Some advice on this place please

loveisdivine

It seems like all we can do now is wait and see what an engineers report brings up. It's all really just speculation til then I suppose.

It's good to hear other people's experiences.

the_syco

Front door leads onto a road that will get traffic from the farm up the road; how busy is the farm? Does it include passing cows?

HeidiHeidi

OP, did you see last night's Room to Improve?

It's a good example of the horrors that an old house can throw up (albeit on a much bigger scale in last night's programme).

loveisdivine

No didn't watch it, but just read the overview of the episode on the RTE website. Is wet rot and fungus not the sort of thing that should be picked up on an engineers survey?

Obviously that situation is what you most fear happening. But I don't want that fear to put us off at least exploring the idea.

The_Conductor

loveisdivine wrote: »

No didn't watch it, but just read the overview of the episode on the RTE website. Is wet rot and fungus not the sort of thing that should be picked up on an engineers survey?

Obviously that situation is what you most fear happening. But I don't want that fear to put us off at least exploring the idea.

It may or may not be. Its quite easy to tidy up these type things- such that they wouldn't be evident unless you sought them out very very closely- however, obviously any cleanup/tidyup wouldn't past muster other than immediately after it was cleaned.

eezipc

On one side, 99k seems a bit high but it may be commuting distance to Dublin so that might explain it.
Wait for the engineers report. But if there is nothing seriously wrong with it, I would grab it and run with it.
To be honest, I think that house looks fantastic and with a bit of imagination it could end up amazing.

We did something similar last year. We bought a real old house and it needed alot of work.
We started with a bedroom and a makeshift kitchen and we moved in. We have been working on it ever since. Now it's a decent house but we are not done yet.
We didn't really do anything for the past 3 months because of the weather but we got an amazing amount of work done this weekend and now the hunger is back.

Don't get me wrong, it could be a long process and could end up costing more than you thought but it could all be worth it in the end.

HeidiHeidi

loveisdivine wrote: »

No didn't watch it, but just read the overview of the episode on the RTE website. Is wet rot and fungus not the sort of thing that should be picked up on an engineers survey?

Obviously that situation is what you most fear happening. But I don't want that fear to put us off at least exploring the idea.

I'm absolutely no expert on these things, but all the rot and fungus seemed to have been hidden behind dry lining so unless your engineer or surveyor started poking holes in walls then there was no way of knowing.

It was also a product of previous work (drylining) that had been done to that house, so this may not be in the slightest relevant to the house you're considering - it's more an observation on the hidden problems that can be uncovered in an older house.

It looks charming. I would be concerned about the cost to update it. The updates could take away from the charm.

Is there any parking and storage space?

Have you considered building a house to your own requirements?
Have you considered would this suit as you get older?

HeidiHeidi

Deleted User wrote: »

It looks charming. I would be concerned about the cost to update it. The updates could take away from the charm.

Is there any parking and storage space?

Have you considered building a house to your own requirements?
Have you considered would this suit as you get older?

This is exactly what happened in last night's Room To Improve (IMO). Everything that they loved about the house, that gave it its charm, wound up gone.

Again, I'm not saying that this would be the case here but it's worth bearing in mind.


How much (if any) land comes with the house? There is no mention of outside space in the ad.

(apologies, the pictures give a bit of an idea - I'm presuming it's the semi-circular garden you can see in the aerial picture?)

Also, I'm completely intrigued by that curtain in the sitting room - what's it hiding???

PhoenixParker

The one thing that really stands out for me is that it really is a tiny house. Even finding modern furniture (beds in particular) to fit it will be tough.
Neither bedroom is big enough to count as a modern double bedroom, so effectively it's one bed sized.

loveisdivine

We were in Ikea yesterday and I checked bed frame sizes, the master bedroom would definitely fit a double and in the spare room we plan to have a sofa bed, as we rarely have overnight guests.

We are the type of people that don't want a big house anyway, we like small. Obviously not tiny which is why we would plan to add an additional room. We only really want to have what we need, we like to live as minimally as possible.

I was wondering if it was a boiler behind the curtain!? Who knows!

Also while we were in Ikea, they had a kitchen set up that was the same width as this one, but only about half as long. It was genuinely enough space for us. It felt comfortable and you had room to move around. It was nice.

I think as this point I'm less concerned about space and more concerned about making sure we don't end up with a collapsing moldy old house!

eezipc

loveisdivine wrote: »

We were in Ikea yesterday and I checked bed frame sizes, the master bedroom would definitely fit a double and in the spare room we plan to have a sofa bed, as we rarely have overnight guests.

We are the type of people that don't want a big house anyway, we like small. Obviously not tiny which is why we would plan to add an additional room. We only really want to have what we need, we like to live as minimally as possible.

I was wondering if it was a boiler behind the curtain!? Who knows!

Also while we were in Ikea, they had a kitchen set up that was the same width as this one, but only about half as long. It was genuinely enough space for us. It felt comfortable and you had room to move around. It was nice.

I think as this point I'm less concerned about space and more concerned about making sure we don't end up with a collapsing moldy old house!

Our house is tiny. We ordered a super king size bed and the delivery guy laughed at us because he said it would not fit. We made it fit without any problems. Now there is not too much space around it but it's fine. Walk in wardrobes or en-suite bathrooms are over-rated anyway....

I don't see why these old houses appeal to people. For the buying cost + renovation of that place you will build a new modern house that better in every single way. Small rooms, low roofs, tiny bathrooms, no space for en-suites or walk in wardrobes, badly insulated, hard to heat and many more reasons along with the hassle of getting it done and potential for hidden problems.

That house on room to improve was a perfect example overall it cost them about 560k all in.

You would buy a site and build a massive house and garage that would be far far better than even the renovated house they had and you would have plenty of change out of 560k.

loveisdivine

Dexter Early Stagehand wrote: »

I don't see why these old houses appeal to people. For the buying cost + renovation of that place you will build a new modern house that better in every single way. Small rooms, low roofs, tiny bathrooms, no space for en-suites or walk in wardrobes, badly insulated, hard to heat and many more reasons along with the hassle of getting it done and potential for hidden problems.

That house on room to improve was a perfect example overall it cost them about 560k all in.

You would buy a site and build a massive house and garage that would be far far better than even the renovated house they had and you would have plenty of change out of 560k.

Some people don't like modern homes. I don't need an en-suite or even own enough clothes to fill a walk in wardrobe.

Unless I was millionaire and I could afford to build my own dream earth ship home, then I wouldn't want a new build in a million years! It's just not me. I want something with history, character, somewhere that feels lived in. I find old homes comforting in a way. New builds feel cold to me.

It's a totally personal thing.

farrerg

Just a thought, but is the money for the additional work coming from savings or a mortgage?
I don't want to burst your bubble but if it's the latter, you might want to speak to them as well before you go too far down the road paying for engineers etc.

New builds and renovations in areas where house prices are lower are difficult.
You might be happy to pay 99k and put 100k into the house, but if they will only lend say 80% of the renovation costs, and cap the overall LTV at 75%, you might need to have a nice lump sum yourself to put into it

loveisdivine

farrerg wrote: »

Just a thought, but is the money for the additional work coming from savings or a mortgage?
I don't want to burst your bubble but if it's the latter, you might want to speak to them as well before you go too far down the road paying for engineers etc.

New builds and renovations in areas where house prices are lower are difficult.
You might be happy to pay 99k and put 100k into the house, but if they will only lend say 80% of the renovation costs, and cap the overall LTV at 75%, you might need to have a nice lump sum yourself to put into it

We have about 40k cash savings to do the most important work first. Then it would have to be done as and when we have the money. Our low mortgage payments would mean we would have a large disposable monthly income which would help with getting jobs done every few months or so.

Obviously if there's lots of work to do, the extension will have to be put on hold until the more urgent stuff is taken care of.

Spanish Eyes

Looks like a charming house from the outside.

A couple of other things that I would be pondering, besides all the other contributions here...

I am not sure of your age group, so if younger, that's ok, but if older I would be concerned (myself) about isolation if I got sick and couldn't drive anywhere for example. Just something to be aware of. I know you would not be up the side of a mountain or anything, but it is a bit far away from the towns if you did not have/could not drive a car.

I am also not sure if the cost of renovation and upgrading would be a good investment. Maybe for you of course, to make it your own, but I am not sure that a price in excess of 200k would be achieved if you ever wanted to sell.

It is a charming house. But if the price seems too good to be true, it usually is.

Follow your dream though, and be aware of the financial and social costs of living in the sticks. Maybe that is what you want and what you are used to. Good luck if it is.

No one here wants to sound negative I don't think, just realistic. Best of luck.

BattleCorp

I renovated a three bedroom house a few years ago. We pretty much gutted it, all that was left was the walls, floors and roof. We installed triple glazed windows, insulated the inside of the external walls with insulated plasterboard, re wired and plumbed it, new oil fired central heating, new kitchen, insulated the attic, 2 new bathrooms, new internal doors, cut doorways out of walls, blocked up old doorways and we tiled all the floors. New fireplace. And we did a few other bits and pieces that came up. We spent about 70k on it.

I've a question for you OP. Is this your first house? In my honest opinion it is too small. You will run out of storage and living space. The idea of a very small house sounds romantic, but the practicalities of living in such a small living space aren't ideal.

If you buy for 99k and spend maybe 50k doing it up, would you get 150k for it if you tried to sell it? That's also something to remember. There mightn't be a good resale value on a small house like that.

You could make it into a very cosy place if you built on an extension but you are looking at adding another €50k onto the cost so now you would be approaching €200k.

I'm always of the opinion "buy once, buy right".

loveisdivine

Thanks for the input Battlecorp.

We've actually been kinda put off the house now, partly due to some info we received on it privately and also because the estate agent has ignored my emails/calls.

Can't help but feel it's all bad signs.

I agree that when we buy it needs to be the right place, so we don't have to move again unless we want too. However, we are only 2 people. We don't own that much stuff and I don't want to fill my house with "things". We actively try to recycle and re-use, not consume and grow. We want to take up only the space we need. Outdoor space is actually more important to us than indoor space!

I know people might roll their eyes, but it's important to us to limit our impact on the earth and that includes reducing our consumption of goods. Honestly, we would be pretty pissed off with ourselves if we ended up moving to a bigger house because we'd accumulated so many unnecessary "things" (which lets face it, most things are). We value simple, basic living.

TeaBagMania

So it looks like the property went Sale Agreed, was that you?

It’s a lovely home. I too like the simple basic living and will always seek out a small home in the country side. Don’t think there is a 200 year old house on the planet that doesn’t need “something” but investing in a house is one of the better gambles you’ll take in life.

Keep us posted

KJ

Not us I'm afraid! I imagine thats why the EA didn't get back to me though.

I'm sure it's for the best, thanks for everybody's advice though

edit - sorry, posted from my husbands account without realising!

eezipc

loveisdivine wrote: »

Thanks for the input Battlecorp.

We've actually been kinda put off the house now, partly due to some info we received on it privately and also because the estate agent has ignored my emails/calls.

Can't help but feel it's all bad signs.

I agree that when we buy it needs to be the right place, so we don't have to move again unless we want too. However, we are only 2 people. We don't own that much stuff and I don't want to fill my house with "things". We actively try to recycle and re-use, not consume and grow. We want to take up only the space we need. Outdoor space is actually more important to us than indoor space!

I know people might roll their eyes, but it's important to us to limit our impact on the earth and that includes reducing our consumption of goods. Honestly, we would be pretty pissed off with ourselves if we ended up moving to a bigger house because we'd accumulated so many unnecessary "things" (which lets face it, most things are). We value simple, basic living.

I certainly am not rolling my eyes. I think it's a great attitude. Without giving too much away, what info did you get on the house?