Room for improvement

■ Before the vulture funds swoop down on distressed homes, I would like to share an account from a management company’s point of view of one of our apartments. The apartment complex is small – 15 apartments only – and is managed on a voluntary basis by the owners themselves. One of the apartments was abandoned in 2010. The couple separated and both returned to the jurisdiction they had come from.

One of them emailed the management company, said they had returned the key to Permanent TSB, the mortgage provider, and would have no further contact with management or anyone else concerning the property. No one has set foot inside the apartment for more than seven years.

Over the years the management company made numerous efforts, through writing and phone calls, to engage with PTSB to advise the property is empty and local people want a chance to be able to purchase it. We discovered some time last year there was one court appearance by agents for PTSB seeking repossession of the property. At this court session, PTSB declared in an affidavit that the couple were resident at the property, which of course they are not. The case for repossession was deferred. There seems to have been no movement since.

Why is this irrational situation allowed to continue? Why has a triage not been done to sort the properties people are actually living in from those properties that are abandoned?

Is it too much to demand that before families are thrown to the vultures, they separate the live meat from the carrion?

Noreen O’Donohue Sandymount, Dublin 4