Coolboy is one of those small Wicklow villages with a pub, a community hall, and a green space nestling in the hills about two miles from the Coollatin estate. A recently renovated terraced stone-built cottage is for sale in the village for £78,000 through Kinsella Estates of Carnew.
The house, one of a terrace of three, was built as a labourer's cottage in the days when Coollattin was still a working estate. Now, of course, there is a golf club at Coollattin, which will likely be an attraction for someone looking for a house in Wicklow.
The cottages on either side of this one have been renovated by their owners for use as holiday homes. The one for sale has been extended, and refurbished inside in country style. The small sitting room has a timber floor, the kitchen is newly fitted and there are three bedrooms and a bathroom. It has electricity, mains water supply, and oil fired central heating.
There is a shared lane-way at the rear of the cottages, and across it, each cottage has a long, sloping patch of garden. At the rear, the cottage has a view of the Wicklow hills; there is a stone wall sheltering the small front garden, and the house is across the road from a village hall.
If your fancy is an inexpensive property, Harrington Lait of Wicklow town, has Mucklagh Cottage, in Aghavannagh, Co Wicklow. The cottage, in need of refurbishment, is traditional in style - it has a large kitchen/living room with an open fireplace and a back kitchen off it, and one bedroom with a loft overhead. There is a septic tank on the property, a telephone, and water from the nearby mountain stream, but no electricity. It stands on three-quarters of an acre, and is for sale for £50,000. This cottage has a roof, four walls, and floors, and the family who own it use it for holidays. And if you want to get off the beaten track in Wicklow, Aghavannagh is the place to do it - right in the forest (with red flags warning of the nearby Glen of Imaal army firing range) you feel hundreds of miles away from Dublin, instead of an hour or so's drive. Buying a cottage in Wicklow has long been the fantasy of many Dubliners. So it's a little surprising to find that there is still a pretty good supply of properties available at relatively reasonable prices, whether you are looking for a holiday or permanent home, a derelict house with a view or a renovated cottage ready to walk into.
What the prices are relative to, of course, are those in the high-priced Dublin market and, say, remote cottages in places such as east Clare, where a derelict cottage on half an acre will cost from around £15,000 upwards.
In Wicklow/Wexford, a similar property will start from around £29,000-plus, with prices rising the closer you get to Dublin, according to estate agents such as Eileen Kinsella, of Kinsella Estates in Carnew/ Gorey/Baltinglass, and David Quinn, of A D Quinn in Carnew.
They both report that prices rise from around the basic £30,000 up to between £70,000 and £125,000 for a renovated county council cottage on half to one acre, depending on location and quality of finish. And location will probably have the greatest effect on price, with cottages with views of Wicklow/Wexford's beautiful rolling green hills commanding more than others.
Even more significant, however, is proximity to Dublin: properties around the pretty, quiet villages of Shillelagh, Tinahely and Aughrim, for example, will cost some £10,000 more than similar properties around Carnew, say both Ms Kinsella and Mr Quinn. And prices rise by the mile the closer you get to Dublin, adds Mr Quinn, with rural properties in the Ashford/Rathnew area being particularly expensive.
Obviously, it is an advantage being close to Dublin, whether you are in search of a weekend retreat or want to relocate permanently and commute to Dublin for work. But the main Dublin/Wexford road is now so much improved, it's worth considering looking a little further south than Ashford if you're trying to save a few pounds. Outside rush hour, it is an easy one hour run, for example, from Dun Laoghaire to Gorey, now that the Arklow bypass is open. In rush hour/ Friday evenings in summer, of course, it is a different story: even at 4.30 p.m. on a weekday evening, traffic heading south slows from around Kilmacanogue.
Indeed, if you're happy to have a Wexford retreat, you might save some money: many Dubliners are very fixed on the idea of the "bit of land in Wicklow" says Eileen Kinsella. In one extreme case, a buyer who was close to signing for a property near the Wicklow/Wexford border called off the deal when he realised his otherwise "dream" cottage had a Wexford postal address.
There is a great deal of interest, mostly from Dublin, in rural properties in Wicklow and Wexford, both from people one agent dubs "tyre kickers" (who will look at their fantasy cottages but never buy) through to those intending to move there to live full-time. Driving around the wonderfully isolated Wicklow/ Wexford border, up and down the gentle hills which yield many pretty views, Eileen Kinsella points to a neat cottage on half an acre bought by a couple who sold an ex-local authority house in Greystones to move here with their young family. Others who make the move for good include young professionals, sometimes people who can "tele-work" from their home in the quiet back roads of the countryside.
David Quinn reckons that the ratio of people buying permanent homes to those buying holiday cottages is about 70/30. But it is not young high-flyers buying holiday homes: it is much more likely to be a forty or fifty-something couple who have come into a lump sum, looking for a near derelict cottage for a modest price which they will do up little by little over a period of time, until they retire and move in permanently. In some cases, pre-retirement buyers try to reduce their working hours, so that they can turn every weekend into a long weekend. And some people, says Eileen Kinsella, are content to just have the land and may never do very much with the property.
She says that derelict cottages, the ones selling for relatively modest prices, are often the most popular, because they are affordable and fulfil that Dublin fantasy of doing-up-your-own-cottage perfectly. The other reason is that it may be easier to get planning permission to convert or refurbish, even tear down and rebuild, on a site with an existing structure - although under Wicklow County Council's strict planning regulations, this is not a foregone conclusion.
It is vital that you talk to the council before you start dreaming up plans for a site or a beautiful ruin: under Wicklow's regulations, even local people can find it hard to get permission to build, and Wexford County Council has recently started to tighten up its regulations too.
