With changes to the regulations surrounding bedsit accommodation and self-contained units has come a death knell for Dublin’s flatland culture. Since then, private owners and amateur developers have been buying up and converting former Victorian properties around Dublin 4 and Dublin 6 that had been turned into flats before the 1963 planning Act. For those brave enough to take on such a project, the following three properties are ripe for conversion.
3 Effra Road, Rathmines, Dublin 6: €625,000, Sherry FitzGerald, 201sq m (2,164sq ft)
Currently laid out as seven self- contained apartments, 3 Effra Road is a distinctive non-basement Victorian house. The property requires total modernisation and will almost certainly be converted into a single-family residence given its pleasant facade, convenient location and good-sized rear garden.
The interior has been completely broken up to accommodate flats and thus work will be required not only to restore the home’s original layout but also to reinstate period features that have been eradicated over the years.
The house’s two-storey layout is more practical than most of its Victorian two-storey-over-basement counterparts, with an equal mix of living space and bedroom accommodation. A 20th century single-storey addition to the rear will need to be razed and may, depending on the eventual buyer’s needs, be replaced by a modern single- or two-storey extension. Fortunately, the house features the largest garden on the street and as such there is ample room to extend if desired.
Asking prices on Effra Road peaked in 2007 at €1.35 million for an unrenovated mid-terraced house, which was also set out as flats, while a renovated 182sq m (1,959sqft) three-storey house with a small rear garden was asking €1.85 million in 2008. More recently, the adjoining house, number four, sold in 2014 for €740,000 requiring total refurbishment. However, this was not laid out as flats and therefore required somewhat less work.
Number three was originally asking €680,000 but has since been reduced to €625,000, leaving would-be buyers with even more money in their pockets to renovate and extend.
56 Palmerston Road, Rathmines, Dublin 6: €995,000, Sherry FitzGerald, 211sq m (2,271sq ft)
In spite of being one of Dublin’s most upmarket addresses, Palmerston Road has for years been a street divided. The genteel road is well known for its sizeable period family homes, but there are also numerous derelict and unloved pre-’63 dwellings lining the street. Number 56 falls into the latter category, having lain empty for a decade and a half after suffering fire damage, and now comes to the market requiring total renovation.
It was at one time laid out as flats. However, there is little evidence of this remaining, save for an eerie- looking kitchenette in the attic, and as such the house enjoys a standard Victorian layout, and a number of period features, such as cornice work, remain intact. The house is laid out over four levels (including the attic) and offers clear scope to create a home of distinction in a much sought-after area.
Many similar houses on the street have been thoroughly renovated and extended in recent years. One neighbour dug under the house and garden, adding about 100sq m, while others have opted for three-storey return extensions to provide additional space on upper floors where bedroom and bathroom space tends to be lacking in these two-storey-over-basement homes.
Few mid-terraces of this size traded hands in the headier Tiger days. However, just up the road a 294sq m semidetached house requiring total renovation achieved €3.3 million in 2007 and has lain derelict since. For renovated examples the sky was the limit, with prices in excess of €6 million sought and achieved for larger semidetached houses on the road at the market’s peak. The lowest price achieved was €870,000 for mid-terraced number 82 in 2011, which has since been renovated. At nearly €1 million, number 56 is competitively priced and even with a renovation budget likely in excess of €500,000, buyers would do well to find a better deal in these parts.
121 Strand Road, Sandymount, Dublin 4: €975,000, Lowe, 247sq m (2,659sq ft)
Set on a Neapolitan-coloured terrace of three houses, number 121 is a pre-’63 property comprising 10 self- contained flats. Its exterior is rather stern compared with the brightly painted homes that line Strand Road, but that can be easily rectified. To the front is a long garden which could potentially provide extensive off-street parking subject to planning permission.
Imagination is definitely required for the interior. However, some original features remain, such as cornice work, architraves and fireplaces.
While basements in Victorian houses were once thought to be unattractive living spaces, with their lower ceiling heights and few period features if any, they are these days the most used parts of the house and the centre of family life when opened up and extended.
The home’s expansive, west-facing garden, which must be close to 30m long, is currently bland in appearance but is certainly one of the property’s best features. There is a private lane to the rear, and therefore obvious scope for a mews house – as both neighbours have done – or, more likely in this case, a small garage as buyers seeking a family home will want to retain as much garden as possible.
With many UK-based buyers acquiring homes in Dublin to occupy in the future and renting them out in the meantime, the property would be ideal given its potential rental income of about €80,000 a year.
A slightly grander two-storey over basement house sold on Strand Road in 2007 for €2.2 million before the purchasers lavishly refurbished the house and constructed a large, single-storey rear kitchen extension, housing an open-plan kitchen and living room and added a new garage at the bottom of the garden. Recently another two-storey-over-basement house (198sq m) was sold for €1.275 million. It was laid out as a family home but was not extended and featured a standard original layout.
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