Who'd live in a house like this? Part 2

Leg End Reject

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119582297#Comment_119582297

That was on here before and described in the same way! 😁

Ubbquittious

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119583665#Comment_119583665

Here is another one for you albeit a bit pricier and not as well maintained: https://www.daft.ie/for-sale/terraced-house-17-sandymount-green-sandymount-dublin-4/4076431

looksee

There is something appealing about the Sandymount house - it needs complete redecoration but looks to be in good condition.

black & white

https://www.daft.ie/for-sale/terraced-house-6-coastguard-cottages-ring-strand-ballymacoda-co-cork/4051312

Fantastic place.

looksee

That's a lovely conversion, not sure I would want to live there in the winter but it would make a great holiday home.

griffin100

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119585029#Comment_119585029

I used to live in a similar row of coastguard houses in Blacksod in Mayo when I was doing fieldwork in college.

At the time the tower on the left was the 'Garda Station' - it has a handle you could pull and speak to someone in Belmullet. On dole day they used it in lieu of driving into Belmullet to sign on. In 1996 (it was a long tome ago) I could have bought one of the smaller 2 bedroom houses for IRL£17k. It would have been a great investment as a holiday home as the beach to the front of the houses is lovely. It was bleak in Winter though. I still have a real soft spot for that part of the country.

Graces7

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119585561#Comment_119585561

Love it! Perfection!

Ubbquittious

https://www.daft.ie/for-sale/detached-house-gurranes-lake-knockeenbwee-drimoleague-west-cork-drimoleague-co-cork/4077601

The photographer who did this one should win an award for all the effort they put in.

Leg End Reject

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119585561#Comment_119585561

No measurement details but it would be ideal for hobbits.

Graces7

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119585333#Comment_119585333

I lived near there my first while in Ireland, over 20 years ago now and yearned to come back and here I am .. and love the winters and the gales.

Addmagnet

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119584166#Comment_119584166

I like it, but I'd have expected underfloor heating rather than radiators.

Also, I'd take issue with the area where the dining table is - things like the floor finish and the light fitting above kinda 'nail' the dining table to that location, and in my fever dreams where I actually have the wherewithal to consider buying any property, I might want it elsewhere.

Suckit

...

https://www.myhome.ie/residential/brochure/cherryville-cottage-cherryville-kildare-town-kildare/4638841

Leg End Reject

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119587503#Comment_119587503

Peig Sayers meets hipster. It's like 2 houses in one.

TomSweeney

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119582541#Comment_119582541

wow!

retalivity

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119587503#Comment_119587503

Looks like someone ran out of money

Suckit

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119587546#Comment_119587546

I think it is a pretty cool idea, and it makes it seem a lot bigger, but an extension at the back might have given a better result. I like it, just not sure I €250,000 like it.

josip

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119587503#Comment_119587503

Been a while since we've had a crying chair

emeraldsky

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119583660#Comment_119583660

Did you not read my response? WE ASKED IF THE HOUSE HAD ANY PROBLEMS, such as the roof needing work, etc. We did not ask if the roof had asbestos, but we DID ask if it needed work - which would include removing any asbestos! And the estate agent said there were only minor cosmetic problems with the house. He LIED to us. I am not a contractor and neither is my husband; I cannot simply look at photos of the roof and tell whether it has asbestos in it or not. And we were far from the stage in which the property gets professionally inspected, so we had to depend on our research and the word of the estate agent. The property looks SO MUCH WORSE in person than it does in either the original listing photos or, especially, in the news article's photos; the whole thing was a bait & switch. I personally believe they used photos from several years ago for the original listing photos, because the house looked far, far worse in person. I encourage you to go see it for yourself.

emeraldsky

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119582793#Comment_119582793

You're quite right - the layout was utterly bizarre! The only way for the very top part of the house (which seemed like a separate house) to access the rest of the house was via a narrow, dark, unlit spiral staircase. They don't show that in the listing, or they didn't when we looked back in March. It seemed as though they randomly added rooms here and there, and the flow through the house made no sense; it's hard to describe, and the listing photos do NOT depict the confusing layout very well. I really hope some people here go to see it for themselves - it's quite weird. My husband and I are not opposed to weird, but we are opposed to impractical, and that house is really impractical for the way we would use it. It would work well for separate groups of people who only want to interact occasionally, as it is basically 2 1/2 houses joined together, but even then it is not intelligently designed. It certainly remains vivid in my memory for how unusual it is! It will be the perfect house for someone out there, of that I've no doubt, but it wasn't for us. :)

Deeec

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119587503#Comment_119587503

Thank god the owners are selling it. They have done an awful job on the kitchen and bathroom. Its lucky they havent unleashed their interior design skills on the old cottage. As someone above said it's like 2 different houses. I love the cottage and it could be restored sympathetically it would be beautiful. The black and white kitchen area and bathroom also needs to be redone.

Citizen Six

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119588012#Comment_119588012

I just scanned over your post actually. Have you thought about hiring someone to vet these places before you view them?

There's obvious alarm bells in the photos, that should have potential buyers asking questions. If the estate agent lied about them to you over the phone, then it should be picked up on. Never trust an estate agent!

I think you should leave the estate agent a full google review based on your experience.

The images shown in the recent listing are also use as far back as 2019, so no reason to think they couldn't be even older than that!

Maybe any future properties you are looking at, you could post here, and people can pick out stuff you may not have noticed.

looksee

About 4 or 5 years ago I picked up on the fact that EAs tended to describe any site under half an acre as 'half an acre', anything under an acre as 'an acre', and if it was actually approaching an acre as 'a generous acre', and so on, the descriptions of sites were totally unreliable, and at times outrageous. It was usually easy enough to check them on Land Direct, but it was so stupid that the descriptions were so useless.

I contacted the Property Services Regulatory Authority (PSRA) and pointed out that firstly the EAs were telling outright lies, and secondly this was bringing the service into disrepute because the lies were usually easy to disprove. I didn't get much of a response but shortly after I noticed that sites were being described in exact hectares as shown on the Land Direct site. Whether it was coincidence or I was just one of many complaints I don't know, but its worth contacting them.

emeraldsky

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119588281#Comment_119588281

We actually did consider hiring someone to vet places before we saw them, but we felt pretty confident that we'd done some good research. There should have been no need for us to hire someone to do this, anyway - what really should have happened is that THE ESTATE AGENT SHOULDN'T HAVE LIED. We wound up seeing something like 12 houses while we were there, and that was the only house that was a problem. The other estate agents were lovely (well, except for one, who gave us two hours to make a decision, but at least the information about the house was accurate). They answered our questions honestly and in detail, and the houses were great. I don't know what that agent thought he was doing - did he think we would be happy to discover that the house we just drove 5 hours one way to see had asbestos? Happy to discover that his assurances of "only cosmetic problems" were lies? Happy to have wasted an entire day on a house that was an absolute no-go? The icing on the cake is that he didn't even mention the asbestos until the end of the tour. My husband had asked at this point in time that, since the deck was falling apart (we were told to avoid certain steps, it was that bad), and the rest of the house had serious problems, was there truly nothing wrong with the roof? That's when the estate agent mentioned the asbestos. In retrospect, we should have just left sooner, but we'd just driven 5 hours and wanted to at least see the entire house and make sure we were making an informed decision. Sunk cost fallacy, probably. At least we got to see Wexford. :)

With every property we set up an appointment to see (we set up all appointments prior to leaving for Ireland), we specifically asked if the property looked true to the photos. We were flying ~12 hours, not including layovers, and we didn't want to waste any time while in country, so we were incredibly thorough in the questions we asked. You can guess what the agent said about this particular house ("Oh, yes, it looks great, just needs paint"). You still seem to be poking to find some reason to blame my husband and me for what happened, and you need to stop doing that. The estate agent is a liar, period. THAT is the problem, not anything my husband and I did or didn't do. Are you his cousin or something?

I'd considered leaving a Google review for him, but got distracted by the bustle of preparing for an international move. I might still do that. He is not a good estate agent.

KevRossi

Estate agent language regarding the house above in Kildare. They say "30 second drive to Junction 14 of the M7"

It's 3.2 km. So to get there in 30 seconds you'd need to going around 380 km/h. It's a 3 min drive according to Google. We can all check it out, so why lie?

And IMO 3 mins sounds better than 30 seconds as 30 secs sounds like it's going to be near a busy junction.

looksee

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119588044#Comment_119588044

It looks as though they are treating the old stone walls by covering with non-lime plaster, which will blister and weep in a short period of time, the work they have done is pretty bad all round. I have come to the view that old cottages are way more trouble than they are worth. Far too many old cottages have been (pretty much) irrevocably damaged by generations of people adding inappropriate treatments. I have an old cottage that fortunately is only a small part of my house (its a useful storage area, but that's about all) and it has been cobbled about to an extent that it would be very expensive to make it a genuinely useful building again. Especially given the current impossibility of getting anyone to do any building work at the moment.

miamee

The black bathroom in that Kildare cottage is giving me flashbacks to school where the main bathroom was painted fully in black including the hand drier to deter graffiti on the walls. (Clearly they'd never heard of Tippex 😂) But no, black just sucks all of the light out of any room.

Leg End Reject

The black probably disguises mould. 😬😬

Citizen Six

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119588386#Comment_119588386

I'm sorry if it comes across as poking. And I'm glad you got on ok with all the other houses. It can't be easy organising all that from abroad.

The house has glaring flaws in the photos they provided. If I had asked an estate agent about them, and they said they weren't a problem, then I'd know they were lying. So probably a lot more hidden things they'd lie about too.

I really don't understand estate agents that waste peoples time like this. As you say, an inspector/engineer's report will reveal these things. Maybe they are hoping for someone to offer lower than asking, given the work that needs to be done to it.

I've had to deal with asbestos in two houses myself, and isn't as difficult as some people think. Just costs money to have it dealt with expertly and disposed of correctly.

Deeec

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119588581#Comment_119588581

You are right. I think the current owners bought it because they thought they could renovate it cheaply. The thing is though you can never renovate an old house cheaply - if you do it on the cheap there will always be problems.

I have a family member who bought an old cottage. She renovated it cheaply and badly that its now a mess. What once was a cute cottage is now a horrible house to live in due to shoddy cheap work. I dont think she could give it away let alone sell it! She is in a financial mess because of it.

Kintarō Hattori

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119588386#Comment_119588386

I hope both you and your husband haven't been put off in looking for a property here, and that you find something you both love and get many years of enjoyment from.