If your family inherited a house in the last few years — somewhere out west, or down in Wexford, or up in Donegal — you've probably been quietly carrying it for longer than anyone planned. Probate took 11 months. The siblings can't agree on whether to sell. Selling means a cleaning of contents nobody is ready to do. Renting it long-term means a year of admin, RTB registration, and the family arguing about whether to be landlords at all. So the house sits. The Local Property Tax bill arrives every November. The vacant-home tax (3× LPT) arrives if you've left it empty for over 12 months. The basic standing-charge utilities tick. The buildings insurer wants to know it's "occupied" or premium goes up.
Storage hosting is the option nobody mentions. Not for a person — for boxes. The house gets a small ongoing income (€100-€200/mo per usable room, €80-€150/mo if the garage works), the buildings insurer gets to see regular activity, the family stops feeling like the property is just bleeding tax. Most importantly: it's reversible. Whenever the siblings finally agree to sell, you give the renter four weeks' notice and the storage stops. There's no tenancy to dissolve.
Below: the actual Irish numbers, the LPT and vacant-home tax interaction, why storage hosting is structurally fine on an inherited property where a long-let isn't, and the practical bit (insurance, the siblings, what happens when probate finally clears).
The bill nobody quite warned the family about
Take a typical inherited 3-bed family home in a regional Irish town valued at €270,000 in the 2025 LPT revaluation. Annual costs the executors inherit:
LPT (Local Property Tax): ~€405/yr at the standard rate.
Vacant Home Tax: if the house is empty for more than 30 days in the year, the VHT applies at 7× the LPT rate — about €2,835/yr on this property. (Note: the rate stepped up from 5× to 7× in Budget 2025; figures move with each Budget.) For a property already empty post-bereavement, this is the painful one.
Buildings insurance: ~€480-€720/yr with the "unoccupied" clause typically lifting the premium 30-60% over a normal owner-occupied policy.
Standing-charge utilities if you keep the electricity / heating on for damp prevention: ~€480/yr.
Travel + minor maintenance (the family member who drives down to check the house once a quarter, the gardener, the pump that someone has to bleed): ~€600/yr in many cases.
Annual carry: ~€4,800/yr. On a property generating zero income, while the siblings argue about whether to sell. Multiply by 3-5 years (typical probate-to-resolution window for a contested estate) and the family has paid ~€20,000 to keep an empty house compliant.
Why storage hosting fits an inherited house specifically
(1) Reversibility. A long-term tenancy creates a Part 4 right of occupation that can stretch six years and require RTB notice periods to terminate. A storage booking is a fixed-term licence. Whenever the siblings agree to sell, you decline the next renewal and the property is empty in 4 weeks.
(2) No tenancy / no RTB registration. The house isn't accommodation; it's storage. The Residential Tenancies Act doesn't apply. No Part 4, no notice-period ladder, no notice of termination ground requirement.
(3) The "house looks lived in" benefit. Buildings insurers care about properties being checked regularly. A storage renter who visits every 3-6 weeks to check on items, plus the host (typically a family member) doing a check on the same cadence, makes the property look unambiguously occupied. Most insurers will accept this and lift the unoccupied loading.
(4) The Vacant Home Tax exemption pathway. The property being "actively used" for storage by a paying renter for 30+ days a year typically qualifies for the active-use exemption to VHT. On the example property above, that's a €2,835/yr tax saved — the storage income on top is gravy.
(5) The siblings can agree on it. Selling the house is a 5-sibling unanimous-consent decision that can take years. Listing a single room on Packhood for storage is usually a "yes, that's fine, it'll cover the LPT" kind of decision. Lower stakes, lower friction, easier to get to.
The numbers — what an inherited regional Irish home earns
Pricing on rural Irish storage is lower than Dublin but the supply is also dramatically lower. Most rural towns have zero commercial self-storage within a 30-minute drive, so peer-to-peer is the only option for renters who want it.
Single bedroom (storage room): €60-€110/mo in regional Irish towns; €80-€140/mo in commuter towns within an hour of Dublin / Cork / Galway.
Garage (single-car): €60-€110/mo in rural Ireland; €80-€140/mo near regional cities.
Loft / attic: €30-€70/mo. Less per square metre but it's a low-effort listing if hatch access is decent.
Combined for a typical 3-bed regional family home: €150-€280/mo. €1,800-€3,360/yr.
Net of tax (assume a 40% marginal-rate sibling collecting the income, since most working-age executors are at the higher band): ~€1,080-€2,016/yr. Plus the €2,835/yr Vacant Home Tax saved if the storage tenancy qualifies the property for active-use exemption. Plus the €200-€400/yr the insurer doesn't load onto the unoccupied policy.
Total swing per year: ~€4,000-€5,300 for an inherited property that was previously a pure cost line. Across a 3-year probate-to-sale window, that's €12,000-€15,000 of recovered position.
The siblings conversation, scripted
One sibling has to bring this up at the next family meeting / WhatsApp thread. The framing matters. The wrong framing: "I want to make money off the house." That triggers the 'I'm being cut out' instinct in the other siblings.
The right framing: "The LPT is €400. Insurance is up another €200. Vacant Home Tax is going to hit us next November at €2,800. I think we should list one room as storage on Packhood — it'll cover the LPT and probably qualify us for VHT exemption. Income gets split equally between us. Whenever we sell, we just don't renew the booking."
That second framing typically gets a yes from 4 of 5 siblings within a single thread. The reason it works: it's a defensive move, not an offensive one. You're not asking them to agree to a profit-making scheme; you're asking them to share the cost of carrying a property they all jointly own.
Practical mechanics: one sibling is the named host on Packhood. Income lands in their bank. They split via standing order at the end of each month. Everyone signs a one-page WhatsApp agreement so the income split is on the record. That's the entire admin overhead.
The inheritance + tax angle, in 90 seconds
While probate is running: the executor manages the property. Listing for storage is a normal "preserving the value of the estate" action — it's literally what executors are supposed to do. Talk to the solicitor handling the probate; they'll usually rubber-stamp it.
After probate clears, before sale: the property is jointly owned by the named beneficiaries. Storage income belongs to them, in their respective ownership shares. Each beneficiary declares their share on Form 11 (or Form 12 if non-PAYE income is under €5,000/yr).
Capital Gains Tax on eventual sale: storage income doesn't change the CGT base. The CGT is calculated on the disposal as usual. Talk to your tax adviser before assuming this is straightforward — Capital Acquisitions Tax thresholds, group relief, and inherited-property reliefs all interact in ways that need a real adviser.
How to start, in 20 minutes
Whichever sibling has the easiest access to the house drives down on a Saturday. Five photos with their phone (one wide of the room, two corners, the door, the entrance from outside).
Three sentences in the listing: "Dry storage room in [town], County [county], 3.5m × 4m, secure access, 8am-9pm seven days." Set the price 5% below the local median (Sligo, Tralee, Castlebar etc all have visible local rates on Packhood now).
Stripe Identity verification (2 mins). Then the platform handles the booking, the contract, the renter check-in (smart-lock or keysafe is recommended for rural properties so the host doesn't drive 90 mins each way for handovers), and the monthly payout.
By month two the cheque arrives on the same date every month. The LPT is covered. The VHT is dodged. The buildings insurer reduces the unoccupied loading. The siblings stop feeling like the property is bleeding them.
The take
Inherited family homes are the under-discussed €5,000/yr drain on Irish families with property in the regions. The conversation usually pivots between "sell" and "rent it out" — both of which have high friction (sale needs sibling consent + emotional readiness; long-let needs RTB registration and a tenancy that's hard to reverse). Storage hosting is the third option that doesn't get discussed because nobody's heard of it.
It won't replace the eventual decision to sell. It buys the family time and money in the meantime, and it's reversible the moment the family agrees on what's next.
List one room. Twenty minutes. By next month it's covering the LPT.