New home completions could reach 35,000 this year, but there is potential to reach 50,000 according to Paul Mitchell, Director at Mitchell McDermott.
Speaking on RTÉ’s Morning Ireland Mr Mitchell, who is also a founder of the independent firm of Construction Consultants, described this week’s CSO figures on housing completions as “positive news” and on a “positive trajectory.”
“We did a study at the end of Q1 based on the commencements from last year, but toning them down because we had double the amount of commencements last year, and that shows that we might get between 32,000 and 35,000 this year,” said Mr Mitchell.
“As it’s tracking at the moment for the half year we could actually get to 35,000, however, we have some issues in terms of funding for AHPs, and so on, that may impact those figures,” he said.
“Obviously connections to infrastructure, water and ESB are affecting completions as well, so it’s all going to be down to Q4 this year,” he added.
Figures from the Department of Housing show 1,356 housing commencement notices were issued in June, bringing the total number of notices issued so far this year to 6,325.
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Last year there was a number of deadlines in relation to receiving local authority and Irish water levy waivers if commencement notices were submitted before a specific date.
“Basically there was double the amount, so everybody just emptied all of their schemes,” said Mr Mitchell.
“It’s positive in that there are that many shovel ready schemes but they’re not all going to start in our modeling.If they all started and completed as planned, we would get to 50,000 this year,” he stated.
“It’s positive that they’re there but we need this other financial lever to make sure that they happen in the following year and the year after that,” he said.
“It’s really about the completions at the moment, and then when we get into next year, we’ll be looking at commencements again, because the schemes that actually physically didn’t commence, will need to submit again,” he added.
