The great experiment by our planners to copy the European tradition of having middle income families live in apartments has largely failed, writes JACK FAGAN

THE PRESENT slump in the property market is bound to prompt a rethink on the type of new homes to be built in future in Dublin’s outer suburbs as well as in adjoining towns and villages.

With a huge oversupply of apartments currently lying empty in the greater Dublin area – as well as elsewhere in the commuter belt – the onus will be on local authorities and the construction industry to look again at the overall planning strategy and examine how they could have got it so terribly wrong.

Even with price reductions of 40 and 50 per cent and all electrical appliances included, it is likely to take years to shift thousands of newly completed apartments simply because buyers prefer houses to apartments. The exception is Dublin city centre where young people are still snapping up some of the available apartments because of their convenience and easy access to a vibrant lifestyle.

Even those directly involved in the construction industry will have been surprised by a recent study which showed that, of 15,000 new homes for sale in the greater Dublin area (taking in parts of Meath, Kildare, Louth and Wicklow), no fewer than 12,500 of them are apartments.

The mismatch in the supply chain could hardly have been worse and raises questions about the merits and practicality of always favouring high density developments in the suburbs as a means of halting urban sprawl. That policy obviously works well in suburban sites with good public transport links but not necessarily in other outlying areas with poor access.

It also does not particularly suit many of the commuter towns and villages where the real demand is for the traditional starter home – three-bedroom semis with front and rear gardens. Nothing more, nothing less.

The great experiment by our planners to copy the European tradition of having middle income families live in two and three-bedroom apartments has largely failed. The Irish are not buying into a change of lifestyle and are happy to leave apartment living to young single people or retired couples.

The building boom in the apartment sector kept most people happy when the property industry was in full flight.

Planning authorities got extra levies and other financial contributions on every new unit built. Equally, the builders were able to bank bigger profits from sites once they were allowed to shove up high density apartment schemes. The investors, often attracted by tax breaks, bought into the boom and were only too happy to rent their properties to Eastern European workers.

But, when the property bubble burst, the jobs quickly dried up and the workers duly headed back home.

Thousands of these apartments have now been bolted up for the best part of a year with little or no prospect of either letting or selling them. Investors who have had the additional misfortune of losing their jobs often do not know which way to turn. Many of them who bought apartments in the last five years are in negative equity. New buyers are showing little interest in the apartments, preferring to wait for three-bed semis in the right location and at the right price.

New homes agents say it will take years to clear the huge stocks of apartments in most outlying areas. And with prices on the floor, builders will be slow to embark on new schemes, even those with planning permission for duplex units which were so popular in the early 1990s because they were perceived as being not quite a house but also not an apartment either.

With the new homes market in the doldrums it is timely to look again at the type of homes that will be in demand when the present mess is eventually cleared up.

The banks must surely be more careful next time, ensuring that the building programme is market-driven rather than at the whim of planners, developers or Green politicians.

This lot cannot be trusted.