Starter Homes

This week: North Strand BallyboughNumber 15 St James Avenue, Ballybough, Dublin 3, is a turn of the century redbrick needing complete refurbishment just off Clonliffe Road. It is larger than it appears from the outside, and has a total of 750 sq ft. It is for sale through Sherry FitzGerald for £78,500-plus.

The accommodation consists of a large, high-ceilinged livingroom opening off the front hall, a sittingroom or diningroom at the end of the hall, with a kitchen opening off this, and a large room that could be a bedroom or reception room off the kitchen. There is a bathroom off the kitchen, which opens into a surprisingly large 55 ft long concreted-over back garden. A staircase leads from the hall up to a small double bedroom on the first floor.

The house could be an interesting proposition although it will clearly need major refurbishment. It has room for expansion into the back garden, and is the kind of period home so many first-time buyers want. It is about two houses down from the rail line, and very close to Croke Park, in a street running between Clonliffe Road and Ballybough Road.

1 Northbrook Avenue, North Strand, Dublin 3, is a property at the other end of the scale in the area. This three-bed end-of-terrace Victorian residence has been completely refurbished, and is for sale through Gunne's Fairview office for £135,000-plus. It has attractive period features, like the 15-ft high ceiling with original coving in the sittingroom, and up-to-the-minute modern features like a kitchen with oak-fitted units and ceramic-tiled floor, and tiled and pine-panelled bathroom, also with ceramic-tiled floor. There are polished timber floors throughout. The property also has an attractive landscaped back garden with lawn, patio area, and pond.

Number 22 Coburg Place is another turn of the century house, one of those attractive big-house in miniature that are to be found all over Dublin. This property is off Seville Place in Dublin 1, and is for sale through Sherry FitzGerald for £88,000. The front hall of the house has its original ornate plasterwork, an elegant archway leading to the rear of the house. A high-ceilinged livingroom opens off the hall to the right, with a second room, used as a bedroom, behind it. Down a few steps is a small kitchen/dining area, with a bathroom off it. It opens on to as small back yard, and new owners would likely extend into it and reorganise the whole kitchen/ bathroom arrangement. Up a flight of stairs from the main hall is a small double bedroom. The property, like so many in the area, is just below the railway line. The house has been rewired. Demand for properties in Dublin's north inner city has been growing steadily over the past year, as in all parts of Dublin within walking distance of the city centre. Prices are still relatively reasonable, compared to areas like Stoneybatter, for example - but bargains are hard enough to come by.

There are properties in the area ranging in price from around £80,000 to £135,000-plus (with a handful off Seville Place at around £65,000), but they are not all that plentiful, and people wanting to live here may have to be patient to get the house they want. Lots of people do want to live here, whether it's in the area known as North Strand - the roads more or less bounded by North Strand Road, Ballybough Road, Poplar Row and Portland Row - or in the network of quiet streets around Croke Park between Ballybough Road and Clonliffe Road. Demand has also begun to rise for properties around Seville Place, just behind Connolly Station, a stone's throw from Spencer Dock. (Peter Sheridan's recently-published 44 : A Dublin Memoir captures the flavour of growing up there in the 1950s).

Several agents remark on the fact that a lot of the demand comes from, yes, southsiders. Like northside Dubliners, they are attracted by the area's proximity to the city centre, as well as the IFSC and East Point Business Park. The opportunity of getting an attractive period house - redbrick or brown brick, fanlight-windowed front doors, elegant archways, high ceilings - at an affordable price also appeals to first-time buyers, priced out of similar housing along, for example, South Circular Road.

There is social deprivation in the north inner city, an area which of course has had its share of social problems in the past two decades. A large banner from flats on Ballybough Road proclaiming "No juryless courts for anti-drugs activists" tells its own story. But local agents say that this has not inhibited buyers. Young professionals who have rented around the Sean McDermott Street/ Summerhill area, for example, have gone on to buy properties in the area.

There is an interesting housing mix, much if not most of it dating from the early part of the century, in an area that is geographically pretty small. Values vary from road to road: Brian Caulfield of northside agents GWD says that two-bed terraced cottages on streets like Foster Terrace, O'Sullivan Avenue and Clonliffe Avenue will cost £100,000-plus; at the far side of the area, he recently sold a single-storey cottage on Third Avenue, off Seville Place, for £65,000.

Agents like Sean Mason Jr of Mason Estates in Phibsborough says that houses close to Clonliffe Road will cost close to £100,000; Martin Doyle of Sherry FitzGerald's Fairview office says that 1930s former local authority homes in the area can cost from around £82,000. Meanwhile, Peter Quigley of Douglas Newman Good explains that houses on streets like Bayview Avenue, which runs from Ballybough Road to North Strand Road, and Northbrook Avenue, on the far side of North Strand Road from here, are very much sought after. The handsome Victorian and Edwardian houses here speak of an era of elegance in northside Dublin.

On Bayview, a single storey to the front, two-storey to the rear three-bed around 1,000 sq ft in good condition can command up to £160,000, he believes; on Northbrook Avenue Lower, a similar redbrick may cost from around £110,000/ £115,000 in poor condition up to £140,000 in good condition. A refurbished mid-terrace two-bed on nearby Leinster Avenue will also cost in the region of £110,000. Alison O'Hara of Gunne's Fairview office - which has a range of properties in the area from a single storey over basement mid-terrace two-bed in need of total refurbishment on Bayview Avenue for £95,000-plus to a completely refurbished period two-bed on Northbrook Avenue for £135,000-plus - says that homes on good roads in the area, in good condition, with character are commanding strong prices. In general, North Strand houses will command bigger prices than those in East Wall because its houses are bigger and better, she believes, while prices in Ballybough are comparable to those in East Wall, where two-bed former local authority homes in reasonable order are selling for £115,000-plus.

THE best way to get a feeling for this, as any other area, is to walk around it, possibly at the weekend. The quiet streets just off busy Ballybough Road and North Strand, where trucks thunder past on their way from the North Circular Road to Dublin port, may come as a surprise to people who have only ever driven through the area. GAA fans presumably know it well - the modern stadium rears up incongruously in the middle of the quiet streets off Clonliffe Road. The other dominating presence is, of course, the rail line, which snakes all through the area.