Houses have gone on sale at a west Dublin housing estate this morning, five days after hopeful homebuyers started queuing for them.
Some 20 homes were up for grabs, with prices ranging from €290,000 to almost €500,000.
Dozens of people waited for more than 30 hours at Hansfield earlier this week before tickets were issued allowing them to hold their place in the queue.
The new homes are two, three and four beds.
One man, who is 15th on the list, told Newstalk he is optimistic he will find himself a home:
“We are looking for a three bed so we are relatively hopeful,” he said.
“I know from chatting to people when we were over their queuing that there are a lot of people looking for four beds.
“There are a lot of people looking for houses that are out of our budget so we think, even though we are 15th, for the type of house we are looking for, we are far closer to what we are.”
“So we are pretty hopeful.”
Houses at Hansfield in West Dublin go on sale this morning five days after people queued overnight for them. The prices have also been revealed #Dublin #housing pic.twitter.com/sMmOe0AiOO
— Paul Quinn (@pdquinn7) April 13, 2018
The scramble for the Dublin 15 houses led to fresh calls for the Government to start actively building homes in an effort to tackle the ongoing housing crisis.
Housing expert Lorcan Sirr has warned that that we are only building half the number of homes the Government says we are.
He said the current problem is that “trading in land is much more profitable and less risky than building houses” and called on the Government to its policy of waiting on the private sector to build houses.
"We can deliver housing ourselves like we used to do for decades - and did very well," he said.
28 year old Sean McCluskey says he’s chuffed after he and his partner queued overnight to buy their first home at #Hansfield in West #Dublin. pic.twitter.com/pA0BWI6XBC
— Paul Quinn (@pdquinn7) April 13, 2018
This morning, 28-year-old Sean McCluskey and his partner, were among the lucky ones at Hansfield:
“We got what we wanted,” he said.
“A three bed, terraced house for €310,000 which is just above our budget.
“It was crazy; madness, so I am happy.”
Yesterday the Department of Housing announced plans to build "thousands more affordable apartments" in an effort to tackle the crisis.
Reporting from Paul Quinn ...