>The rules, introduced by then minister for housing Eoghan Murphy in 2018, mean apartments owned by institutional investors and developed specifically for the rental market do not have to comply with minimum size standards required in homes for sale, while there are less stringent storage requirements and more apartments permitted per floor.
>Minister for Housing Darragh O’Brien is expected to tell the Fianna Fáil Ard Fheis on Saturday that he will issue an amendment to existing guidelines effectively removing BTR standards. Developments already in planning will be allowed to continue under the existing regime, but a spokeswoman for Mr O’Brien said he intended to remove the category this year.
>The development standards have been the subject of criticism by the Opposition since their introduction. Labour housing spokeswoman Rebecca Moynihan criticised the standards in the Seanad earlier this year, saying apartments developed under them were “just boxes”.
>Industry sources said that axing the development standards would add to the cost of building homes in urban areas.
>Under the rules, a requirement that the majority of all apartments in a development exceed minimum floor area standards by a minimum of 10 per cent does not apply, and the requirement for a maximum of 12 apartments per floor does also not apply.
>They stipulate a “default of minimal or significantly reduced car parking provision” and that “flexibility shall apply” in relation to storage and private amenity space associated with individual units.
I don’t see the point in having regulations against small rental flats when the majority of young people currently live either in their childhood bedroom or in a room in a crammed houseshare. All it does is prop up the investments of current property owners.
The only apartments we’re going to allow are the ones that are the most expensive to build!
Nothing wrong with small apartments but surely there needs to be some kind of min standard
But I’d say we’re safe enough getting rid of anything Eoghan Murphy had his hands on
Useless bastard
Wouldn’t this reduce supply?
Most of the “build to rent” apartments have a section of their units leased out to AHBs for social housing, so you’ll have families living in them for decades with no living space or storage.
These exemptions should never have been allowed in the first place, it suggests that these units would never be used for anything other than the short-term private rental market, which is historically untrue. Residential housing always outlives it’s original purpose, especially in Dublin. We’ve seen tenements turned to offices, Georgian manors split into apartments, we’ve seen 2bed council houses extended and sold as luxury 4bed developments.
These developments could’ve been sold as individual apartments or sold en masse to DCC for social housing in years to come, or any other number of uses, but are now less likely to because they’ve been allowed to be built with the bare minimum standards when it comes to space and storage requirements.
Possibly at the worst time in Irish housing history to allow developments like this to be built. We already have an aversion to apartment developments due to poor building standards, lack of storage and amenities, lack of space and soundproofing, not to mention our completely unresolvable anti-social behavior problem.
Having nearly every development of the last decade do absolutely nothing to rectify these issues will do nothing to change the opinion of apartment living in the mind of our society, precisely at a time when our society must accept apartment living as the solution to the housing crisis. It’s just so typically Irish.
Lets just ruin supply even more especially after the CIF warned of a building slowdown next year
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Some quotes for the non-subscribed:
>The rules, introduced by then minister for housing Eoghan Murphy in 2018, mean apartments owned by institutional investors and developed specifically for the rental market do not have to comply with minimum size standards required in homes for sale, while there are less stringent storage requirements and more apartments permitted per floor.
>Minister for Housing Darragh O’Brien is expected to tell the Fianna Fáil Ard Fheis on Saturday that he will issue an amendment to existing guidelines effectively removing BTR standards. Developments already in planning will be allowed to continue under the existing regime, but a spokeswoman for Mr O’Brien said he intended to remove the category this year.
>The development standards have been the subject of criticism by the Opposition since their introduction. Labour housing spokeswoman Rebecca Moynihan criticised the standards in the Seanad earlier this year, saying apartments developed under them were “just boxes”.
>Industry sources said that axing the development standards would add to the cost of building homes in urban areas.
>Under the rules, a requirement that the majority of all apartments in a development exceed minimum floor area standards by a minimum of 10 per cent does not apply, and the requirement for a maximum of 12 apartments per floor does also not apply.
>They stipulate a “default of minimal or significantly reduced car parking provision” and that “flexibility shall apply” in relation to storage and private amenity space associated with individual units.
I don’t see the point in having regulations against small rental flats when the majority of young people currently live either in their childhood bedroom or in a room in a crammed houseshare. All it does is prop up the investments of current property owners.
The only apartments we’re going to allow are the ones that are the most expensive to build!
Nothing wrong with small apartments but surely there needs to be some kind of min standard
But I’d say we’re safe enough getting rid of anything Eoghan Murphy had his hands on
Useless bastard
Wouldn’t this reduce supply?
Most of the “build to rent” apartments have a section of their units leased out to AHBs for social housing, so you’ll have families living in them for decades with no living space or storage.
These exemptions should never have been allowed in the first place, it suggests that these units would never be used for anything other than the short-term private rental market, which is historically untrue. Residential housing always outlives it’s original purpose, especially in Dublin. We’ve seen tenements turned to offices, Georgian manors split into apartments, we’ve seen 2bed council houses extended and sold as luxury 4bed developments.
These developments could’ve been sold as individual apartments or sold en masse to DCC for social housing in years to come, or any other number of uses, but are now less likely to because they’ve been allowed to be built with the bare minimum standards when it comes to space and storage requirements.
Possibly at the worst time in Irish housing history to allow developments like this to be built. We already have an aversion to apartment developments due to poor building standards, lack of storage and amenities, lack of space and soundproofing, not to mention our completely unresolvable anti-social behavior problem.
Having nearly every development of the last decade do absolutely nothing to rectify these issues will do nothing to change the opinion of apartment living in the mind of our society, precisely at a time when our society must accept apartment living as the solution to the housing crisis. It’s just so typically Irish.
Lets just ruin supply even more especially after the CIF warned of a building slowdown next year