Vendors still slow to lose belief in the hype

HOUSE HUNTER:In south Dublin good old-fashioned delusion continues to hype-up a two-bit shack, so that it finds itself in the same price bracket as the Playboy mansion writes DON MORGAN

I WANTED to get away from nasty estate agents, houses containing load bearing dank and breathe the pure, fresh air of New York for a few days. The problem is that fresh air exists here like a Green Party first preference vote and the only other option to going outside and choking to death is sucking in a lungful of legionnaire’s disease in the hotel air conditioning system.

Worse still, the search for a new home is stalking me at every given turn. America is the home of the property bubble and ensuing credit crunch. This is, if you will, the San Andreas Fault of finance, to our San Francisco.

When I mention we’re living 60 miles from work, group therapy ensues, as people mention their own horror stories, of getting up at stupid o’clock and travelling via Neptune to get to work.

House prices pop up in otherwise pleasant chit chat – a topic only slightly cruder than making fart jokes in front of the pope – and someone will describe how house prices haven’t just fallen by a third, as is the case in the Big Apple, but even by a half in places like Las Vegas. It’s just like at home, but over here, the boom has a better name. The Yanks call it “The Hype”.

In south Dublin, where we’re still searching, good old-fashioned delusion continues to hype-up a two-bit shack, so that it finds itself in the same price bracket as the Playboy mansion.

One house we saw bore this theory out quite well. A lovely, spacious house, the best part of this property was that there was no estate agent. Halleluiah! I thought my prayers had been answered.

A colleague at work had told us it had been on the market for ever, with not so much as a nibble from a prospective buyer. The sign outside the house had a number for a mysterious Billy, and so we left a message, calling ourselves Mr and Mrs Deepthroat, saying he should meet us at midnight in the College of Surgeons car-park, alone, and with a brown paper bag for wads of our dirty, dirty cash.

Eventually we got a reply and, sure enough, Billy was not his real name. This was an executor sale pure and simple, and Billy was a very nice chap. The house, unfortunately, was part gorgeous, part Wendy house. Built in the 1940s, it had been added on to considerably during times when Ireland was doing a good impression of Zimbabwe.

People used papier-mâché and asbestos to construct everything in the country and the rear extension was a fine example of such work, including a wavy stone floor at the back. On the plus side, the main bedroom had an incredible view, if you kinked your head a little, of the Irish Sea and elegantly shabby rooftops of Dún Laoghaire and Sandycove.

With each room, though, the asking price, in the late €600,000s, was being devoured by the irresistible reality of needing to renovate the house from top-to-bottom, back-to-front. It was just too much for us, and we’ve no problem getting our hands dirty, doing a spot of upgrading and decorating.

Do I want to do a spot of gutting, though? Eh, no. My nightmare scenario is The Money Pit, where I’m Tom Hanks and my wife is Shelley Long, and a bit of work, which should take “two weeks”, takes us to the brink of bankruptcy and the very edge of a nervous breakdown. Given the big-time hassle we saw for ourselves in this place, the idea of ending up in a psychiatric ward for it wasn’t that appealing.

The more we think about our own house in Carlow, the more its location breaks our heart. It’s lovely, well built and on a quiet cul-de-sac.

We love it and hate the downsides it has, all of which are associated with its location. Work is in Dublin, play is in Dublin. We don’t know our neighbours in Carlow and, despite our efforts, they don’t want to know us. If only we could put the damn thing on wheels and park it on a scrap of land close to work.