Talking property

Opinions differ widely on doer-uppers, says ISABEL MORTON

LAST SATURDAY I  set off to view three well-located houses with attractively low price tags, which reflect the fact that they all need to be fully renovated.

My first port of call was 8 Beatty’s Avenue, an end-of-terrace single storey artisan dwelling alongside the River Dodder in Ballsbridge. It is to be auctioned on June 3rd by Savills. The low AMV of €299,000, together with the smart D4 address, attracted a large number of viewers, some disappointed to find that the house required a lot more than a quick lick of paint.

Basically consisting of four rooms, two on either side of a central hall and a tiny bathroom extension to the rear, the cottage has some potential to extend into a small southeast-facing rear garden, but not without further reducing the already limited rear outdoor space.

Surprisingly, it has a particularly large (13m long) front garden, which would, subject to planning permission, provide off-street car-parking along with a nice garden area, from which to enjoy the river.

The first viewer I met was a woman who was quite prepared to buy a property in need of renovation. But in her view, an AMV of €150,000 would have been more “accurate” – she estimated that renovation work and stamp duty would cost a further €150,000 – as €300,000 would be the value of the renovated property in today’s market.

But opinions varied hugely – two men admitted to being very interested in the cottage as a long-term investment and believed that it would sell for about €400,000 at auction and cost about €130,000 to renovate.

The next auction prediction was higher again. “It could make €550,000 due to its potential and location,” one man said. “You’d be buying a site, so you’d have to get permission to demolish and rebuild it, including an extension out the back. All you’d keep is the front wall.”

Another woman, however, was aghast at the amount of work which needed to be done and horrified at the potential cost: “I wouldn’t know where to begin, nor would I want to.”

And some already had great plans. One near neighbour, an interior designer, would love her friend to buy the cottage: “I have ideas for it already,” she enthused, as her friend looked around with less conviction.

My next stop was the end of a laneway behind Camden Street Lower, where a two-up, two-down with a rear forge on Pleasant Lane is also heading for auction, this time with a rock bottom-sounding AMV of €155,000. It’s just 53sq m (568sq ft) inside.

Many of the same viewers from Beatty’s Avenue turned up but, due to the location down a commercial laneway and dwarfed by the surrounding buildings, reactions varied.

Most were slightly confused by the layout and were trying to fathom how they might use the forge to increase the available living space. A number of suggestions were proffered, including using the main house as a bedroom and bathroom space and the forge as the living/kitchen area and linking the two with a glass corridor through an internal courtyard garden.

All possible, but it is more likely that a developer will buy 5a Pleasant Lane to knock the lot and build a multi-storey commercial building, merging with surrounding properties.

My last stop was Ailesbury Road, Dublin 4, where number 62 is on the market with Lisney asking €2.5 million, recently reduced by €4 million. Having been stripped back to a bare skeletal state by its developer owner, the 1960s house measures 295sq m (3,175sq ft), but needs to be internally rebuilt. However, according to Lisney’s David Bewley, the new owner may consider knocking it entirely and starting again.

“Allowing for stamp duty and €1 million to demolish and build a new house,” said one viewer, “the final cost would come in under €4 million, which would, in Ailesbury Road terms, still be considered a bargain.”

Based on the presumption that the new house would be larger and include all the bells and whistles, an allowance of €1 million may not be too far off the mark by the time you have paid the architect and landscaper and fitted it out and furnished it appropriately. Even if you were to rebuild the existing house, you wouldn’t get much change out of €650,000 by the time it was finished, decorated and furnished.

However, as the property in question is not one of the grand redbrick period houses more typical of Ailesbury Road, a new house, even if it were built in period style (such as Bernard McNamara’s home down the road), would look a little odd and out of place sandwiched between two houses of more modest and modern design.

And, as one viewer reminded me, it is located on the “dark” side of the road as it faces north to the rear and, as he said, “damn all can be done about that”.

Which just goes to show that, even with €4 million knocked off the asking price, it’s impossible to please everybody.