Maybe you are like me and this morning received a copy of the March 2008 newsletter from Dublin City Council listing properties throughout the city which will be available for purchase under the affordable housing scheme. There are a variety of properties on offer in Dublin 1, 2, 17 and the Docklands (that’s Dublin 1 and 2 I suppose)
I say available for purchase – not without having your teeth pulled.
First you have to enter into a draw along with thousands of others having expressed your preferences, then you have to get picked out, then you have to be made an offer, then you have to show you are entitled to the offer, then you have get mortgage approval, then you get to see the property! Then you choose to accept or reject.
And the thing that really hit me beyond the lack of information on what will be in the actual properties themselves fittings and spacewise – the majority of the properties listed in the newsletter do not have car parking spaces – so they don’t expect people to have cars for the next 20 years (the length of time one would have to own it before not being penalised by the state for selling it) or am I missing something here?? I completely get that one might not need a car to get around town but you may well own one for other reasons, like traveling or working outside of the City, shopping, mobility issues, transporting children and older people.
Having seen the process right through, I can tell you the whole thing is an administrative nightmare. It’s a fantastic idea run brutally. I have no regrets about going through it – we have a beautiful home as a result, but just thinking about dealing with the council makes me feel tired.
There’s so much wrong with the Scheme, but the good definitely outweighs the bad on this one.
It is also not a scheme for a household on one income, the repayments are not in the slightest bit affordable. I am not a ‘glass half empty’ person but I have no hope whatsoever of this scheme getting me a place of my own. But I keep my name in the hat.
I took a slightly different route with the Shared Ownership Scheme. Getting the approval is messy, but one approved, there is no waiting list.
Getting a house within the budget however was the hard part.
seems like a bit of a travesty,
very difficult to obtain info about properties over the net.
some agents display videos of properties shot in semi darkness with close ups of taps and cooker fittings !
no maps,no floor plans , no specifications , no energy ratings,
Does anyone know how to find what developers built what properties over the net ?
to be honest its not actually that bad, maybe a little more administration and you’d need to be fairly patient but I don’t think the whole thing is any worse than buying any property really. the main issue really is the lack of information before you have viewed the property but once there the estate agent will give you all the details and you can walk away if it doesn’t suit. I think considering the fact that you are getting a bargain its worth filling in a few extra forms (and yes you might not make as much money as on the open market if you resell, at least you are pretty much guaranteed never to have negative equity)
Maman Poulet » Affordable housing to get affordable? // Jan 21, 2009 at 03:33
[...] wasn’t affordable anymore. While there are several thousand people on the waiting list (Including yours truly) nobody is buying anything. The difference between the market price and the affordable price was [...]
I’ve deal professionally with the Affordable Housing people so I’ve some idea of how long-winded and detailed the process is. Their BIGGEST concern is documenting everything in great detail so when some TD calls asking why consitutent so-and-so didn’t get a house, they can pull out the file and show that the process is as fair as can be. You can imagine that they get a lot of these calls… from TDs, councillors, solicitors… You might be talking about 6 months from getting the call to getting the keys.
Fortunately they’ve now spent a large amount of money on a new computer system that should speed up the whole process.
As for the info available, it’s nothing to do with them, it’s provided by the developer and/or another unit of DCC which actually makes the deals with developers over what properties they (the developer) have to hand over. As you can imagine, the developer wants to keep all the best properties for himself and fob the council off with the ground-floor, facing-the-main-road, 25msq stuff!
Is it true you can walk in on e.g ‘A Docklands opening day’, and buy an apartment for roughly half the market price if you earn under 58,000? If this is the case does that mean they ask for 500,000 and you offer 250,000, or do they just say the latter. And is it now true that you could buy this place and sell it off in a couple of years, ‘they say there is no longer this 20 year payback claus on these apts. in the docklnds. Can someone advise me on what to do???