It is when someone is challenged that you see their true nature. It is in time of difficulty that people are really tested and their inner qualities shine through. It is also in time of necessity that innovation rules supreme and invention leads the way. Considering the current challenges facing the property market then it would be safe to say that new ideas are greatly needed and a new market must emerge rather than a revamp of the original one which will, inevitably, run into the same old problems.

Evolution and change are ongoing processes and the property market needs to engage with the new times and attitudes prevailing in society in order to remain relevant.

An example of forward thinking and innovative action is the recent symposium that invited proposals from architects on possible outcomes for the huge swathes of empty homes and housing estate all over the country that will now, most likely, be NAMA assets.

Some of the proposals were practical, some community-based and others, like the one from FKL Architects, truly innovative and new. One of its ideas – selling homes in a 'two for one' scheme – at first seems rather crazy but when it's explained it begins to make sense. According to FKL architects: "An excessive supply of housing, often in 'ghost estates', where a small number of houses have been sold and the rest will not be finished or sold leaves many residents feeling trapped.

"By accepting the reality of new market values and exploiting the availability of very cheap property, it may be possible to avoid negative equity. Offering existing residents the unsold house next door or new buyers "two for the price of one" would allow them to sell on, rent, use as a business premises, to grow food or simply to make a larger house and garden, while at the same time addresses the issue of redundancy, vacancy and falling property values. By making houses more sustainable and attractive to niche markets the issue of location becomes less critical and the place, in turn, more desirable to live.”

Innovative indeed. The idea of getting a 'two-fer' on a home is strange but, considering the huge numbers of home lying vacant, it's not altogether a terrible idea. Considering Irish people's relationship with property; who wouldn’t be tempted by two houses for the price of one?

Another element of the FKL proposal deals with more grim matters. We are running out of space to put our dead people. One solution included in the plan is to take some of the unfinished housing estates and transform them into ‘cities of the dead’. Using structures already erected on sites as crematoriums and other such facilities and using the unbuilt sections of sites as burial ground. Another element of the proposal aims to transform green spaces, created in housing developments merely to comply with planning codes, into useful and valuable sites. The proposal suggests that these, currently valueless, areas be used to plant crops, create community gardens and give an income to the local community. The vegetables grown could be sold or, another suggestion, proposes the areas be used for cash crops such as Christmas Trees and biofuels.

These are just a handful of the suggestions and proposals made by a number of architects and groups and some are plausible, others take a bit of getting used to but, importantly, it shows that there are ideas out there, that there is activity in the sector and that there are people who are thinking about the future of the property markets.

To have a look at some more of the ideas proposed see www.shadowland.ie.

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