Have FG finally noticed we have a vacant properties problem?

Care to deal with the substantive issues or just fancy having a rant about a house you know nothing about.

In this case it is owed by Cork City council. The owner, a single man, sold it to them when he emigrated. Been sitting empty ever since. As an LPT payer and voter in Cork City yes, they are obliged to account to me. That's democracy which seems to be the buzz word for some in this thread.

So yeah - nice fantasy story bro but very far from the reality.

Exempting PPR doesn’t help to distinguish between a vacant/occupied second property, nor why it is vacant and whether that vacancy should be exempt.

You really should offer your legal services to the people tasked with framing this legislation, I’m certain they would appreciate your knowledge. No doubt they would be disappointed you weren’t available when writing the vacant site legislation.

In other words a punishment tax for daring to be absent from your own property that you have bought and paid for.

And have already paid taxes on your whole adult life.

You Communists and your contempt for private property rights of citizens really know no bounds.

So tell me, how long would a citizen have to be absent from their property before your punishment tax kicks in?

6 days? 6 months? 6 years?

I’ll do a deal with you. When I reach my retirement days and jet off on my five year trip around the world.

If six months is time limit for your punishment tax. I’ll make it my business to fly home from wherever I am in the world and on the last day of that six month period I’ll spend a night in my property.

And if I keep two properties I’ve bought and paid for, I’ll come home a day earlier and spend a night in my second property.

And then I will jet off again for another five months and 5 or 6 days.

Will that suit ya?

The council cannot sort its own gaffs out and these are easily tracked on a single spreadsheet and you think they are going to be able to sort out the thousands of other empties in private hands.

Well good luck with that.

Out of interest how high should the tax be ?

Anything less than a couple of thousand a year won't move many people to change anything?

PS Schmittel, I’m a woman, not a man. But your statement is otherwise correct.

I do believe, “It is my property and I’ll do what I want with it”…because I’ve bloody well paid through the nose for the privilege.

Not sure i understand what is the actual purpose of a vacancy tax...is it just to increase the general revenue pot of county councils, or is it to penalise owners so they either make that property available to the sales or rental market?

That you can't discuss actual points I raised but have to resort to having a dig based completely on your imagination speaks even louder.

Added to that, if the property is occupied, be that by family or someone who commutes, it isn't vacant. It's occupied.

The main focus of campaigners are those property owners who own multiple places with no intention of renting them out not the people who have gone abroad for a while or the accidental LL or hands tied by fair deal.

It's the empty for decades and allowed to rot, the whole street earmarked for future sale once it can be cleared due to dereliction. It's the shops in town centres allowed to disintegrate driving customers away to more salubrious locations.

Apologies Schmittel, perhaps I didn’t make my point clear enough.

When I referred to being forced to remain a LL against my will.

That was with regard to the other laws these housing campaigners and politicians are knitting up to lock landlords into “indefinite tenancies” which I had mentioned earlier in my post.

Ultimately leading to once you make the mistake of becoming a LL you’re never going to get out.

Same with their plans to prohibit LL’s from allowing their own children to move in to their property.

The very same campaigners and politicians that 3 years ago implored citizens with 2nd properties to let them out.

Have done nothing but try to strip property owners of our rights ever since.

This vacant tax punishment law is just another punishment in their arsenal.

You said yourself most people won’t go to the extremes I am prepared to avoid this.

They’ll either pay the tax, sell up or rent out their property.

Again it’s about stripping property owners of their rights.

Furthermore, I no longer have any belief whatsoever that these punitive laws are designed to somehow solve the housing crisis.

You don’t ask someone to do you a favour and then hit them with a hockey stick and vilify them for doing what you asked.

If they want to motivate people to rent out their second properties and help, you don’t implement laws that crucify them for doing what you asked.

This is all about stripping away private property rights. Plain and simple.

The only positive thing I shall be taking away from my time as a landlord is that I know I did my very best for tenants I’ve had. And I’m glad to had such lovely people in my much loved home. I have recently two new lovely tenants and I shall absolutely honour my lease agreement with them.

But after that I’m out, there’ll be one less rental property on the market.

And it will be thanks to every last one of those housing campaigners and politicians and their punitive laws.

1. I’m not your “bro” I am a woman.
2. You had made previous references to “people hoarding property” and owners either “using it or losing it. This led me to believe that the vacant house beside you is owned by a private citizen who purchased his / her own property. Rather than a state owned council property. When it comes to Stste owned properties, mismanaged and left idle. I am absolutely in agreement with you. There’s circa 5000 of them empty the length and breadth of the country. If the government actually wanted to help solve the housing crisis those 5000 properties could be quickly and relatively cheaply turned around to put roofs over heads and go a long way to taking pressure off the system. But instead of that they’re busy knitting up ever more punitive laws to strip private property owners of their rights to the properties they’ve bought and paid for.

Are council properties included? I remember reading councils were tardy about returning their own properties.