Despondent after a morning of particularly disheartening house viewings, my partner and I were resetting our expectations yet again over lunch when my phone rang. After more than a year of searching, bidding and disappointment after disappointment, my friend on the other end of the line had finally struck lucky and bought her house for a song, on a quiet leafy street in our ideal area close to the city centre in south Dublin.
Her addiction to property websites has proven hard to break and almost two years later she still keeps a beady eye on houses for sale around her. She has become our personal property scout, and I’m convinced the home we eventually end up with will be ours because of one of her leads.
A “For Sale” board had just gone up outside a house just a few doors down from hers, but the listing wasn’t yet online. Call them quick, she said, get in there early and you might have a good chance. Before hanging up she mentioned the doors and windows were boarded up, after the house went up in flames a few years ago.
Anyone I’ve mentioned the house to since has been horrified by the thought of taking on a burned-out shell, but the prospect excited us. It looked from Google Maps like the house had been empty for a long time, even before the blaze. Over the remains of our eggs and coffee, we concocted plans for a completely modern interior: poured concrete floors, wood burning stoves, maybe a mezzanine. We’d get this place for a bargain price and with a lot of hard work and the few hundred grand we’d have saved on the purchase, we could transform it into our dream home.
I called the estate agent’s office to ask what it would be going up for – surely it couldn’t be more than €150,000 for a burned out, two-up two-down, ex-council house? After a bit of flitting around the woman came back with the figure: €350,000. I guffawed.
“Well, it is an up-and-coming area,” she said. I could almost hear her wry smile and glinting eyes down the phone.
I was in shock. From the Property Price Register we could see that several similar houses on adjacent roads – probably in need of some investment but not ravaged by fire – had sold in the past year for between €270,000 and €320,000, which was much closer to what we could afford for a house in need of modest refurbishment.
Fire-damaged house
With the expense of extensive renovation, the fire-damaged house would end up costing the guts of €500,000. And that’s for just 80sq m of floor space, no bathroom upstairs and only a small yard out the back.
We thought they hadn’t a hope of getting near such an outrageous figure, but within days the agent replied to our email to say bidding had almost reached the asking price. It has since gone sale agreed.
For our first few months of house-hunting, we were dead set on this area. A few friends had already bought their first homes here, and several others are renting nearby. It is close to the city but with a village feel, and just a half an hour walk away from my office. The first house we fell properly in love with here had an asking price bang on our budget, so prices seemed reasonable. Or so we thought.
We weren’t mortgage-approved by the time that house sold before Christmas, but the few similar properties up for sale in the area since have come with increasingly large price tags. A house on an adjacent street advertised for €410,000, which we restrained ourselves from going to view as it was already more than we could afford, went to best and final offers after several bidders pushed the price up over €550,000. The final sale isn’t up on the Property Price Register yet but I’d almost be afraid to look.
It is no longer an up-and-coming area. It has swiftly been and gone and left us behind.
That took us a while to come to terms with as we had our hearts set on it. We joked about starting a fake news campaign – I’d post articles online about rough goings on in the ’hood, and my boyfriend would pay some youths to hang around causing a ruckus outside the properties on viewing days.
But now we’re casting our search net wider geographically, and discovering the benefits. A 10 to 15-minute walk away, there’s a lot more floor space on offer for a much cheaper price, and the gardens are big enough to grow some grass in. Imagine, our very own lawn.
So in addition to our usual Saturday viewings, we are also taking regular drives, cycles and walks around to see how the areas look and feel at different times of the day and night. If you went searching I’m sure you’d find articles about some dodgy activity in the area every now and again, but we can live in hope that these are just alternative facts, spread by other hopeful house hunters just like us.
