Category Archives: FORGET

Property not worth looking at

A note on the Pre-63 Debate

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Are Bedsits Gone Forever?

There seems to be a lot of panic in landlord, tenant and journalistic circles about the new rules for basic minimum standards of accommodation. I’ll be honest, I don’t get it.

Take this article in The Independent for instance:

 

UP to 1,000 pre-1963 rental properties worth an estimated €500m are in danger of being shut down next year because the owners say they cannot comply with new legislative changes demanded by the Government. . .

 

The IPOA believes that the majority of pre-63 owners, whose buildings hold around 6,000 tenants, have been thus far unable to comply and won’t manage it by the deadline.

The main obstacle it says, is negative equity, which is preventing those who cannot afford to make the costly renovations from selling their properties to someone who can actually afford to undertake the work.

Almost all properties bought since 2002 are now in negative equity.

 

Well first off, the IPOA are talking about 6000 tenants, but the 2006 census found there were 14,480 tenants living in bedsit accommodation. That already tells you how much of a change has taken place. We’re talking 4-5000 rental units in a rental market of about 200,000 rental units (2%) and a country that has hundreds of thousands of empty properties.

But more importantly, think about what the new regulations actually mean. These are the minimum standards of accommodation as laid out by the act:

  • Ensure that the house is in a proper state of structural repair. This means that it must be essentially sound with roof, floors, ceilings, walls and stairs in good repair and not subject to serious dampness or rotting. The new Regulations strengthen this requirement with effect from 1 December 2009 (see below)
  • Provide a sink with hot and cold water
  • Provide a separate ventilated room with a bath or shower and toilet
  • Provide heating appliances for every room lived in
  • Provide facilities for cooking and for the hygienic storage of food, for example, a 4 ring hob with oven and grill, fridge-freezer and microwave oven
  • Provide clothes washing facilities
  • Provide clothes drying facilities if there isn’t a garden or a yard
  • Ensure that electricity or gas supplies are in good repair and safe
  • Ensure that every room has adequate ventilation and both natural and artificial lighting
  • Provide a fire blanket and fire alarms
  • Provide access to vermin-proof and pest-proof refuse storage facilities.

Let’s face it, what we’re talking about is your own bathroom, cooking facilities, a washing machine, a clothes rack and a few electric heaters. Even the not so charming bedsit I’ve shown in the picture in the top left probably meets these basic minimum standards. It’s this one by the way, Longwood Avenue, South Circular Road, Dublin 8. There’s a bathroom, there’s an electric radiator visible, there’s central heating, there’s (presumably) hot and cold running water. There’s a fridge, a sink, presumably a cooker. The washing machine might stump them, but as far as I know “laundry facilities” somewhere in the building will cover that.

Oh and a decent bin.

There are dozens of other, equally crummy flats, that will meet the new regulations. Unfortunately the new regs say nothing about minimum size, the wallpaper or furniture.

 

13 McBride Avenue, Mervue, Co. Galway

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13 McBride Avenue, Mervue, Co. Galway

13 McBride Avenue, Mervue, Co. Galway

13 McBride Avenue, Mervue, Co. Galway is up for sale, by auction, with O’Donnellan and Joyce in Galway. Advised minimum value, E100k. Surprisingly, or maybe unsurprisingly, that seems to be almost as low as it goes in Galway. To my eye, this house looks like it was inherited in the late ’90s and used as a student let thereafter.

Outside, the porch looks rickety. The neighbours have changed theirs, and it’s right on the property line, which limits what can be done with the porch on this one. Otherwise the front of the house looks relatively ok. Windows and roof seem fine, though I can see that a few of the neighbours have changed their windows, and this style/age of house isn’t known for its insulation value so there’s probably a bit of ugrading to be done there. The garden is overgrown, and the plants up the sidewall would need to be taken care of.

The sitting room carpet is pretty spectacular, but it’s also removable. No visible cracks or peeling wallpaper. I see no plugs or radiator in the room though. The photos give me no feel for the downstairs layout. The sitting room is at the front, the dining area is at the back. What’s with those two lights on the wall in the dining area? Seems very strange, both in location and fitting style, was it used as a bedroom? Is that door off the lino area into the kitchen? Is the dining area/kitchen an extension out the back. I’m assuming that the unit in the old chimmney breast is the central heating.

Upstairs none of the three bedrooms seems to have a double bed, but it looks like two of them are big enough. The bathroom makes me cry.

Let’s see, overall, a decent site with possibilities to extend. The house might be in good nick, that’s not much use when you have a tiny kitchen, a messy downstairs layout and a probable need to rejig upstairs. E100k seems a little steep.

Marella Holiday Village, Enniscrone, Bartragh, Co. Sligo

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Marella Holiday Village, Bartrah, Enniscrone, Co. Sligo

Marella Holiday Village, Bartrah, Enniscrone, Co. Sligo

What an ugly house, that’s my first thought. I’m not sure if I have much else, but seriously, what an ugly house. Or rather houses, since Lot 6, Lot 66 and Lot 85 are almost identical. Four bedrooms, detached, used to be on sale for E270,000.

I’ve been to Enniscrone, I happen to like it, it’s the only place in Ireland I can remember the sea being vaguely warm, but it is massively overbuilt. I really wish there was more to say, but there’s not. I can’t find a single photo that shows the inside of these houses anywhere. Outside, they’re ugly and look like they haven’t been looked after in a few years or longer. Are they worth even the reserve price? I don’t know. I guess if you really, really want a house down there maybe, but these are so singularly charmless that I’m not sure I could bring myself to.

Maybe if I went to visit them I’d change my mind.

Lot 54, 41 Seville Place – Update

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41 Seville Place, Dublin 1

41 Seville Place, Dublin 1

I got an excellent contribution from Bargain Hunter on the old post about 41 Seville Place today, and it deserves a post of its own. So here it is, in its entirety:

“This property is now up for auction in the next allsops. The maximum reserve is 35,000.

There are a few reasons why it’s not the bargain it looks to be. Firstly there seems to be some questions over the title. The only vesting certificate provided is a copy. The original is presumed lost but what happens if someone shows up with the original and saying they had an arrangement with the previous owner sale after you’ve forked out money to supposedly have bought it? Can it even be registered without it now that registration is compulsory?

You need to read the special conditions of the sale carefully to have spotted that little gem, I’m not saying it’s been deliberately done to mislead people but the copy is referred to as “the vesting certificate” even the downloadable is called vesting certificate so some people might not spot the issue till to late.

The other issue is condition. First off it’s not a 4 bedroom, it’s only got 3 “habitable” rooms and I use the term loosely. The ground floor consists of a hall and large room that may have been 2 rooms sometime in the past but now is knocked through. Upstairs you have 2 more rooms that were probably the original bedrooms. The basement has 3 area’s but the ceiling height is too low for them to be used as anything other than storage and as the wall are directly on the flagstones the digging out some extra headroom is not going to be be cheap. The front basement windows are now bricked up and might have to stay that way for structural reasons.

The house has serious Water and Fire damage and underlying damp and possible other structural issues. You’ll see a crack just above the door as you enter and the wall between the hall and ground floor room has subsided there is a crack visible the whole way through at the top of it where it meets the ceiling. That damage was probably caused by a fire in the basement, soot marks externally at the front of the basement and the basement damage internally are visible even at a cursory glance. The area is high flood risk so the basement also needs to be tanked as well as urgently treated for damp which is so bad the bricks are crumbling. The buildings to one side are to be demolished and I’d be worried that might cause serve damage. Even if it doesn’t immediately cause damage without proper underpinning it’s likely the new building going up beside it (one neighbour told be a methadone clinic) will cause problems down the road.

The original water tank burst. While a new tank was put in at some stage it’s now located in the rear upstairs room. On top of that damage the roof valley collapsed too. The ceiling downstairs has started to collapse and the walls dividing the front and rear portions of house are badly damaged. At a minimum the roof will probably have to be replaced due to the rotting of the roof timbers and the floors/ceilings and internal wall look like they will have to be replaced too. Due to the damp pretty much every surface has fungal growth on it so the entire house needs to be re plastered and the damp treated.

Oh to top it all off the only bathroom currently is a shed (walls are not proper external walls maybe just 80mm tick. That is raised on one side by a stilt made of concrete blocks with the other side resting on the rear garden wall. That will have to go but good lucky getting planning permission to replace it with a more permanent structure.

You’d need to get it really really really cheap to make all those gambles worthwhile, even 20,000 seems overpriced if you end up with nothing at the end of the day.”

and then a final comment:

“Oh and I forgot to mention the house is fully to the brim at the moment so there maybe be other problems hidden away never mind the small landfill it will require just to clear the place. The chimneys need seeing to too and the stack if not the entire chimney looks like it needs rebuilding or removal.”

Huge thanks to Bargain Hunter for the excellent contribution!

2071 East 105th Street, Los Angeles CA 90002

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2071 East 105th Street, Los Angeles CA 90002

2071 East 105th Street, Los Angeles CA 90002

For Irish houses I always look at the roof and windows to see if they’re in good repair, for American houses I always wonder if it matters because the walls look like tapping them would make them collapse. 2071 East 105th Street is no exception.

It looks to my eye like a prefab house that’s been placed on a vacant lot, but maybe I’m wrong. At 616sqft it’s small by any standards and the inside looks grim. Surely they could have managed more flattering photos?

What I really love is the way you can see the map of the LA property crash in the price history section of the listing. From $270,000 in 2005 to $60,000 today and still falling. How far will a neighbourhood like this one fall? Who knows.