a permanent move yet. Those are registered as vacant. 2) New Priory: an apartment buildings that due to fire issue was in no living conditions. It got almost complete rebuilt by now, and sells as new apartments. Those are registered as vacant. There are many other reasons. And definitely not all workers in census waste a time to find out if the property is really vacant.
schmittel wrote: » The fact that they are 5 years apart is the whole point. If the same property is listed as vacant in 2011 census AND 2016 census then it is classified as long term vacant. Intuitively it makes perfect sense. What other these other data sources that are more real time and accurate? And I don't think I have strayed into the realms of conspiracy theories by using census data to come to a conclusion!
Hubertj wrote: » If you want to use 2 data points 5 years apart to come to a conclusion, please do. There looks to be plenty more real time and accurate data to build an opinion on.
schmittel wrote: » It was a generalisation on a view expressed here. Whilst you might not have explicitly said the census cannot be trusted, you're obviously not convinced by the data on vacant properties.. Of course not, that's ridiculous. And that is not is what is being claimed by the census. Perhaps have another read of Marius' link to understand the explanation a little better.
Hubertj wrote: » I didn’t say the census can’t be trusted. I said that 2 data points 5 years apart are useless in terms of property.
Hubertj wrote: » The explanation of what they determined vacant clearly sets out is extremely limited effectiveness in providing a reliable analysis of that data. Should a property that is being renovated be classified as vacant? Should a property for sale be vacant? What if people are living in it while it’s for sale?
schmittel wrote: » Probably because they have confidence in the methodology they have developed to try and evaluate every household in the country and didn’t expect people to say “sure the CSO doesn’t know its arse from its elbow, the census figures can’t be trusted, Fingal county council knocked on 76 doors and totally debunked it.”
Hubertj wrote: » They are totally different - objective of the census is to gather population information, hence the number of questions to compile a detailed data set. There are other sources of data for property. Or why didn’t the census cross reference vacant properties with RTB (or is it PRTB?) registrations?
schmittel wrote: » You'd wonder why we bother with a census at all, if it is less than useless.
Marius34 wrote: » It is. But from census we only know, that on 2011 census night it was registered as vacant (for that specific night only, not in general), same for 2016. Thus, it doesn't really tell if it's really permanently vacant.
Hubertj wrote: » 2 data points 5 years apart is less than useless. If this was updated quarterly then you have something to go on.
schmittel wrote: » Long term vacancy I.e 5 years + is very relevant in the context of a housing shortage.
schmittel wrote: » Marius’ link does indeed give an insight. Of particular interest is the long term vacancies as this represents a potential oversupply. I.e the same property was vacant in 2011 and 2016. As Marius quotes by relative numbers these are lowest in Dublin as you might expect. But of more interest are the reasons thAt they were vacant: So are these houses languishing on the rental market with no takers for 5 years or is it just a coincidence that a high number of properties in Dublin just happened to be between tenants on consecutive census nights 5 years apart? Or is there an altogether more probable explanation?
Marius34 wrote: » the issue that census does not provide information on Permanent vacancy, so it's not a source for housing shortage details. They are planning to improve information about vacancy for 2021, hopefully they will add details on actual Permanent vacancy, although I don't expect magic, as it's abit of the complex question, and they can not work with other institutions to verify this.
