Phil Flanagan empty homes
AS 1,800 homes lie empty across Fermanagh today, up to 770 families still remain on the waiting list for social housing, plunging the county into what one MLA described as a “housing crisis”.
The shocking figures shows that Fermanagh has the highest number of empty residential properties in the North, outside of Belfast, as a result of the property crash.
While Fermanagh and South Tyrone MLA Phil Flanagan has called for the empty homes to be transferred into public ownership to help alleviate the housing waiting list, local estate agents say that should be used as a “last resort”.
It has also been revealed that over the past two years only 19 social housing ‘units’ were completed in the county, however, the Northern Ireland Housing Executive has confirmed plans to build 60 houses over the next four years.
While a number of ghost estates are still dotted throughout the county, estate agents believe that the rising demand from first time buyers will reduce the number of empty properties.
Seamus Cox, an Enniskillen estate agent said: “I’m surprised there’s so many vacant houses in these developments. There’s still demand and it’s starting to pick up for first time buyers. There’s no reason now why they shouldn’t sell.
“Putting them in to the public sector is more of a knee-jerk reaction and the demand is coming back and the houses could be disposed of.
“With more cooperation from the banks and they are able to facilitate first time buyers and provide assistance to developers, they could finish them off.
“It’s certainly a reasonable solution to transfer them to public ownership if there’s no uptake in the private sector but it should be used as a last resort.”
Seamus McGovern, an Enniskillen based estate agent added: “A lot of what they are doing in the South is letting people in on a rent to buy scheme. They could agree a price today and then after a couple of years renting, the amount of money they spent paying rent would come off the house price.
“If the houses were given to the public sector I’m not sure if the developer would get the price he wants.
“There are new developments in Enniskillen that are selling well and I’m sure in time these unfinished houses will be slowly sold on particularly if banks loosen up and start giving out money as there is the demand there for them.”
However, local MLA Phil Flanagan expressed his concern as demand for housing across the county rockets towards “crisis point”.
Mr Flanagan said: “One of the biggest issues facing us in Fermanagh at the present time is the serious lack of social housing. The shortage of social housing in all parts of the county needs to be addressed as a matter of urgency.
“It seems to me that the problem with the lack of social housing could be sorted, at least in part, by dealing with the huge number of vacant properties that exist.
“There has to be potential in having some of these empty properties, which are under the control of the banks, vested for the purpose of providing social housing to the people of Fermanagh.
“Given the cost of building many of the houses which are now lying empty, it should be investigated how cost effective it would be to transfer these houses into public ownership and bring them up to a decent standard and allocate them to people who are crying out for housing.”
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