Call to revive ‘living over the shop’ in Galway city centre

From this week’s Galway City Tribune – Rents for houses in Galway have remained fairly static since the Coronavirus pandemic hit, partly due to demand from Dublin-based employees opting to move back West to work from home.

And while the global health crisis has resulted in some closures of city centre businesses, including big UK high street stores, it represents an opportunity to bring residents back to living over shops.

That’s according to Enda McGuane, Managing Director of Winters Property Management, who anticipates there will be “some turbulence” in the rental market in the coming months.

However, he said the rent drops in Dublin have not materialised here so far.

“Galway is probably lucky. The big change in Dublin was really expensive high-end properties were being rented to people who work for Google and so on. They all went back to their own country [when Covid hit]. Those properties came on the market, and they dropped their price which created turbulence. In Galway we didn’t have so much of that.

“It’s been fairly static to be honest. We still have big demand for properties in the city, prices have come back a little bit but nothing substantial because the demand is there. We are anticipating a little bit more turbulence over the next six months but ultimately, we have a shortage of affordable residential properties in the city, and that hasn’t changed,” said Mr McGuane.

He said that remote working was feeding demand as locals return home from Dublin.

“We’ve seen a lot of people, because they can now work remotely, they are now relocating to Galway and working in Dublin. I thought it was anecdotal but we’re seeing evidence of it now more and more in the last month or two. They can now keep their job in Dublin and are living Claddagh or Salthill even further out in the hinterland.”

(Main photo shows the late Una Taaffe, a prime example of living over the shop, looking at a busker outside her door. PHOTO: JOE O’SHAUGHNESSY).
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