We had been renting for years and our landlord wanted to up the rent and although we always thought getting a mortgage and owning our own place was always out of reach, we had to try. Within a few months we made contact with a mortgage advisor who was so helpful and put us on the right track. We had part of the deposit put together within 6 months and family members had offered to help once we found a property. We decided that we would try and stay in the area we were in, as the kids were in school there.

I wanted to buy a house with history, a house with character and after many searches I was contacted to say a cottage was for sale, although it was outside where we were looking, it was still only less then 10 minutes from the school. I made an appointment for us to view.

We fell in love with it and the area. We got a really nice feeling about it, myself and my husband talked about it all that night. We put in an offer next day, and had, a bidding war for a week or so, but won it out. It was, worth it and we are so looking forward to starting on our journey of making this, house our home. We found some lovely brick work over the fires, just a really cute cottage with character and a lovely quiet road, lovely neighbours who used to own the house and were born there and can tell me many stories. They’re so happy to see another family live there and make their own memories in the house now.

Here in Cork County Council we use vacanthomes.ie to follow up in relation to empty homes in our area.

We find it a great way for the public to let us know what units are vacant and then we can follow up to try and bring them back into use. So far we’ve identified in excess of 100 properties that have potential for providing homes to people with a housing need.