Mayo County Council has launched a service to match vacant properties with prospective buyers.
Tom Gilligan, the council’s Director of Services told RTÉ Radio’s Morning Ireland that under the pilot scheme, which is funded by the Government's finance agency, the council will assess vacant properties, compile a list of suitable homes and write to their owners to encourage them to participate in the pilot.
Prospective buyers then will be able to view these properties on the Homebuyers Hero website which will allow them to declare an interest in the property, he explained.
“What we are focused on is people who were looking for homes that they want to make a principal private residence and we're encouraging homeownersmages to get involved in the pilot - we will be writing to them to get involved.
“Property will be valued and there will be reports and the potential home buyers themselves will have a value on those properties, so we're hoping in a sense that what will happen in this situation that there will be cooperation and collaboration between the homeowners and the people who want to buy the property, so that there will be a fair price and there will be a market value established for those properties.”
When asked if the council could use a Compulsory Purchase Order on a property, Mr Gilligan said yes, the council would have the ability to use CPO, but they wanted to keep that as a last resort.
He pointed out that under the Government's Housing For All plan there is a provision for local authorities to CPO up to 2,500 vacant properties for resale on the open market.
“What we really want to do here is match up the property owner with the potential home buyer and we want to get them talking to each other - to cajole the property owner to get them to come to the market because there are - according to the last census - 166,000 vacant properties in Ireland. In Mayo, we have 9,166 vacant properties.
“The scheme is up and running, we have already identified a number of properties here in Mayo. We're working in conjunction with the Homebuyers Hero, we have started the process - what we want obviously is that throughout 2023 to have a number of transactions done,” Mr Gilligan said.
