In the current market homes in turn-key condition offer far better value to buyers than doer-uppers. This is especially apparent at the lower end of the market where asking prices have dropped in a strategic move to generate competitive bidding.
Number 52 Annamoe Drive is a mid-terrace concrete-slab constructed house that its owners bought in 2015 having previously lived in it on a rental basis. It meant they knew the house and any shortcomings it had.
“We got the option to buy but were slow to make up our minds and it had already gone to the market,” they explain. They paid €208,000 for it in October 2015, according to the Property Price Register, and lived on in it until the next summer, when they started their upgrade.
One half of the couple trained as an architect and that expertise, coupled with their in-depth knowledge of the house from having lived in it, informed some very simple but clever layout changes.
The house opens into a tiny hall and extends to 60sq m (645sq ft), but moving the dividing wall between the living and kitchen just two inches forward gave them space to install a small but perfectly workable eat-in kitchen where there is a dining table for two.
Glass double doors now open from it to the garden and a long narrow window at the other end of the room brings natural light into the cooking and prep part of the room. The smart soft white gloss units and laminate worktops are set in an L-shape with space for a slender dishwasher.
“We had no wall space in the living room,” they recall.
They resolved this by moving the location of the internal door between the living room and kitchen, shifting it from its position in the centre of the wall to the side and replacing the hinged door with a single-sized, pocket sliding option. This simple move gave room for a sofa and armchairs on two sides, facing a wood-burning stove.
The garden is beautifully appointed with all-weather deck set at the same level as the kitchen floor, thus extending the space to the outside. The middle part has an artificial lawn, and limestone paving leads down to a wired and plumbed shed that functions as their laundry room, keeping noisy appliances out of the house.
Facing west, it is private and planted with all manner of specimen shrubs including veronica, a red robin tree, lavender and lilies.
Upstairs, the main bedroom is to the front and is big enough for a king-size bed. Previously the bathroom was accessed via the second bedroom. This has been reworked to give a smart shower room and a small second double bedroom.
The house was insulated and internally slabbed and the owners also installed new uPVC windows and new internal and external doors to bring it up to a decent C1 Ber. It was also replumbed and rewired.
Given the lack of available stock it will probably sell for well in excess of its asking price but offers a turn-key condition home with a second bedroom that a couple starting out could rent to help with the mortgage.
If the same style of property were to come to the market in the previous condition of number 52 it might ask €295,000; you would then have the Herculean task of trying to getting a builder to renovate both it and the garden for €100,000 to match the offer here. Unless you have family in the building game, or can do all the work yourself, that is a big ask.
