If you spend €895k on this house you are a moron

If you are willing to drop nearly a mil on a gaff cause you’ll have a few swans handy to shit on your lawn, then by all means, be my guest.

This property isn’t one of the usual suspects that reaches the upper echelons of virality on Irish Twitter. It’s not a solitary 4x4m room that doubles up as a kitchen and a bedroom. There’s no queue of young people competing to reluctantly pay €1000 a month to piss four yards from where they sleep.

No, this gaff is being pitched to a completely different set of people, with by the looks of it, a lot more money than sense.

Before I inevitably start clowning the property to rid myself of years of repressed guilt for pledging all my pocket money to stop Joseph Kony in 2012 let’s have an honest examination of the place.

Put simply it’s a terrace house beside a canal, with three bedrooms and it costs a whopping €895,000. Yep, €895,000.

To experience the full absurdity of this property you have to engage in the kind of creative thinking that someone actually purchasing this property wouldn’t possess.

Take a moment to imagine you have ninety grand spare for a deposit. What wild features would you expect? What madness could they fit in this expensive terrace house? A fully-furnished billiards room? A diamond encrusted chandelier? More than one bathroom…?

Put yourself in the shoes of someone that could afford this property and drift away into the depths of your imagination.

~Insert dreamy transition to fictional universe here~

It’s a Saturday morning, you’re hungover, you just overpaid for a dodgy brunch and anymore expensive disappointment might push you over the edge. (Spoiler, there is more).

Opening a heavy looking door, the agent is there to greet you. Following a handshake you are prompted through a hallway that’s seen more dirty feet than your nephew’s onlyfans subscriptions and a plant withering faster than a Dublin landlord’s erection at the thought of a rent cap.

The scepticism is creeping in already.

“Stay positive, it’s just the first room, surely the value lies elsewhere?”

Starting to breathe slightly heavier you mentally apply some of the bullshit faux-modern changes you spotted on Grand Designs half way through your second bottle of Pinot.

“Just add a little thing here, a lick of paint there…”

Sorry to break it to you, but a stainless steel fruit bowl and an alexa ain’t going to help. If anything drunken slurs of “play Lighthouse Family”, will only compile the misery felt in this room.

The next room isn’t any better.

900 fucking thousand to resemble the inner walls of the Gryffindor common room. Jesus.

The decor and colours genuinely looks reminiscent of a terrible Father Ted, Harry Potter crossover episode. All that dining area needs is a few goblets and  you’ll no doubt start to hear Moaning Myrtle tripping over Ms Doyle.

They aren’t the worst rooms of all time, but with the context of the house price you realise how ridiculous the capital’s housing market has become.

Continuing your fictitious tour and tailing the agent up the stairs like they are Dublin’s pied pyper of shitty abodes, you begin experiencing mixed emotions. You cross your fingers in the hopes of a more pleasant room and clench your arsehole, fearing the consequences of your questionable meal and another dated, overpriced room.

Interrupting your anxious inner-monologue the agent continues,  “Number 20 is a 149sq m property that has been home to the same family for 70 years, and could do with upgrading.”

Surely the first bedroom will be more promising.

“Oh for fucks sake.”

It’s like poetry in motion as you spot a wardrobe that you swore featured in an episode of Downton Abbey.

Jesus, what shape is this room?

Imagining this picture in black and white with a chamber pot under the bed and you could swear it’s a still frame from an orphan’s bedroom in Oliver Twist.

Trying to put a positive spin on things you realise that in the room’s almost medieval status it has probably seen so much disease you’ll likely become immune to Coronavirus.

Just to bring you out of this twisted, fictional viewing for a moment. If this isn’t proof of the utterly fucked housing market in Ireland I don’t know what is.If you are reading this likelihood is you are aged 18-30 and have struggled to find a place to rent or are still shacked up with your parents. Conversely there’s people willing to pay huge sums to get unfinished shite. The housing market has completely warped our sense of value. Eugh.

Let’s just keep it moving.

“Windsor Terrace is one of the nicest stretches in Portobello. The fact that it is a cul-de-sac means the only cars are those of neighbours, which makes it less busy than the many rat runs in the locality used at peak traffic times,” says the agent as they chime off more of the property’s online description.

The next bedroom is similarly grim viewing.

Do you ever look at a picture and it has a smell? That musty, velvet blanket on the bed is nasty. The bed sheets are more sexless, victorian marriage than jazzy Hugh Hefner love robe.

Not even hallway Jesus can save you it seems.

“The house could also be extended – subject to planning – though the rear garden is not very large but could, with the use of a good architect, become something special.”

This description of the garden says it all. That’s basically property agent language for, “This garden is small, overpriced and unfinished, but if you spend a metric fuck ton more it could look ok.”

Look it’s obvious this isn’t the ugliest and most impractical property in Dublin. It is however, proof of an utterly skewed housing market that benefits from people with inflated wallets mindlessly blowing their financial load. Could you actually imagine dropping 900k for a small, completely dated terrace with one bathroom?

Whoever does end up buying this spot, I hope they learn a lesson tinnitus induced by the relentless noise of  the neighbouring swans and the inevitable renovations needed.

Click here to view the listing.