Buying Grandparents House

showed that 81% of over 65s were owner-occupiers without a mortgage. Not all use the Fair Deal of course. So maybe assume 20k dwellings in the Fair Deal scheme at any point.
We'd need to allow in the figures for those properties which continue to be lived in full time by a partner or other family.

So even if there's 20k properties tied to the Fair Deal loan (and I think that's on the high side); that wouldn't mean they were unoccupied and available to rent.

Even at the lower estimated figure, 6k properties on the rental market would have a significant impact.

But that could only happen if the current legislatipn made it easier to do so with out the legal hassle.
 
So could a change to the Fair Deal rules bring more houses into occupancy? Yes. Is the effect likely to be large? Not clear.
There were proposals from Jim Daly back in 2019 to change the rules and allow houses to be sold and ring fence the sale proceeds from fair deal. I didn't follow it so not sure why it didn't get implemented (or if part if it did) but they had estimated that there were potentially over 4,000 homes in high demand areas.
 
they had estimated that there were potentially over 4,000 homes in high demand areas.
Sounds plausible, yes. But as I said I'm not convinced that the financials are always the constraint. Many families I know are kind of sentimental and reluctant to clear out and sell a relative's house until they are deceased. From what I can tell Daly's Bill got stuck in the Oireachtas and the 2009 Act is still law.

6k properties on the rental market would have a significant impact.
In the scheme of roughly 2m dwellings not so much. Annual demand for new housing estimated at anything from 30k to 50k.
 
Today, daft.ie has just over 3k properties to rent for Dublin, Cork Galway, Limerick combined.

And you think adding 6k rental properties wouldn't make much difference to the rental market?
 
I disagree; if you were looking to rent right now, a tripling of the available properties would be huge.
 
I disagree; if you were looking to rent right now, a tripling of the available properties would be huge.
Yes but they wouldn't appear on daft on Monday morning in one go.

Anyway you are looking at maybe one in 300 houses which are unoccipied due to Fair Deal incentives.

Is the appearance of one extra house in a town of 300 going to make an appreciable difference to rents? Unlikely.
 
Philip Ryan has an article on this in the Indo.

A study carried out by the Department of Health and the Housing Agency estimated there were potentially 9,300 family homes lying idle because their owners were in nursing homes under the Fair Deal scheme. Local Property Tax figures show 7,800 people last year applied for an exemption from the charge due to a long-term illness which meant they were not residing in the house.

Somewhere in between the two figures is probably the number of vacant homes scattered around the country because their owners are in long-term nursing home care.

https://www.independent.ie/opinion/...ho-want-to-rent-out-family-home-40380343.html