Homes in Donnybrook are highly desirable. This inner suburb, sandwiched between Ranelagh and Ballsbridge and stretching from Leeson Street to Fosters Avenue on the Stillorgan Road, is packed full of houses of every style, from doll-sized cottages to detached houses of mansion proportions. Anyone who bought in Donnybrook a few years ago can consider themselves fortunate. The smallest cottages are fetching well over £200,000 now and you will pay anything from £500,000 to £2 million-plus for a period family-sized house. The attractions are obvious. The village is close to St Stephen's Green, Sandy mount Strand is five minutes by car and the main thoroughfare, Morehampton Road, is at the city end of the southbound N11. Residents with itchy feet have a choice of moving sideways to Ranelagh or Ballsbridge without sacrificing either cachet or proximity to town. The area seems to have everything: specialist wine shops, florists, a small cafe or two and, at the post office end, the best fishmonger and greengrocer for miles. Among the handful of estate agents on the mall a new shop selling Spanish villas has opened for business. Traffic is probably the only drawback: a scarcity of pedestrian crossings encourages jaywalking on busy Morehampton Road. Driving through, it is easy to imagine that the population consists of well-off professional people secluded behind the gates of million-pound period homes. Nothing could be further from the truth.
There is a strong local community here, centred mainly in the more down-to-earth Beech Hill estate and among the older residents of the village. And Donnybrook Fair has been reintroduced in recent years, with an emphasis on family fun and without the drunken debauchery that caused it to be disbanded in the old days.
Donnybrook was named after Broc, who founded a convent in the year 700 on the banks of the Dodder. The village was on the edges of the city boundaries when the charter was granted by King John in 1172. Since the important south road probably crossed the river here, it became a meeting place for country people to trade their produce and an ideal site for the famous annual fair. The area is noted for its big six or seven-bedroom Victorian houses, many Crampton-built and set well back from the traffic with decent-sized gardens. The best period homes are on the avenues off Herbert Park such as Brendan and Arranmore, Marlborough Road, Eglinton Road and Mount Eden Road.
Leafy Marlborough Road is mainly owner-occupied now and gets a lot of attention when one of its Georgian or Victorian houses comes on the market. A late Georgian house here, needing a fair bit of work, made £750,000 at a recent auction.
On Eglinton Road, Sherry FitzGerald sold a five-bed semi for £1.4 million a couple of months ago and Gunne Residential achieved £300,000 in March for a pretty five-bedroom period house needing an upgrade on Belmont Park. Gunne sold an Auburn Avenue period house last September for £490,000. The biggest threat to the character of Donnybrook comes from the inevitable passing-on of older residents. Busy young professionals with enough equity to buy into the pretty period cottages bordering the park are queueing up to put deposits down. For them it may be just a step on the property ladder, say community groups, and these newcomers rarely get involved in local activities. That said, these redbrick cottages are worth a premium for their position alone. Home Villas are two-storey redbrick and Pembroke Cottages have single-storey. Many have extensions and are surprisingly roomy inside. A small back yard is all the sitting-out space there is, but, with a gate into Herbert Park at the end of the cul-de-sacs, who would miss a garden?
Donnybrook is attracting a new type of buyer now, according to Kate Sissons of Christies, and with the current acute shortage of builders, people are expecting houses to be in walk-in condition. Gunne Residential sold one of the Pembroke cottages in April for £262,000 and another the previous month in tip-top condition for £292,000. Hamilton Osborne King is currently selling a "very cute" three-bed end-terrace Pembroke cottage, guiding in excess of £225,000.
Last May, Hamilton Osborne King achieved a record price of £330,000 for a completely refurbished two-bedroom Home Villas house which featured in RTE's Our House television series.
New housing developments tend to be on the luxurious side and are popular with investors. Fosterbrook off Stillorgan Road sold from £93,950 when the houses were first launched in October 1993. A three-bedroom semi sold for £290,000 last autumn and Christies achieved a record price of £414,000 recently for a four-bedroom Fosterbrook semi. Kate Sissons points out that, with rental income of around £1,200 a month for the average Donnybrook house, people are buying for long-term capital appreciation.
One of the most recent new schemes is Donnybrook Castle, at the beginning of Stillorgan Road. The only detached house on this development is for sale with Lisney, guiding £660,000. One of the three-storey houses is also on the market with McNally Handy quoting £1 million. A two-bedroom apartment here was sold for £300,000 by Douglas Newman Good recently. Donnybrook has its share of solidly-built post and pre-war houses with bay windows and large gardens. Gunne is selling a four-bed semi on Eglinton Park guiding £520,000 and a newer detached three-bed house opposite RTE on Airfield Court is quoting £770,000. Apartments are also sought after as trade down options rather than starter homes. Two-bedroom and three-bedroom apartments in the exclusive St Ann's apartment block at the end of Ailesbury Road, opposite Donnybrook Church, are among the best in the city, although they rarely come on the market. Expect to pay £500,000-plus for large two-bedroom units there. Christies is selling a two-bedroom unit in Belfield Court opposite UCD, guiding £250,000 plus. Gunne has a Belfield Court apartment for excess £245,000, a two-bed duplex in Eglinton Wood for excess £285,000 and a two-bed unit in Airfield Manor asking excess £250,000. Masons has a one-bedroom top floor apartment in Belville guiding excess £200,000. The best buy in Donnybrook has to be the former Dublin Corporation and bottle company houses on Beech Hill, tucked behind Donnybrook Castle off Beaver Row. The "bottle" houses are slightly larger. Gunne is selling 26 Beech Hill Crescent, a two-bedroom terrace with an attic conversion and good gardens for excess £240,000. Not for the average first-time buyer, but in one of the most expensive suburbs in the city, undoubtedly an estate worth watching.
