It is not possible to get through a normal day in any part of this island these days without the subject of houses being brought up and discussed at length.
People are either talking about the price of houses, or how much their property has increased in value.
Now one of Ireland's brightest young poets has come up with a book of poems which she has called Other People's Houses.
Houses of one kind or other form the central theme of Vona Groarke's latest book, but the one thing she does not deal with is their price.
Vona was born in Edgeworthstown, Co Longford, and grew up in Co Westmeath, close to Ballymahon. She has won The Sunday Tribune New Irish Writer of the Year Award and the Hennessy Cognac Award for Poetry.
Her first collection, Shale (1994), won the Brendan Behan Memorial Award in 1995 which brought her national and international recognition.
She has been writer-in-residence at University College Galway in 1997 and at NUI Maynooth in 1998. She is currently writer-in-residence with Cavan County Council.
Her most recent success was winning the Strokestown Poetry Prize with her poem, The Way It Goes, when this festival was held for the first time earlier this year.
She explained that she had taken the theme of houses for her latest book because they reflect the physical and social landscape.
"I grew up in the midlands and I was always fascinated by buildings, mainly other people's homes or houses. Buildings are historical reference points," she said.
That is why she included in the collection a poem entitled Workhouses, as the workhouse in Ballymahon was a major building there. Another of her poems is entitled The Lighthouse. Such installations are few and far between in the midlands. This is a poem about the stories which grew out of rural electrification.
Vona will promote her book in Longford Library on June 2nd at 8.30 p.m. It is published by The Gallery Press, Oldcastle, Co Meath, priced £6.95p.