Saturday 1 September 2012

Home ownership drops as number of people renting increases




THE NUMBER OF households in Ireland renting their accommodation has increased by 47 per cent since 2006.
The Census 2011 figures show that in April last year, almost 475,000 households were renting their accommodation. The spurt in letting has led to a sharp drop in overall home ownership. In 2006, that rate was 74.7 per cent but it has now fallen back to 69.7 per cent.
The Central Statistics Office published a report today, Profile 4 The Roof over our Heads – Housing in Ireland, which examines the characteristics of the more than 1.6 million permanent dwellings currently found in Ireland. Of those, 289,451 were unoccupied at the time of the census.
As the arrears crisis continued, the Census asked respondents about mortgages and employment. Of the 583,148 homes which are owned through an existing mortgage or loan, more than 50,000 are headed by a person who is unemployed.
The increase in apartments as an accommodation type in Ireland continued between 2006 and 2011 with 177,587 occupied apartments in 2011, an increase of 27 per cent on the 2006 figure. Apartments comprised 10.9 per cent of all occupied households in 2011 and accounted for almost one-third of all household types in Dublin City, the highest of any local authority area.
Foreign nationals and “smaller homes”
The CSO has also described the “smaller sized homes” as being “back in vogue”. Since 2002, there are more households living in properties with three rooms or less. However, non-Irish nationals were more likely to have fewer rooms with just one in eight Irish households having a maximum of three rooms.
In urban areas households headed by non-Irish nationals paid an average of €181 per week to private landlords, slightly higher than €178 paid by Irish householders. Rents were broadly similar for both groups in rural areas.

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