Expensive property lying idle for 30 years. Why?

There's a good, but short, letter in today's Irish Times about what should happen to all these vacant properties:

Housing Action Plan and the housing crisis

Here's an extract that I fully agree with:

There is no lack of housing units in Ireland. There are 260,000 vacant units with a further 45,000 temporarily vacant. These are all connected to current infrastructure. They are also social black holes.
By focusing primarily on these idle properties we would kill many birds with the one stone. We could solve the housing crisis. We could provide a micro-economic boom to small-scale builders, tradesmen and renovators. We could bring life back to town and village centres, where considerable vacancy exists nationally. We would not ghettoise social housing as this vacancy demographic is widespread. We would not add to sprawl and the associated traffic issues this brings.
Yes, the Housing Action Plan contains some carrots, eg local authority up-front rent to fund renovation. Sadly it contains no stick for those unwilling to put a property to use or to sell it. No stick either for local authorities not taking swift action on dereliction.

As pointed out by several people here, it is our taxes which provide the infrastructure and social services which give houses such as in the op their value. Imagine the value of these houses in, say, rural Donegal and you get an idea of the naive nonsense spouted by the "private property is sacrosanct" lobbyists. The value of all private property depends to a very large extent on the infrastructure and services which our taxes provide to the surrounding areas. Thus, houses like these sitting idle are wasting these taxpayer-funded resources and denying their use to potential residents. As such the owners should be financially penalised by the state while this continues.

In terms of good governance, there's no policy justification for the absence of such penalties on people who are hoarding vacant properties in sought-after areas. As the government for the past five years Fine Gael has simply bottled it, yet again.

2RockMountain

2RockMountain wrote: »

The Elgin Road houses aren't on the Derelict Sites register;

http://www.dublincity.ie/main-menu-services-planning/derelict-sites

There's a very, very informative article in the Dublin Inquirer from 9 March 2016 about DCC's "derelict sites" list: officially, there are only 59 derelict properties in the entire city. Here's the entire list for 2016 Now, everyone of us know there are far, far more derelict sites in reality than this and it is easily in the thousands. But the article says DCC is afraid of being brought to court because the courts tend to rule in favour of developers/private owners and on this point there is widespread agreement that the derelict sites legislation is wholly inadequate and the onus is on legislators to return and give it teeth. "The limitations of the Derelict Sites Act is that “It’s really intended to make people clean them up, it’s not intended to ensure that a vacant site gets developed,”

The article also points out that the zeal of the council official can make the world of difference: "What he believes made a lot of difference for these sites, was the dedication of the council official who plugged away at it.

If more council officials had worked with such zeal, the council might have also pocketed more money from sites. The value of land has changed a lot over the years, but right now in the inner-city, it is about €4 million for an acre. So, for a site that covers a quarter of an acre and was put on the Derelict Sites Register with an annual levy of 3 percent, the council could have brought in €30,000."

Dublin Inquirer: Losing Patience: why are there so many rundown sites along the Red Line?

Nekarsulm

If you get a Thom's Directory out of the library, it's a great way to track down owners of such properties. Though what you plan to do when you find out is another matter.