Dublin’s cheapest house currently listed on Daft for €120,000 is number 3 Millbrook Terrace, a one-storey, end-of-terrace cottage in a small cul de sac by the Camac River, off the Old Kilmainham Road.
It came to market through agents Herman White about a week ago, and had by mid-morning Monday been viewed over 14,000 times. It needs everything done to it. “It’s really a site,” explains selling agent Kate Randall-Duffy.
It’s listed as measuring 36sq m (387sq ft) in size, although this may refer to its overall plot, for when the measurements of the property’s three rooms, one of which is a lean-to with outside toilet, were totted up it came to a sum just shy of 24sq m (258sq ft). This equates to a price per square metre of €3,333 if at a measurement of 36sq m or €5,000 if it’s 24sq m.
A planning application to extend the house was lodged back in 2018 (2806/18). The request to “rebuild the existing single-storey dwelling as a three/four storey house, together with associated site works and areas of balcony to front and rear” was declared invalid. It was a lovely idea as the house isn’t overlooked to the front and would give you gorgeous views of the river and its greenery but what would such a renovation cost? Such unknowns didn’t deter interest in number 24 Rutland Cottages in Dublin 1, which came to market seeking €85,000 in October 2019. The 31sq m (334 sq ft) single-storey cottage was then the cheapest house listed for sale in the capital. In rag order it garnered more than 42,000 hits across property portals Daft and MyHome and had 110 interested parties across its threshold.
Eighteen months and one pandemic later, the digital traffic to this D8 abode is over 14,000 on Daft, about one third of the total Rutland level, but it’s still early days. While it isn’t listed on MyHome, Randall-Duffy says there are around 12 interested parties.
Many of us look at screens and dream, but the real cost of buying and the requirement to have additional cash for the refurbishment means that that is all most of us can do.
The house isn’t habitable and it’s located beyond the boundaries of the Living City Initiative, a scheme that allows higher earners to write off their income tax liability against certain refurbishments over a certain period of time. And even if it did come under the scheme, the tax liability of those on more modest incomes wouldn’t cover the cost of its refurbishment at today’s tender prices.
A new initiative is needed to support those buyers who take on such projects as their primary residence. There also needs to be some sort of carrot for the smaller building firms involved in bringing these houses up to current building standards.
