Starter Homes

Number 24 Kickham Road, in the Bulfin estate, Inchicore, Dublin 8, is a refurbished end-of-terrace former local authority house with scope for expansion. Set in a little cul-de-sac off Kickham Road, it has three-bedrooms, a comfortable livingroom, a small fitted kitchen and a wide, good-sized back garden with a paved patio area. It is for sale through Mason Estates for £115,000.

A first-time buyer with around £115,000 to £125,000 to spend, and who wants to live at the Kilmainham/Inchicore end of the South Circular Road, will find a reasonable choice of this kind of house on the market at the moment.

Number 24 is in good decorative order, and has been refurbished, although new owners might decide to expand the property. The house has panelled internal doors with attractive doorknobs, and the rooms are freshly painted or wallpapered.

The livingroom, which has a brick fireplace, opens into a compact kitchen, which has a tiled floor and tiled splashbacks. The main bathroom, which has a shower, is off the kitchen. New owners might consider either making the livingroom and kitchen one room, or extending into the back garden, perhaps building a conservatory.

Upstairs, there are three bedrooms: the large main double bedroom at the front of the house has generous storage space in fitted wardrobes, as does another bedroom at the rear. There is a small, single bedroom, where new owners might consider installing a bathroom.

Number 14 Devoy Road is another mid-terrace house in the Bulfin estate, facing directly on to the Grand Canal. This has a most appealing view of a green canal bank, and dozens of swans sailing up and down between locks - marred a little by the view of a factory and a garage on the far side of Davitt Road, which runs beside the canal.

This property, also for sale through Mason Estates, is in need of total refurbishment, and so costs only £80,000. It is more or less the same house design as the house on Kickham Road - parlour at the front, just off the hall, with the kitchen behind it, and a bathroom at the back of the house inside the back door. Upstairs, there is a big double bedroom at the front, and a smaller double and a single at the rear.

Houses like these needing complete refurbishment have some advantages: this house, for example, has its original picture rails in the livingroom, and a tall, dark timber mantelpiece over the fireplace. The South Circular Road is a long road with several sharp turnings, and the value of properties on or near it can vary greatly along its length. Handsome turn-of-the century redbricks near the Portobello end now make £250,000 to £300,000-plus - and similar houses, at the Kilmainham/Inchicore end of the road, don't make much less.

A house on Mountshannon Road, a quiet street running parallel to the South Circular Road just beyond the hump-backed bridge from Rialto, recently sold for over £225,000 after auction through Sherry FitzGerald. Many of the fine redbricks on or just off the stretch of the South Circular that runs from the back entrance to St James's Hospital down to Suir Road go to auction, says Declan King of Gunne, often commanding prices from £170,000 up to the mid-£250,000s.

So is this end of the South Circular Road also slipping beyond the reach of the first-time buyer? Fortunately, there are a reasonable number of options for somebody looking for a starter home around here, with a pretty good mix of accommodation and prices to choose from. (Unfortunately, the first-timer hungering after a handsome redbrick will probably find them out of their reach here; they would do better to go back to streets such as Reuben Street and Church Avenue in Rialto, where smaller versions of the typical South Circular redbrick cost around £115,000.)

They range from two-bed townhouses costing around £130,000 to £135,000 in Rothe Abbey, a quiet cul-de-sac development about 12 years old tucked away off the South Circular Road and Suir Road, to apartments and townhouses from £100,000 up in Hybreasal, an impressive scheme built in a converted convent, up to around £120,000 for refurbished two and three-bed 1930s former local authority houses off Bulfin Road, just across Suir Road where the South Circular Road takes a sharp right down to old Kilmainham. (Unrefurbished, you can still get these homes for less than £100,000, as the house on Devoy Road illustrates).

A short distance away from the South Circular Road, there are infill apartment/townhouse developments, such as Harcourt Lodge, where a one-bed apartment costs £85,000. Closer to town are schemes such as Millbrook Court on Mount Brown, just down the road from St James's Hospital, where a 600 sq ft two-bed apartment costs around £125,000.

Agents such as Declan King and Gary Jacob of Douglas Newman Good report that demand for properties in the area continues unabated. Prices are up by about 25 per cent on last year, reflecting demand as well as general trends in the Dublin market.

Investors are creeping back into this market, agents report; there is strong demand for accommodation from people working in the huge St James's Hospital. The attraction of Kilmainham/Inchicore is obvious: it is within easy reach of Dublin's city centre, about 15 minutes drive, outside of rush hour, just about walkable, and on good bus routes such as the 19 (which has its terminus off the Bulfin Estate). LUAS is to have a station at the Suir Road bridge across the Grand Canal. It is near a fascinating and historic part of Dublin - old Kilmainham Gaol and the Royal Hospital Kilmainham are nearby.