The Beeb tells us that 1 in 5 homes are empty, that is a higher number than personally I would have stood over, I only suspect 17-18% max myself.
They went to the unfashionable south Midlands ( Carlow and Laois) for this report unlike the media herd that normally heads for the North Midlands.
I just saw that report on the BBC TV News, one of the newscasters in the studio made the point about the irony of there being a shortage of decent housing in many parts of Britain.
Hopefully our ‘government of national sabotage’ won’t look to Profidious Albion to help fill our empty housing units. Another wave of plantation? No thanks.
This is probably our biggest “It’s the empties stoopid” moment so far.
“It’s the empties stoopid” goes Global and we don’t officially know how many of the shaggin things we have out there and have Ciarán Cuffe mumbling as much to the BBC.
Great, just great 
Theres no shortage of housing in Britain.
Theres manipulation of land and empty properties alright, but no shortage.
There was a longer piece on radio 4 this morning as well. David M was being interviewed as well as a few disgruntled home owners.
The idea of knocking them down to maintain the price of the remaining ones was being hinted at but would still seem crazy over here.
Housing is not in short supply in the UK, housing/ sites with planning in specific school catchment areas is mind you. In the area of cardiff I live in there is a positive feeding frenzy, wiht houses selling like the first days of 2007 despite there being litterally 1000s of empty apartments a stone throw away in cardiff bay. ( and other than a lack of schools, cardiff bay is quite nice…) They are just about to break new ground on another 300 houses less than a mile from the bay…
As PROFESSORI rightly pointed out some months ago before he/she/it stormed off in a huff, the UK economy now IS property, property building and selling is central too everything there, in fact it’s pretty much all that’s left apart from superstore retailing, the NHS and universities. So with the entire economy a ponzi scheme radiating out of from London, it’s completely logical that the scheme’s last throes should be spotted in places like Cardiff, I mean how many cities further west of it are there?
For property insiders in the UK, based on earlier crashes (although the coming crash will be much worse than any before), the code phrase to watch out for is “Methyr Tydfil” (a mining town in the valleys): so as soon as you hear or read in the paper that house prices are soaring in Methyr Tydfil, that’s insider code for pack your bags and head for the hills, the crash you knew would come is finally happening!
I think one Ghost Estate shown there is Oakley Wood in Tullow County Carlow…which features on the Ghost Estates website where the BBC probably did their research 
2Pack, I think its necessary to make a difference between ‘empties’ and vacant premises where the owner is actively looking to rent it out or sell.
I know a lot of people with 2nd (holiday) homes who are neither looking to rent nor sell them, yet these are still counted among the ‘empties’.
These properties are irrelevant to the statistics as they have no bearing on supply or demand.
Its important to only count the properties that are genuinely empty against the owners best efforts.
I always count the lot Mr A, my reason is that the census is always carried out in April and Irish Holiday homes are normally empty in April nd will show as empty in future censii.
However the number of on the market properties is much lower than 1 in 5 because many holiday homes are not for sale and will not be for sale. Only about 250,000 properties are ‘on the market’ in any way by my reckoning. One in 8.
As far as I’m aware the only housing shortage in Britain is a council housing shortage due to the right to buy schemes. Of course that shortage depends on your perspective and what/who you think council housing should be for.
It’s not really ironic at all, there is a shortage of decent housing here as well. most of the surplus empties, and stock on the market currently is not decent.
It took some work but let’s not forget in the EU’s country with lowest population density we managed to end up with the least space per capita in terms of dwellings.
The biggest property bubble, the shitest stock.
You have to stand back and admire, we may not have been different but we were almost exceptional! 
Oh, that’s us, isn’t it, not some other backward country 
Don’t worry, though, the Dept. of environment have baked all this in with their density guidelines. Who did this benefit, do you think? Purchasers or developers?
Ummmm, first time buyers as they all got their own space to live. There ya are see Im not biased thats as good a gombeen answer as you’ll ever get. 
The film crew was lucky with the weather for that BBC report. Grey skies with darker grey clouds looming closer to the ground.
Bit like the antithesis of the cut & paste blue sky on estate agent pictures.
I like how the Minister for Planning blamed bad planning for the debacle without going red in the face.
