A vacant property tax of 6 per cent should be 'enacted and fully operational as a priority', the association’s research paper concluded. Photograph: Frank MillerA combination of incentives and penalties could bring a “large chunk” of the roughly 167,000 vacant properties in Ireland back into use, alleviating Ireland’s “chronic shortage of affordable homes”.
However, this number contains many dwellings that may be unoccupied for a relatively short period time and a home deemed vacant does not necessarily mean a home is available for reuse or to house other people, the Department of Finance said last month. Excluding the roughly 4,000 homes included in the Fair Deal scheme and assuming a further 25 per cent of the homes are likely to be tied up legally, the association said estimated that roughly 33,778 could be renovated at a reasonable price.If uptake in an incentive scheme was 50 per cent, it means that 16,889 homes could be released to market over the next three years, adding 5,000-6,000 to the national housing stock each year.
This could generate up to €600 million, it said, and fund an extension of the help-to-buy scheme to vacant homes that would see first-time buyers of empty properties receive a grant of up to €50,000.