New housing data map could ‘revolutionise’ public understanding

The developers of a new housing data resource to go live on Monday believe it will “revolutionise” public understanding of property trends in the capital.

A variety of data sources will be combined under the new “mapping viewer”, to be unveiled as part of the Dublin Housing Observatory (DHO).

It will bring together information including sales prices, rents, locations and amounts of social housing and private rented housing, the numbers of people living in homes in a particular area, where the most “empty-nesters” live and where the most overcrowding is concentrated.

Dr Dáithí Downey, head of housing policy research and development at Dublin City Council – which is the lead body on the DHO – says the resource will be an enormously important tool for anyone interested in housing, in particular housing policy makers, elected representatives, the housing industry, approved housing bodies "and anyone looking to buy or rent a home".

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The project is a collaboration between Ordnance Survey Ireland (OSI), the All-Ireland Research Observatory (AIRO) at Maynooth University and Dublin City Council, drawing on data from the Residential Tenancies Board, the property price register (PPR), local authorities, the Revenue Commissioners and the Central Statistics Office.

‘Essential tool’

Colin Bray, chief executive of OSI said: "This has made a level of data on Dublin city housing available that has never been seen before. It is and will be an absolutely essential tool to support housing policy design and implementation in the capital."

Justin Gleeson, director of AIRO, said good policy needed to be driven by "reliable and authoritative facts".

“What we wanted to do here was mobilise all this data, that has been scattered across several different platforms, and concretise it in one place.”

Dr Downey said: “It will greatly improve the transparency of the housing market allowing house hunters to see registered RTB rents across Dublin, information on house sale prices and other concerns such as housing tenure patterns and the spatial distribution of the age, condition and type of Dublin’s housing stock.”

One of the issues the mapping tool starkly highlights is the dearth of house-building in the capital. While 115 new dwelling were completed in Dublin 24 in the first three months of this year, just eight were completed in Dublin 4 and none in either Dublin 1 or 2.

It also reveals where the most "empty-nest" households are. In one small area in Sandymount for example 23 per cent of dwellings are home to "empty-nesters", or vacant bedrooms, while this rises to 26 per cent in parts of Drumcondra.