There’s no sight sadder than a closed down shop.
According to a report by GeoView, county Sligo has the highest rate of empty commercial spaces in Ireland.
The new study by GeoDirectory and DKM Economic Consultants is based on analysis of 102 locations throughout Ireland.
It found that almost 20% of commercial property in the west of the country was vacant during the second quarter of this year.
Other counties in the top five alongside Sligo were Leitrim (16.2%), Limerick (15.9%), Galway (15.6%) and Mayo (15.5%).
In terms of counties with the lowest level of vacancy, Kerry came out on the bottom with just over 10.6% of commercial property in the county unused.
However, the figure from the Kingdom was a slight increase from their position at this point last year (9.4%).
Kerry wasn’t the only county to see the level of vacancy rise and they were among 22 of the 26 counties that saw an increase also.
In total, there are 212,717 commercial properties in Ireland and of those, 28,784 were vacant in the second quarter of 2017 which is a national vacancy rate of 13.5%.
The study also focused specifically on towns in Ireland and found that Ballybofey in Co. Donegal had the highest commercial vacancy rate at 28.8% followed closely by Edenderry in Co. Offaly who had a rate of 27%.
There were two Mayo and Longford towns on the top 15 list also.
Ballina (23%) and Castlebar (22.6%) lingered around the middle of the towns table while Longford’s Edgeworthstown (24%) and Longford town itself (21.3%) were in 4th and 10th place respectively.
The full report is available to download here.
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