TAKE a house in a good Dublin suburb, any house. Take, for instance, a solid, five-bedroomed semi in Fortfield Road in Terenure, Dublin - a comfortable family home with a decent back garden and off-street parking.
There is nothing showy or spectacular about this house, except for its price.
Today it is worth around £275,000. In 1990, you could have picked it up for just under £150,000. That represents an 84 per cent rise in value in six years.
Compare that to a rate of inflation in the same period of around 17.6 per cent. Houses like these have been among the best performers of this year's boom market.
As larger period homes in Dublin 6 and Dublin 4 achieved ever-higher prices, buyers began to appreciate more and more the value of good, pre and post-war homes in quiet residential streets.
Fortfield Road is considered one of the better addresses in Terenure. With Terenure College just across the road and Bushy Park close by, it appeals to people with young families who want to settle into a good neighbourhood.
When the houses were built in the mid 1930s, they cost around £1,200. Some 20 years later, houses were changing hands for about £2,800.
By the early 1960s, prices had edged into the £3,000s. By 1979, however, they had taken a huge leap to the region of £58,000. The 1989 property boom sent prices shooting up again, this time to around £160,000. A year later, however, values slipped back to around £149,000. By 1995 the average cost had risen to £225,000.
One year on and you can add another £50,000.
These days, according to Ms Mary Dillon, the director of Sherry FitzGerald's Terenure branch, the new buyers into Fortfield Road are mostly well-off professional - doctors, solicitors and bankers.
Certainly, Fortfield Road is now well beyond the reach of many of the people who grew up in the neighbourhood.
