Doing up a home can be costly and time consuming. If you’re buying a fixer-upper to renovate, then along with pulling together the asking price, property tax and agents’ fees, you need to factor in the building costs and the additional expense of paying rent or an existing mortgage while you wait for the work to be done. You’ll also need to prepare for the frequent delays that can be caused by the planning process and by the quest to find – and retain – a good builder.
Yet the lure of a so-called bargain buy somehow captivates us all. Maggie Molloy's hugely successful Instagram account, Cheap Irish Houses, has ratcheted up almost 30,000 followers with its regular updates on ruinous gems that are coming to the market. Typical examples – the locations are mainly rural – include a former school house in Millstreet, Co Cork, for €19,950, an old forge in Co Offaly for €50,000 and an old mill outside Ramelton, Co Donegal, for €75,000. There are castles, too, including a tower house, Black Castle, in Thurles, Co Tipperary, seeking just €95,000.
Even if you need to stay in or within easy reach of Dublin, you’ll be holding on to a sliver of hope that there might just be bargains to be had in city properties that need everything done to them.
There is certainly an appetite for such projects, especially from small builders, who are often working on behalf of a family member trying to acquire their first property. A three-bed end-of-terrace former council house, 75sq m (800sq ft) in size, recently came to market in Drogheda, in Co Louth, seeking €80,000 through Robt B Daly & Son, and went sale agreed, more than 30 per cent above the asking price, within about two weeks.
Last month a one-bedroom cottage, of just 31sq m (334sq ft), off Rutland Street in Dublin 1 generated enormous interest after featuring in The Irish Times with its asking price of €85,000. The serious bids came mainly from builders and small developers who could do the job at cost; the house was sold to a developer for €100,000.
We ran the numbers on some properties in and around the city that looked as if they could be good value.
THE PERIOD THREE-BED TERRACE
Address 3 St John's Terrace, Mount Brown, Kilmainham, Dublin 8
Price €195,000
Agent Vincent Finnegan
Cost per square metre now €1,931
Rough cost of refurbishment €75,000
Total outlay €270,000 before fees, property tax and VAT
Cost per square metre after refurbishment €2,673
Public-transport links The James's red line Luas stop is a five-minute walk; bus numbers 13 and 40 stop almost outside the door
St John’s Terrace is a row of just six period yellow-brick houses on Mount Brown, a route that links James’s Street and old Kilmainham. It’s a busy part of the city trafficwise, especially with the stream of trucks going to and from the children’s hospital site, on an elevated site to its rear.
The house’s forlorn exterior belies a good-sized property – it measures 101sq m (1,087sq ft) – with three bedrooms, two of them quite large. It also feels dry inside, with very little indication of water ingress or damp, even though it hasn’t been lived in for more than five years.
It is pretty much in original condition, which means there’s less stuff to put in a skip; period features include a broad timber-floored hall and good ceiling heights, of 2.7m, in its reception rooms, the living room to the front, with original floorboards that seem to be in good condition, and the dining room to the rear, which has a raised concrete floor. The window in this room, like all of the rear windows, has steel bars, which is off-putting (and blocks light).A galley kitchen sits in the rear return; the bathroom is downstairs.
A steep but south-facing garden has steps leading up to vehicular rear access; parking is tight, although part of the garden could be sacrificed to create a parking space. Double yellow lines at the front of the house mean you can’t put a skip outside the front door. It will have to go at the back instead, meaning labourers will have to the climb the steps to fill it.
The place needs everything done to it – new wiring, new plumbing, new floors, insulation, new bathrooms, a new kitchen, and new windows and doors; the roof may also need attention. The next owner might install a bathroom in the smallest bedroom and turn the place into a more luxurious two-bed property.
Kevin Moran of Moran Builders estimates that all of this work, including installing a second bathroom, staining existing timber floors and including a heritage dry lining with lime-skim finish, timber sash windows and timber doors, will cost about €75,000, excluding any work on the roof.
THE ONE-BED CITY COTTAGE
Address 14 Maxwell Street, Dublin 8
Price €160,000, down from €189,950
Agent REA McGee
Cost per square metre now €4,848
Rough cost of refurbishment €47,000
Total outlay €207,000 before fees, property tax and VAT
Cost per square metre when refurbished €6,272
Rough additional cost of refurbishing and extending like number 10 €150,000
Cost per square metre when refurbished and extended €6,078
Public-transport links It's a 10-minute walk to the Fatima stop on the Luas red line
This one-bedroom single-storey terraced cottage of 33 sq m (355sq ft) is just off Donore Avenue, behind Coombe Women & Infants University Hospital. It has a small courtyard just big enough to accommodate wheelie bins. Parking is on-street residential disc parking.
An executor’s sale, the property came to market six weeks ago asking €189,950, but as it is in relatively poor condition, and in order to drum up interest, that has been reduced to €160,000.
The property, which has a D2 BER rating, has gas-fired central heating and double-glazed windows but needs everything else done to it.
The selling agent, Anthony McGee, doesn't believe you'd get a dormer first floor into the property, as the low roof pitch means anything that might be installed wouldn't conform to building regulations. McCabe Architects turned another property on the street from a one-bed of 24sq m (258sq ft) into a two-bed house of 52sq m (560sq ft), dropping the ground floor by about a metre to create more height in the new upper floor. Declan McCabe estimates that it would cost from about €150,000 to do something similar at number 14.
A more affordable refurbishment, maintaining the layout and including a new kitchen, new bathroom, floors, doors, joinery, architraves, painting, tiling, plastering, plumbing, heating, electrics, new bathroom, new windows and new front door will cost an estimated €47,000.
THE NEWER THREE-BED TERRACE
Address 37 Dunsink Park, Finglas, Dublin 11
Price €175,000
Agent Ray Cooke
Cost per square metre now €2,333
Rough cost of refurbishment €53,000
Total outlay €228,000 before fees, property tax and VAT
Cost per square metre when refurbished €3,040
Rough additional cost of refurbishment including extension €138,000
Cost per square metre when extended €2,746
Public-transport links Buses 40 and 220 are within a five-minute walk; buses 103 and 109x are about a seven-minute walk. The M50 is less than a 10-minute drive
This three-bed, one-bath terraced house measuring 75sq m (807sq ft) is a former rental property that is in need of a good tidy-up. Its only bathroom is downstairs, as it was originally in all of these 1960s-built houses, according to the agent, Ray Cooke.
He says neighbours have extended the backs of their houses to create big open-plan kitchen and living areas; some have also converted their box bedrooms into bathrooms and turned their sitting rooms into third bedrooms.
One of the bedrooms extends the depth of the house; many neighbours have installed an en-suite bathroom at the rear, so that it has a window. Some other houses have attic conversions, but anything that can be done within the footprint will most likely suit only a child and will only be an attic room, says Cooke. Nor will it conform to building regulations.
The house, which has gas-fired central heating, needs new flooring, tiling, kitchen and bathroom, Cooke says. The garden is south-facing but is in need of further work to remove all the growth.
The builder Kevin Moran says refurbishment would cost from €40,000, to include stripping out, new flooring throughout, insulation, new windows, new kitchen, new bathroom downstairs, painting and insulation. An extra €13,000 would cover rewiring and replumbing; an additional €3,000 or so would sort out the rear garden and level the soil.
To build on without the risk of being refused planning permission, an extension would need to be kept under 40sq m; there are further restrictions on any upstairs addition. But it would be possible to turn the box room into a bathroom and complete all the aforementioned works for about €138,000.
THE FORMER SHOP
Address 26 Offaly Street, Athy, Co Kildare
Price €100,000
Agent Connaughton Auctioneers
Cost per square metre now €1,000
Rough cost of refurbishment €80,000-€100,000
Total outlay €180,000-€200,000 before fees, property tax and VAT
Cost per square metre when refurbished €1,800-€2,000
Public-transport links Irish Rail serves Athy on the Waterford route. It's about 50 minutes from Dublin Heuston. Bernard Kavanagh & Sons runs a coach service from Kilkenny via Athy to Eden Quay in Dublin; the firm also operates Bus Éireann's route 130, which runs between Athy and the capital several times a day
Anyone looking to renovate this two-bedroom former sweet shop should be aware that it needs everything done to it. The shop and storeroom have been knocked into one big space, with the living accommodation – living room, kitchen, two bedrooms and bathroom – upstairs. It measures about 100 sq m (1,076sq ft) in total, with an east-facing rear of about 25sq m, according to Michael Connaughton of Connaughton Auctioneers.
Two former shops in Dún Laoghaire, in south Co Dublin, were very cleverly reimagined recently. The interior designer Gillian Sherrard did a smart refurbishment for her client using half-walls in the original windows to create a public gallery space that gave something back to passersby, retained the shop-window idea and still allowed natural light in while maintaining privacy.
The other former shop, reimagined with the help of the architect Mark Monaghan, has a roof terrace with fine sea views, as well as secure bike storage in part of the original shop. It is currently for sale.
Noel Kelly, a local builder, estimates that the property will cost between €80,000 and €100,000 to make habitable; that includes new windows, heating, electrics, insulation, plastering and painting. It doesn't take into account any potential roof problems. Kelly wonders if it would be worth the financial effort. "In my view it is far too dear. I wouldn't want to be paying more than €50,000 to buy it, refurbish it and sell it on," he says.
Another downside, in his view, is that it doesn’t have parking. A narrow lane to the side might allow a small vehicle through, however, and planning permission might enable a buyer to look at creating vehicular side access.
But even if you were doing it as an owner-occupier, he says, the same money could buy you a three-bedroom house in any estate in the town for between €140,000 and €170,000. “Why pay €100,000 for a doer-upper when the alternatives would be ready to walk into?”
