Viewers of 74 Lombard Street West in Dublin 8 will probably trip along while in the neighbourhood to nearby 17 Ovoca Road for a look. It is less expensive, asking €615,000 (from the same agent, DNG), and it's the same type of property: a Victorian, single-storey to the front redbrick, in a terrace, with original features and good-sized rooms.

It’s slightly smaller at 85sq m, but there are two key differences that will immediately strike househunters: the garden – about 10m long, unusual in these roads where many houses have just small yards – and the considerable modernisation work that needs to be done. The garden is the key to the potential in this house: it will give scope, subject to the usual planning requirements, to create a modern eat-in kitchen and extended living area and possibly an additional bedroom or two.

Pleasant, open aspect

Number 17 Ovoca Road faces down Carlisle Street so it has a pleasant, open aspect to the front. Currently vacant and being shown unfurnished, it has been a rental for some years.

The layout isn’t too far from the original: two small double bedrooms and a bathroom upstairs, one fine reception room off the hall to the front with period features and proportions, and another room to the rear opening into the kitchen. There is also a small utility room.

There are built-in cupboards, wardrobes and shelves in various rooms, but that hardly matters as they will likely go in the renovation. The houses that line these streets were built in lots by different builders at different times and because of this, even the villa style ones which appear similar tend to be quite different. Because of the proportions of number 17’s two reception rooms and hall, this house feels more spacious than its size suggests.

There is pedestrian access to the rear which will help with the renovations which new owners will most likely embark on before ever moving in. The Ber is F – a low grading that will certainly need to be addressed in any new plans.