Meath house drops 80 % - but buying means living on side of the road

HALF the country may be living in fear of what our grandparents dreaded: “ending up on the side of the road”. But as the economic crisis continues unabated, a forthcoming auction offers an opportunity to do just that – at “bargain” prices.

Five houses bought under Compulsory Purchase Order by Meath Co Council to “facilitate the construction of the new M3 motorway” are being offered for resale.

The batch of houses will be offered by public auction in Navan on Thursday November 18th by joint agents Lisney (Drumcondra) and Smith Harrington (Navan) who say the properties, four in Navan and one in Dunshaughlin, require varying degrees of work – and in some cases entire rebuilding – “as they haven’t been lived in for about six years”.

The sale should allow the State to recoup at least a fraction of the €1 billion spent building the 60km motorway which controversially passes through the Tara/Skryne valley and bypasses Clonee, Dunshaughlin, Navan and Kells. However the prices paid to acquire the individual properties cannot be revealed due to data protection legislation.

Star lot is a five-bedroom detached house of 325sq m (3,500sq ft) standing on one acre at Balreask New, Navan which has an advised minimum value (AMV) of €190,000. “At the height of the boom, a house like this could have fetched €1 million” according to Lisney’s Darren Chambers.

The house has “a view of green fields to the rear” and is situated “on a height about 100ft above the motorway which runs through a ravine below”. A semi-detached house nearby, on three-quarters of an acre, has an AMV of €160,000.

At Ardsallagh, Navan, a detached house with an AMV of €100,000, is close to Tara Golf Club and set on an “elevated site of just under half an acre” but will require planning permission to realise its “excellent potential”.

At Boyerstown, Navan the site of a “large detached residence” destroyed by fire on a 0.4-acre site has an AMV of just €50,000.

Over at Roestown, Dunshaughlin, a detached four-bedroom bungalow, with 230sq m (2,475sq ft) of living space, three-quarters of an acre of garden, a separate self-contained ‘granny Flat’ and a separate garage has an AMV of €230,000.