Sir, — Des Rooney's idea of making the 7 per cent vacant site levy self-assessed is an excellent one (Letters, December 18th).
An even more radical way to tackle this crisis might be a law enabling newly developed estates to be sold off in two phases.
During Phase One, houses/ apartments would only be available to first-time buyers who would occupy their property immediately. This should have a cooling effect on prices – as first-time buyers would only be competing with other first-time buyers (those of us lucky enough to already own our homes could continue to buy second-hand properties off each other to our hearts’ content).
If every unit isn’t snapped up during Phase One, then the remaining units could simply be sold off on the open market during Phase Two.
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Such a scheme would help spread the nation’s wealth more fairly. We need to think of houses and apartments as homes rather than mere financial assets. – Yours, etc,
RONAN SCANLAN
Leopardstown,
ublin 18.