. . . but if you follow the Aldi factor, you can find a house that may be messy but good quality for sale at a discount, writes DON MORGAN.

MY MOTHER told me a story about a place that embodies my childhood. When we were kids, the smell of the Aldi near my grandfather’s house in Hamburg was a bizarrely comforting mix of cold tiles and cardboard.

It closed years ago, though my grandad lives on, with no plans to go anywhere, despite being older than a Jimmy Tarbuck gag.

His mother-in-law, who shared her birthday with my mum and Marshal Tito, apparently refused to set foot in discount supermarkets. They were too “rummelig” for her, she’d sniff, too messy. Grandad didn’t care. He was looking for value, just like us.

As the slump turns into depression and the depression turns into a Joy Division album, many people will scout around for value. Now is the right time to calmly investigate how far you’re willing to stretch your money. You can find something that’s cheap, but that also represents quality. In Dún Laoghaire, two houses we looked at showed how the Aldi factor is the X-factor.

Both houses are period buildings in Dún Laoghaire, which although once called Kingstown, overestimates how regal it really is. It’s small and vaguely British, just like George IV, for whom it was thusly named in the 1820s.

House number one was a case of someone trying to make a silk purse from a sow’s ear, only to find they’d made a pig’s breakfast of it instead. The brochure bragged about three beds, a hi-spec kitchen and spacious front rooms, all renovated tastefully.

It sounded great. It was so close to work you could fall out of bed and straight into the working week. It turned out it was worth a look only to see how not to renovate a period dwelling.

We could see from our own experience of furnishing our beloved little chateau in Carleau the difference between cheap prices and cheap quality.

The rooms were lopsided, the finishing in the master bedroom’s “walk-in” cupboard-ette was as cheap as chip(-board)s, and the wedge-shaped kitchen was more a gallows than galley. Asking price was an astounding 850k.

Despite a good poker face, the agent’s embarrassment was palpable. To top it off, there was neither on- or off-street parking. There was a rumour of a parking space in Wexford, or alternatively you could airlift your vehicle into the back yard.

What we saw was a house “developed” but completely circumventing the potential the original structure might have had. It was as faithful a restoration as Mickey Rourke’s last facelift.

We left shaking our heads at the tragedy of it. Coincidentally, my wife noticed a period house down the road, which for two hundred grand more gave you a three-storey marvel of good maintenance which had double the space and a hundred times the character.

We didn’t view it, as it was way out of our price range, but it was more worthwhile sinking your cash into this house than the one we had just escaped.

Down the road, however, we found the Aldi house. And yes, it did have a similar smell to the supermarket. It was as rummelig as a bombsite, and represented the kind of efficient value that really appealed to my inner Kraut. Inside, it was stripped back as far as possible and had a revealing little price tag of around €500,000. It might as well have been priced in Polish zloty. All the other houses on sale in the area were commanding twice the amount.

It was a 19th century terraced house with a hint of off-street parking and a garden so big you could comfortably fit a herd of Leinster players to graze.

Yes, there was work to be done, but it meant simply giving the place a good shake and marrying its Jane Austen charm with some James Dean panache, all for the price of a three-bed semi in Terenure. That was good value as we saw it.

We didn’t make an offer. It was practically sale agreed, and whoever bought it, I hope they revel in getting a gem of a house for what my grandad would call a reasonable some of money.

No gaudy flights of fancy necessary.