House hunting

I've been house hunting in Dublin recently. More out of curiosity and slight boredom than any actual desire to purchase...an expensive hobby.

Reading the papers and listening to the news, you'd be under the impression that you'd pick up a pretty decent house in a nice area for the half of nothing, or two for the price of one in a slightly less desireable location but it is not the case.

I viewed a house in Sandymount the other day, quoting €340k. When we went to look at it, it was over-run with people who thought they were on to a good thing. It was in a shockingly bad state. The walls were wet to the touch and the smell of damp was overpowering & there were cracks everywhere.

The auctioneer had conveniently "forgotten" to bring the keys of the garage, but if you got up on your tippy-toes, you could see through the tiny glass panels at the top of the garage door that
A) the roof had caved in and
B) there was no room to park a car...it was a triangular shaped space. However the Estate Agent insisted that you'd fit a car in....maybe you could if you drive a Fiat 500.

The agent also informed us that there was a mistake on the website and the price was actually €360k...they probably up-ed the estimate when they realised the huge interest the property had generated. It was a money pit, and I pity the poor sod who is going to end up pouring money in to rebuilding the whole thing from scratch because that is all you can do with it. You're merely purchasing an address.

We looked at another one yesterday, this was in Kimmage, the price quoted here was €375k. Nice house, nice surrounding area, lots of green areas for kids to play etc. We got talking to one group of children on the green afterwards...they wanted to know if we were moving out or in to the house. They were also asking us if we were going to dress up for Halloween. We said that we weren't but asked them what they suggest our baby should dress up as. One suggested that he dress up as a bumble bee like their neighbour's baby did last year. The other kid on the bike said we should dress him up and that he could borrow his dad's "REAL pump action shot gun and REAL hand gun". He seemed to think this was hilarious and proceeded to laugh loudly revealing several gold teeth. The child was about 7 years old. Classy. Something tells me we won't be moving to Kimmage any time soon!

I'll keep you posted...

E