Renovation scheme proving popular across county
Cork homeowners have spent over €269 million in total through the Home Renovation Incentive (HRI) since its launch in 2013.
This incentive has facilitated homeowners throughout Cork in carrying out 17,724 home improvement projects over the past four years.
These projects throughout Cork have had an average spend of €15,185 per project, providing a huge boost to the local economy and employment in the construction sector according to the Construction Industry Federation (CIF).
Introduced in 2013, the Home Renovation Incentive (HRI) provided homeowners with an income tax credit at 13.5 per cent of qualifying expenditure on home improvement works carried out on a main home or rental property by qualifying contractors.
The success of the scheme in Cork and nationally has been evident with the scale of the work undertaken on home improvements and energy upgrades. While the scheme concluded at the end of 2018, it was successful in encouraging significant private sector investment in the upgrading of private and rental property throughout Ireland.
Nationally the HRI incentive has facilitated homeowners in carrying out over 147,000 home improvement projects over the last five years with an average spend of €16,766 per project. The average spend per project in Cork was €15,185, which was below the national average.
Broken down, the largest amount of work was carried out completing home extensions at 34 per cent, followed by general repair and renovations at 25 per cent and then window replacement at 11 per cent and kitchen replacement at 10 per cent.
The scheme was introduced initially in late 2013, but the extension of it to rental properties in late 2014 help increase the number of homeowners who used the scheme.
Shane Dempsey, CIF Communications Director said: “A scheme such as the Home Renovation Incentive (HRI) has been a significant contributor to construction activity with registered contractors in Cork and elsewhere throughout the country. A total of 17,724 projects in Cork was a very significant level of private investment over the five years of the scheme from homeowners in Cork. CIF has worked with stakeholders including the SEAI to ensure contractors were in place to support the work required by homeowners.”
“At a time of modest growth in the construction industry, the scheme encouraged investment by homeowners in Cork, which was good news for construction companies and contractors in the county.”
Mark Courtney, Managing Director, House2Home Retrofit Ltd said: “From a homeowner’s perspective, deep retrofit is now affordable and logical if someone is planning a refurbishment project. Most of our clients have extension and alteration works which they would like carried out along with the deep retrofit works.
“The ability to combine the two projects gives our clients the comfort and reassurance of one contractor, one start date and one finish date. A typical project brings a home from a poor BER rating (C3 or worse) to an A3 or better. Some of our clients have improved their homes from G rated homes to A3 or better. On completion, their homes perform as well as brand new builds which is remarkable!”