I’m not surprised. Of all the places I’ve lived in Ireland, Cork had by far the worst accommodation. I don’t think I ever lived in a place that didn’t have damp, mould, or mildew.
All RTÉ TV license inspectors should be retrained to inspect rental properties. The standard and price just don’t match up m
Where thermal isolation is an hesitant afterthought.
Where you can always fit an extra bed there, surely.
Where rental BERs peak at D.
Where you can expect at least one appliance is currently broken, but *will get fixed soon fershure*.
Where the rental ads get fulfilled within 20 minutes of publication regardless.
This is bad and I’m in no way excusing poor houseing.
I will say this though. I take care of a place my mother rents out. It’s a very exacting standard. For example, if there’s a gas cooker there must be an up to date gas inspection report, ditto oil fired heating and electric. That’s fine and correct, however, the services might be fine, but the reports could easily not be up to date ; some only last a year and others three years. Then there needs to be more fire alarms and carbon monoxide alarms than you, or your electrician, may have thought could be possiblity needed. Again this is fine, but the house was fitted with the correct 10 year spec carbon monoxide and smoke alarms in working order and still failed.
Ventilation is a big issue. In our case the vent in the living room was not considered wide enough to have a solid fuel stove. It’s a standard size vent. We had another vent in the room adjoining this room, and there was no door between the two rooms, however it’s considered another zone and couldn’t be counted. I’m pretty sure this isn’t how air flow works…the inspector even conceded this point to me, but couldn’t use their discretion. This is the kind of thing that makes passing first time very difficult. So while the headline looks terrible it may not give a fully accurate picture.
I want to stress that apart from the ventilation bit it was all fair enough, and I had no issue bringing the house up to spec. I just wanted to explain the level of detail these inspections go into. Not all failing properties are poorly maintained.
I’ve been looking for a place to rent in one of Cork, Galway, or Waterford for about a year now, and the biggest killer isn’t necessarily the price, its what you get for the price. A 1 bed in Cork or Galway is usually no less than 1300-1400, if its anything less, then the majority of the time it isn’t a house or an apartment, its just someone’s converted conservatory with 300 quid worth of ikea furniture in it. The heartbreaking thing is that a lot of what is going for 1300-1400 are absolute kips too.
Do they actually fine the landlords for this?
Just a reminder that local authorities more often than not have only one person allocated to inspections of private properties and even then they might only carry out inspections one or two days a month.
The government knows fucking well how bad it is, but if you don’t look then you can pretend you don’t know.
And what is actually done about this? NOTHING.
Well then stop inspecting them ya doofus
It is really typical of the landlord class in this country, not happy with getting the highest ever rents in the history of the state they want people to live in hovels so they can squeeze every last penny out of their tenants.
Council needs to up its game too, large fines should be accompanying these improvement letters’, landlords will never change until they are hit in the pockets
If it’s that bad in Cork, what must it be like in the rest of the country.
Rented near the Lough. Place had been refurbished but the refurb had been done wrong. The damp was fucking ferocious.
More than 96%? So 97%? 98,99?
> Of the 756 properties inspected by the council in 2020, 98% failed to meet minimum standards, and none were deemed unsuitable for renting.
Not really a minimum standard then if you are still allowed to rent the property that doesn’t meet it.
99% of owner-occupied homes would fail county council standards.
Lived in a place in Dublin where the bathroom had carpet, and everytime you had a shower, water would drip through the floor into the sitting room, and that still wasn’t the worst place I’ve ever lived.
*shocked pikachu face* No way!
Shocking I tells ya.
“Inspected”? You can tell that just with a cursory glance through [daft.ie](https://Daft.ie).
Is this selection bias or is the accomodation really that bad in Cork?
How do they select which properties to inspect? Is it if there is a complaint or is it random?
I do have a question.
This situation is a HUGHE business oportunity, i’ll actually will be moving to Cork soon.
Is it legal if i offer services to fix damping, painting and stuff like that cash in hand ? I never did that but if 98% of the houses are shit there is a massive oportunity to bank some serious cash.
All you need to know its on youtube anyways and i’m sure i could pick up a team of immigrants like myself pretty fast. I wouldn’t mind to cover my arms in someone elses sh1t for some hundred euros.
Do they inspect properties in random, or are they only called to inspect properties after they get complaints?
There should be fines for landlords who let substandard housing and they should be fuckiny serious fines. My friend had a gaff with like 7 rooms two of which were in a converted shed he attached to the house. An old boiler room. Over 3k a month and rats and holes in the roof. Old bastard laughed his parents out of the house saying he could have someone else in there tomorrow.
Surely the councils could fine/dock the payments to landlords who are not meeting standards. It’s not as though it would even be that difficult to enforce. It’s that the housing services are intended to serve landlords first, tenants when never like.
I’m Portuguese, 10 years in Ireland. Been trying to write about this in the last few posts but my comments get so long it all bugs out!! So I’ll just say, after 10 years and facing actual homelessness I got the ferry booked to go back to Portugal. If I can write in parts I’ll probably share what ten years of dealing with landlords has been as well for me… literally just to take it off my chest… Just can’t believe the insane amount of greed and lack of humanity going around at all levels from landlords
Lastly, this is for County Cork… which is even worse given how big the County is…
The 4% is probably already the upper high-end rentals that most can’t afford. lmao
“Most rental properties are shit in Cork.”
It’s funny really, because I think the minimum standards for rented accommodation are not applicable to local authorities. They enforce them, but generally don’t have to adhere to them. I might be wrong though.
I live in Cornmarket apartments:
Took landlord 2-3 years to change the curtains (they had mould on them and we were told that those will be changed shortly after we move in).
Took a year to change the broken shower unit
Took a year or longer to change sofa that was all falling apart
Waiting for several months now to get another shower unit changed as no hot water there(we have 2 bathrooms)
Mould is everywhere – cleaning it all the time, keeping windows open etc
We also had a rat recently.
And it’s considered to be one of the nicer places to live.
As part of the way to tackle this the council has now decided it needs more inspectors , however they won’t hire them directly , they have gone with a 3rd party to carry out the inspections for them . The 3rd party is trying to hire people with degrees , qualifications in surveying and industry experience for 25-35k per year. This is barely graduate level wage in the current construction and engineering industry.
To give you an idea of how many need to be done it’s in the range of 20 Thousand homes to be inspected , many twice.
Would anybody have any faith in these inspections being carried out correctly or at all for those sorts of wages , given the level of busyness in the construction industry right now .
A relative of mine works for DCC and does these inspections. Dublin isn’t much better.
32 comments
Not surprising in the slightest
I’m not surprised. Of all the places I’ve lived in Ireland, Cork had by far the worst accommodation. I don’t think I ever lived in a place that didn’t have damp, mould, or mildew.
All RTÉ TV license inspectors should be retrained to inspect rental properties. The standard and price just don’t match up m
Where thermal isolation is an hesitant afterthought.
Where you can always fit an extra bed there, surely.
Where rental BERs peak at D.
Where you can expect at least one appliance is currently broken, but *will get fixed soon fershure*.
Where the rental ads get fulfilled within 20 minutes of publication regardless.
This is bad and I’m in no way excusing poor houseing.
I will say this though. I take care of a place my mother rents out. It’s a very exacting standard. For example, if there’s a gas cooker there must be an up to date gas inspection report, ditto oil fired heating and electric. That’s fine and correct, however, the services might be fine, but the reports could easily not be up to date ; some only last a year and others three years. Then there needs to be more fire alarms and carbon monoxide alarms than you, or your electrician, may have thought could be possiblity needed. Again this is fine, but the house was fitted with the correct 10 year spec carbon monoxide and smoke alarms in working order and still failed.
Ventilation is a big issue. In our case the vent in the living room was not considered wide enough to have a solid fuel stove. It’s a standard size vent. We had another vent in the room adjoining this room, and there was no door between the two rooms, however it’s considered another zone and couldn’t be counted. I’m pretty sure this isn’t how air flow works…the inspector even conceded this point to me, but couldn’t use their discretion. This is the kind of thing that makes passing first time very difficult. So while the headline looks terrible it may not give a fully accurate picture.
I want to stress that apart from the ventilation bit it was all fair enough, and I had no issue bringing the house up to spec. I just wanted to explain the level of detail these inspections go into. Not all failing properties are poorly maintained.
I’ve been looking for a place to rent in one of Cork, Galway, or Waterford for about a year now, and the biggest killer isn’t necessarily the price, its what you get for the price. A 1 bed in Cork or Galway is usually no less than 1300-1400, if its anything less, then the majority of the time it isn’t a house or an apartment, its just someone’s converted conservatory with 300 quid worth of ikea furniture in it. The heartbreaking thing is that a lot of what is going for 1300-1400 are absolute kips too.
Do they actually fine the landlords for this?
Just a reminder that local authorities more often than not have only one person allocated to inspections of private properties and even then they might only carry out inspections one or two days a month.
The government knows fucking well how bad it is, but if you don’t look then you can pretend you don’t know.
And what is actually done about this? NOTHING.
Well then stop inspecting them ya doofus
It is really typical of the landlord class in this country, not happy with getting the highest ever rents in the history of the state they want people to live in hovels so they can squeeze every last penny out of their tenants.
Council needs to up its game too, large fines should be accompanying these improvement letters’, landlords will never change until they are hit in the pockets
If it’s that bad in Cork, what must it be like in the rest of the country.
Rented near the Lough. Place had been refurbished but the refurb had been done wrong. The damp was fucking ferocious.
More than 96%? So 97%? 98,99?
> Of the 756 properties inspected by the council in 2020, 98% failed to meet minimum standards, and none were deemed unsuitable for renting.
Not really a minimum standard then if you are still allowed to rent the property that doesn’t meet it.
99% of owner-occupied homes would fail county council standards.
Lived in a place in Dublin where the bathroom had carpet, and everytime you had a shower, water would drip through the floor into the sitting room, and that still wasn’t the worst place I’ve ever lived.
*shocked pikachu face* No way!
Shocking I tells ya.
“Inspected”? You can tell that just with a cursory glance through [daft.ie](https://Daft.ie).
Is this selection bias or is the accomodation really that bad in Cork?
How do they select which properties to inspect? Is it if there is a complaint or is it random?
I do have a question.
This situation is a HUGHE business oportunity, i’ll actually will be moving to Cork soon.
Is it legal if i offer services to fix damping, painting and stuff like that cash in hand ? I never did that but if 98% of the houses are shit there is a massive oportunity to bank some serious cash.
All you need to know its on youtube anyways and i’m sure i could pick up a team of immigrants like myself pretty fast. I wouldn’t mind to cover my arms in someone elses sh1t for some hundred euros.
Do they inspect properties in random, or are they only called to inspect properties after they get complaints?
There should be fines for landlords who let substandard housing and they should be fuckiny serious fines. My friend had a gaff with like 7 rooms two of which were in a converted shed he attached to the house. An old boiler room. Over 3k a month and rats and holes in the roof. Old bastard laughed his parents out of the house saying he could have someone else in there tomorrow.
Surely the councils could fine/dock the payments to landlords who are not meeting standards. It’s not as though it would even be that difficult to enforce. It’s that the housing services are intended to serve landlords first, tenants when never like.
I’m Portuguese, 10 years in Ireland. Been trying to write about this in the last few posts but my comments get so long it all bugs out!! So I’ll just say, after 10 years and facing actual homelessness I got the ferry booked to go back to Portugal. If I can write in parts I’ll probably share what ten years of dealing with landlords has been as well for me… literally just to take it off my chest… Just can’t believe the insane amount of greed and lack of humanity going around at all levels from landlords
Lastly, this is for County Cork… which is even worse given how big the County is…
The 4% is probably already the upper high-end rentals that most can’t afford. lmao
“Most rental properties are shit in Cork.”
It’s funny really, because I think the minimum standards for rented accommodation are not applicable to local authorities. They enforce them, but generally don’t have to adhere to them. I might be wrong though.
I live in Cornmarket apartments:
Took landlord 2-3 years to change the curtains (they had mould on them and we were told that those will be changed shortly after we move in).
Took a year to change the broken shower unit
Took a year or longer to change sofa that was all falling apart
Waiting for several months now to get another shower unit changed as no hot water there(we have 2 bathrooms)
Mould is everywhere – cleaning it all the time, keeping windows open etc
We also had a rat recently.
And it’s considered to be one of the nicer places to live.
As part of the way to tackle this the council has now decided it needs more inspectors , however they won’t hire them directly , they have gone with a 3rd party to carry out the inspections for them . The 3rd party is trying to hire people with degrees , qualifications in surveying and industry experience for 25-35k per year. This is barely graduate level wage in the current construction and engineering industry.
To give you an idea of how many need to be done it’s in the range of 20 Thousand homes to be inspected , many twice.
Would anybody have any faith in these inspections being carried out correctly or at all for those sorts of wages , given the level of busyness in the construction industry right now .
A relative of mine works for DCC and does these inspections. Dublin isn’t much better.