Spending €320-350k on a one-bed apartment

B

bobsuruncle

Guest
Is this lunacy? Looking both city centre, near northside and near southside. Prices of two-beds are out of my range and one-beds in town, Raheny, Clontarf and near Southside are €320k plus.
What's the deal with appreciation on one-beds?
Thanks in advance!
 
Is this for residential purpose or as an investment? If you're going to live there, go for it.
 
My only advise is not on price but on the actual building it's self. If it's timber frame, which an awful lot of them are today . . . . . . run a mile.

Living in a timber frame apartment/house is a nightmare!
 
Martina said:
My only advise is not on price but on the actual building it's self. If it's timber frame, which an awful lot of them are today . . . . . . run a mile.

Living in a timber frame apartment/house is a nightmare!
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Hi Martina,
Just wondering why you think this - was considering a timber frame hse. Why would you advise steering clear? Thanks
 
Hi Ciaran,

Most estate agents today won't even point out the fact that houses/apartments are timber frame! And to be honest if you are building way out the country and have the extra money for the highest level of insulation etc, then it might be alright.
You will always be told that they are so easy to heat and very, very warm and to be honest I have no arguments there. They are indeed very warm.
BUT . . . . I live in a quite exclusive estate (renting) in the south side of dublin (not that that makes any difference!) and to give you some idea of the standard of housing I'm talking about I'll tell you that the last house to be sold in the estate sold for over 850K
I live in one of the humble apartment on the estate I won't even hazzard a guess at what they would sell for.
To make a long story short we can hear every move from the apartment next door. We can hear drawers opening, doors closing, televisions, phones . . . you name it and we can hear it . . . . . . yes, I mean rompy pompy too!
It is that bad that at night I can hear my flatmate turn the pages off a book in the bedroom next door!
Also, don't be under the illusion that timber frame is cheaper that a normal block house because it's not. The only advantage to timber frame is it take a fraction of the time to build. But as far as I'm concerned a good house is worth waiting for.
I am actually looking to buy a house at the moment and I wouldn't touch a timber frame house if you paid me, infact it's one of the first questions I ask an estate agent.
 
have to agree, semi D, terrace, apartments with timber frame structure are very noisy... detach would be fine however...


hard to knew of 320,000 to 350,000 is good value for an apt, depends on location, structure, size, balcony? terrace? etc etc.... a property is worth what someone is prepared to pay for it....!!!!
 
Sorry to jump in.How does one know if house is timberframed construction. What basic checks can be performed.
 
Molly said:
have to agree, semi D, terrace, apartments with timber frame structure are very noisy... detach would be fine however...
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I totally disagree... we have a semi-d timber frame house and you can't hear anything from next door unless we both have our windows open. Once in a while we hear their little girl having a tanturm but only because she is stomping on their wooden floors.

My parents house is brick build and you can hear a lot more including the neighbours flushing their toilet during the night. I also rented for a while in a brick build and we could hear next door pulling out the plugs....

so it really does depend on the standard of insulation used....
 
It's impossible to tell a timber frame house just by looking at it from the outside. The internal walls are sometimes a giveaway as they are all just partition walls. Another way you might tell is to bang on the inside of an external wall .. . . . . ie the inside of the wall on the front section of terraced house, this too will have a hollow, partition sound to it. But the only true way you can tell is by getting an engineer to have a look at it.
Don't rely on an estate agent to tell you because most of them don't know and care even less. Their only concern is making their commission.
I viewed a couple of houses and I expressly told the estate agent on each occasion that I DID NOT WANT A TIMBER FRAME HOUSE! When we arrived at the house it was obvious from the inside that the house was timber frame and I asked the very, very young estate agent if the house was timber frame (even thought I knew the answer at that stage and then she admited that she didn't know. Screeeeeeem!
No wonder car sale men and estate agents have such a bad name!
 
I would have to aggee with kiddo, I live a semi - d timber frame house, and I never hear anything from my neighbours, they also have no carpet on the stairs and I still dont hear them...


But back to OP question, you would have to be careful with a one bed apartment, if property prices start to slow or go down, these types of property general are the first to be hit..I lived and worked in banking in london in the late 80's when property started to fall in value, and it would scare the living daylights out of you, I seen one bed apartments halve in value.
 
RainyDay said:
Is this for residential purpose or as an investment? If you're going to live there, go for it.
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I am very surprise to hear you say "go for it". This price seems outrageous for a one-bed apart (500/600 sq feet?) AFIAC.
I think most people , especially FTB, have completly lost the notion of value for money, and out of desperation, buy almost anything for any price. And they fuel the prices to the pleasure of the builders & its friends.
"Price can not go down" they think. Watch that in few years time....!!!
An ECB rise of 0.0001% and half of them will have to sell.
 
bacchus said:
An ECB rise of 0.0001% and half of them will have to sell.
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I very much doubt that this is the case. One ten thousandth of a percent increase will force half of recent FTBs to sell!?
 
ClubMan said:
I very much doubt that this is the case. One ten thousandth of a percent increase will force half of recent FTBs to sell!?
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Ok obviously the guy wasnt being serious

But a 1-2% rise could really push some people to the limit, and the scary thing about that is a 5% raise is not outside the realm of possiblities over the next 10 years.

Naturally, inflation eats into a mortgage in the longterm (altho currently inflation is quite low) but what is very tough in ireland these days is that wage inflation is quite low and will stay that way as IBEC (kinda understandably..) will play every card they have to keep wage inflation low and thus try to keep irish businesses more competitive.

As for buying one bed apts, there's a good chance they'll bear the brunt of any price decrease, I've heard crazy predictions for the number of new apts being built in the dublin docklands area alone. There's a real danger of a glut developing in these type of properties.
 

Ultimately you have to decide what way property prices are going to move over the coming years. I am not a subscriber to the view that property prices are going to head down for an appreciable lenght of time . You may well have the equivalent of a cyclical downturn for a period but to delay buying on that basis would be folly in my view because guessing it's timing and duration is nigh on impossible. Long term property prices are and have been trending up even with cyclical changes in factors like output growth and interest rates. Trend growth of just 4% in house prices over the next 20 years will see a 335k apartment come in at around 735k in 2025. Now I could be totally wrong of course but I'll be in good company if I am. Are Joe O Reilly, Sean Dunne, Johnny Ronan, Noel Smyth etc.etc. and the bankers who back them all similiarly clueless about the long term direction of property prices in Ireland? I don't think so and I have been happy to put my money where my mouth is in that regard over the last twenty years and will continue to do so !
 
It doesn't sound great to me. You'll probably need to use a lump sum of at least 40 grand and your repayments are going to be over 1400 a month.

Consider an alternative. You could rent one of these places for around 1000 a month and put the lump sum into an equity fund; top the fund up every month with the 400 or 500 you are saving (over a mortgage) and your fund should be worth around half a million in 25 years time. The advantages of doing this would include:
  • You are not tied to the property. You can move around and live anywhere you want.
  • You are not tied to the mortgage payments. You can take a sabatical from work without worrying about the repayments.
  • You'll have a large amount of easily accessible money throughout the period if any need arises.
  • You don't have to worry about interest rates or a property market collapse which would make it impossible to get out as you'd need to acquire a lump sum to cover the negative equity.
Admittedly, this goes against the recommendation to buy a PPR as soon as possible but I think it is worth considering alternatives to burdening yourself with such a large mortgage. The notion of getting a foot onto a property "ladder" only makes sense if house prices continue to appreciate ahead of inflation. Otherwise you need to ask yourself whether you expect to be living in a one bed apartment (more likely to be 400sq foot than the 500-600 that someone else suggested) for 25 years.
 
Fair point - I should have qualified my 'go for with' with a condition that the price represents decent value for money for that location.
 
demoivre said:
Are Joe O Reilly, Sean Dunne, Johnny Ronan, Noel Smyth etc.etc. and the bankers who back them all similiarly clueless about the long term direction of property prices in Ireland? I don't think so
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Personally, I wouldn't put such faith in the ability high-flyers and bankers to predict the future.

Banks when under pressure to perform and unconstrained by regulation will often enter new and riskier loan markets.

I'm sure you've heard of the savings and loans fiasco - by some accounts that took half a trillion tax-payer dollars to fix. Not suggesting that's what'll happen here but demonstrates the point.

Some of the high-profile Irish deals being put together recently show the banks willing to be take extraordinary risks in order to increase their loan book. (as detailed in the Jury's example a couple of weeks ago in the SBPost)



 
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