30,000 home approvals in 3 months

Planning: Planning permission for almost 30,000 new homes was granted in the second quarter of this year - the highest level ever, the Central Statistics Office (CSO) said yesterday.

Figures in the CSO's quarterly bulletin reveal a booming demand for planning permission running at 20,000 new homes per quarter.

At this level the figures show demand for planning permission is just matching housing output, with the number of new homes expected to peak at about 77,000 this year, according to the Construction Industry Federation.

If permission is being granted for more new homes, those homes are getting bigger on average. Planning permissions for new homes in the second quarter rose by 11 per cent over the second quarter of 2004, but total floor area covered by those permissions rose by 17 per cent.

Those additional bigger houses are less likely to be built as one-off houses in the countryside. One-off houses accounted for just 19 per cent of all new dwelling units which were approved in the three months to June. The comparable figures for 2004 was 25 per cent.

The number of apartments has fallen over a similar period last year. The CSO said 21,938 new houses were approved, an increase of 17 per cent. However permission was granted for just 6,880 new apartments - a decrease of 6 per cent on the similar period in 2004. This brought the overall increase in new homes approved to 11 per cent.

If one was to invest in a new house in the coming year it would be statistically most likely to be in Co Cork, excluding the city council area, where permissions were approved for 2,282 new houses in the three months to June. Your new house would be least likely to be in Waterford city where planning permission was approved for just two new houses.

South Dublin County Council approved just 17 new houses in the period; Dublin City 26; Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown 37. Fingal approved 1,037 new houses.

If you opted for one of the approved apartments it would most likely be in Dublin city where 839 were approved. In Offaly just 14 were approved.

Of the one-off houses approved, the largest were in Co Monaghan with an average floor area of 252sq m. In Dublin the average floor area was 117.4sq m.