With builders not busy - fancy a wreck?

With the cost of building work down by 30% and house prices cut to ribbons, a fixer-upper like this €450,000 house in Ballsbridge makes sense, writes JACK FAGAN.

WITH DUBLIN house prices close to bottoming out, an ever increasing number of buyers are on the lookout for bargains in the city.

A rundown four-storey Victorian house that’s just come on the market on Dublin’s fashionable Northumberland Road will be an interesting test of the market given that the asking price is a mere €450,000. That is a long way short of values on the busy Dublin 4 road where houses seldom change hands for less than €1.5 million.

However, number 19 differs from all other houses on the road in that it has been derelict for years and is in an extremely rundown condition.

Ross Shorten of selling agent Lisney is advising interested parties that structural work “will need to be completed by the end of the year”.

In recent years steel supports have been installed on the internal walls to stabilise the building which has 290sq m (3,121sq ft) of space over four levels. One firm of engineers has estimated that it could cost anything from €1.2 million to €1.5 million to put the house back into a liveable condition “even before considering a fancy kitchen or bathroom”.

That estimate will probably have changed in recent months given the huge increase in the number of skilled tradesmen pitching for work since the closure of most new housing sites in the Dublin area.

Ted Laverty, managing director of an online search service for tradesmen ( www.onlinetradesmen.com), says charges by tradesmen are down at least 30 per cent from the highs of 2007. To save money, many property owners are now acting as contractors and hiring in tradesmen as they need them to extend and upgrade their homes.

Architects, too, are finding that clients are seeking initial sketches only rather than committing to a full job, or the cost of on-site supervision. However, it’s also a time when clients can get top notch service from large and middle-sized architectural firms. Where once some firms may not have wanted to touch domestic renovations, many leading companies are now glad to get the work.

One group of architects launched www.homearchitect.ie last week, offering such a service, and Greg Tidall, of the company, says that a renovation of such a property, with a 20sq m (215sq ft) extension, would cost from around €1,430 a sq m for a more basic renovation to about €2,000 a sq m for a more high-end fit-out with good insulation and solar panels (there is a calculator on the website).

While the Northumberland Road house has a front and rear garden it does not have a car-parking space. Apart from being free to turn it into a smart D4 home, a new owner can also apply under the zoning to use it as an embassy, medical centre or for public worship. Interested parties will be relying on a wing and a prayer – and a lot of money – to change its fortunes.