One of the first houses to be auctioned in 2001, a large Georgian semi-detached house at 24 Wellington Road, Ballsbridge, goes under the hammer on January 30th.

The sale may set the pace for prices at the upper end of the Dublin housing market, where there has been a degree of uncertainty over the past three months. However, with interest rates once more expected to be easing, buyers may be encouraged to return to the auction rooms for this kind of property. The three-storey over basement house is expected to fetch around £1.5 million through agents Hamilton Osborne King.

Wide, tree-lined Wellington Road is a prime Dublin 4 address where terraced houses regularly change hands for over £1 million. Recent sales on the road include two similar houses which failed to sell at auction last autumn but eventually found buyers through private negotiations.

Number 40, a renovated terraced house, sold for around £1.5 million in December, while across the road, number 55, needing refurbishment but with a full garden and sunny orientation, fetched £1.35 million. Number 24 is a fine family home with 3,000 sq ft of living space in good decorative order. Currently arranged as a four-bedroom house with three bathrooms, it has kept many of its original features including fireplaces and ceiling cornices. There is off-street parking to the front and an enclosed patio garden to the rear.

Unusually, the kitchen is at hall level, in the rear reception room with the original fireplace and cornicing intact and double doors opening into a formal diningroom.

Upstairs, the first floor landing is deep enough to be used as a sittingroom, and there's a superb drawingroom on the first floor. Also at this level is a large study, which could be a fifth bedroom, and a separate, original staircase leading to the top floor. Up here is the main bedroom with its views towards the Dublin mountains. There is a large en suite bathroom and a guest bedroom.

The two remaining bedrooms are both large doubles at basement level where there is also a good sized bathroom.

This entire floor could be converted to a self-contained apartment, or, as is the fashion, to a large kitchen and family room.