Image: Shutterstock/lensmen Image: Shutterstock/lensmen HOMEOWNERS IN CELTIC Tiger era apartment developments have called for better access to credit to help fund the works on their homes.
One homeowner, Kevin*, who spoke to The Journal said loan applications to help cover the €15,000 bill were refused by five different banks, including the bank that holds his mortgage. “I understand that the management company has a responsibility to ensure it’s all safe and we have a fire safety cert issued to get insurance, but my gripe is around the lack of understanding from financial institutions and there doesn’t seem to be any great urgency from government to address this.”
An insurance claim is pending but even the maximum insurance payout will likely only cover around half of the €20 million bill, he said. He expects to have to raise €20,000 to cover those repairs. “This was my longterm investment and it’s costing me an arm and a leg,” he said.” On top of the mortgage I’ll have invested another €130,000 in it between tax on the rent and the fire safety and water ingress repairs.”
“I’m not looking for this whole thing to be written off – though that would be nice – but it would be helpful to be able to spread it out in some way over a longer period of time.”The Construction Defect Alliance, the campaign group for impacted homeowners, has around 30,000 affected properties on its database but estimates that as many as 120,000 properties may have one or more of these types of structural deficits.
Another option, he said, would be to provide soft loans - a loan with no interest or a below-market rate of interest- either directly to homeowners or to owner’s management companies, which would then levy the property owners. He said this would only be acceptable to owners if they could recover 100% of the costs through the tax system.