If council workers spot a match, the owner of the vacant home and the prospective buyer are sent each other’s details. Photograph: iStock
Sarah McInerney: ‘If you look up middle-child syndrome in the dictionary, you’ll find a picture of me’ The council isn’t trying to muscle in on estate agents, Gilligan is keen to stress. What the matched parties do next is up to them. The council is just facilitating introductions. “It’s an alternative to the estate agents and the property websites. You might be able to cut to the chase a bit quicker and have a quicker sale.”
Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown, for example, was the area with the highest proportion of vacant dwellings where the resident was in a nursing home or hospital. This was the case for 11 per cent of vacant homes there. The Mayo matchmaker scheme has had enquiries from people in the US and from Northern Ireland. Those people can apply, but the property has to be the applicant’s principal private residence or available to rent, he says.
Buyers can also avail of separate Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland grants towards insulation, a heat pump and solar panels. Work covered by the SEAI scheme is not covered by the vacant property refurbishment grant. “Taking on a renovation project, you really don’t have a full understanding of the condition of the property and exactly what’s needed,” says SCSI vice-president Gerard O’Toole of Tuohy O’Toole estate agents in Westport.
“People are having to fund the entire build until it’s completed. The mechanism of the grant needs to be looked at where funding is in staged payments throughout the build. If this is done, there will be much bigger take-up,” he says.