YESTERDAY’S ANNOUNCEMENT that mobile homes are to be exempt from the €200 secondhome charge could help to boost the slow market in this area, as will this summer’s good weather. While one estate agent said that there was no movement in this market, Ciara Slattery of Warren Estates in Gorey, realistically points out that “mobile homes are all about price, like everything else”.
Anne Lait in Wicklow has a few mobile homes on its books, including two in Jack’s Hole, Brittas Bay, Co Wicklow, for €95,000 and €125,000 that have been on the market for months.
Yet mobile homes often change hands without going through estate agents and many agents report leaving this market in the past two or three years due to a lack of demand for the homes and a dearth of approaches from vendors. Instead mobile homes – or ‘vans’ in the vernacular – are sold by word of mouth or offered for sale (or rent) through site owners, who will sell them either freehold or as a company share. There are four sites for sale at Kilgorman Holiday Park near Ballymoney in north Wexford, each costing €120,000.
That buys a share in the park which is run as a co-operative, “owned by the residents for the residents”, says John Morris who bought the 108-site park last year for a reported €6.5 million. “My in-laws bought a place here in the early 1970s and I have visited with my wife, Sharon, since the mid-1980s, first staying in her parents’ van and then buying our own in 2000.
“This is a lifestyle choice. We have consultants, solicitors and barristers here: a lot of people who could go off and buy proper bricks and mortar but they would not have the social life you get here.
“When I get down here I could be on the other side of the world. You go to bed with the sound of the sea.”
He does think the state of the market and weather will persuade people to stay on home turf: “More people who would have gone abroad this year will be in their mobile homes this summer.”
The fact that they contribute to the local economy means that mobile home owners are doing their bit to help, rather than taking the money out of the country on holiday, says Morris, which is why people weren’t happy about being taxed ¤200 on top of that, “although the tax wouldn’t have a huge effect on people in this park”.
Warren Estates is also selling a complete mobile home park at Cahore Point, Wexford, on six acres, for €1 million.
The same estate agent is selling single mobile home sites although agent Denis Howell confirms that they rarely come up for sale through agencies such as theirs.
