THE number of Dublin City Council tenants choosing to buy their home from the local authority has collapsed by nearly 90 per cent in the last five years.
In 2006, Dublin City Council raised nearly €43 million from the sale of 220 homes but as the housing bubble burst in 2007, that figure fell to just 133 sales, raising €30.5 million.
Only 10 tenants opted to purchase their homes in 2009, raising €5.8 million for the Council, while last year the number of sales rebounded to 26, raising €6.7 million for the Council.
The sales figures were published by the Council in answer to a question from independent councillor Ciaran Perry while the tenant purchase figures were supplied by the council following queries from The Irish Times.
At the time of writing, the council had not responded to a request for clarification on the 2009 figures.
By contrast, the average sale price for a private home in Dublin in 2009 was €292,631 in the third quarter of that year according to the Permanent TSB/ESRI house price index.
Dublin City Council owns about 27,000 dwellings throughout the city, including everything from one-bedoom flats to cottages and four-bedroom homes.
The Tenant Purchase Scheme was introduced in 1995 to allow local authority tenants purchase their home at a discount. To qualify, buyers must currently be a local authority tenant and have lived in accommodation provided by them for the last 12 months.
The scheme gives purchasers a discount of 3 per cent of the market value of the house for each year of tenancy, up to a maximum of 10 years, capping the total discount at 30 per cent.
They also receive a grant of €3,810 with each purchase. Dublin City Council says a tenant living in a house valued at €275,000 after 10 years tenancy would be given a discount of €82,500. Purchasers can get a mortgage from either a financial institution or the authority themselves. Some units are not included in the scheme. including senior citizen housing, maisonettes, duplexes and all flats.
“Dublin City Council may, at its discretion, exclude houses for reasons of good estate management, because of their structural condition or if it has proposals to carry out remedial works to them,” the Council states.
