The Dublin Community Blog

As most people know, the housing market in Dublin is crazy. We have recently decided to explore the option of buying our own place. I had hoped that may desire to own my home would diminish when I moved country but it seems to keep popping back up. We met with a mortgage person a while back and had decided to wait to start looking for places since we don’t qualify for a 100% mortgage and wouldn’t have a down payment until August. We don’t qualify for the 100% mortgage because we haven’t been in continuous employment for a year. I haven’t had a break in employment for 6 years (even though I moved country in that time) but the bank won’t count the first six months I was here as continuous employment since in Ireland there is a probation period. Why don’t they just say 18 months in current job then? That is really what they mean. Qualifying for a 92% mortgage was surprisingly simple. The broker didn’t really do a credit check or anything to get approval in principle. In the States, they do these complex calculations based on your credit history, employment history, etc. and come up with a mortgage amount and interest rate. I like that it seems people here all get the same interest rate.

So, on Monday we happen to see a place out in Parkwest that looked interesting. We saw two apartments. Both were two bedroom, two bathroom. The smaller one was listed at 300,000 and had a small balcony. It was small but large enough for two people. The other one was actually spacious but had a bid of 340,000 put in by the first person who saw it! We went back to look at the smaller apartment yesterday for a second viewing. The apartment was nice. It needed flooring since no one has lived in it before but that wouldn’t be that hard or necessarily that expensive.

Here’s the major catch for us: we take public transit and it was a 20-25 minute walk from the Luas! The Cherry Orchard Arrow station is supposed to move but they don’t know when. We saw about 5 busses on our two round trip walks to and from Park West to the Luas station. That is NOT well serviced by public transit like the ads claim. We decided that we weren’t interested in the Park West even though it seemed like an OK value because it is a long walk from the Luas and there isn’t anything to do out there. If it had one or the other drawback, we would have gone for it but it had both and we thought that we would be bored. There is one restaurant (a Chinese/Thai place that is expensive but pretty good) and Bennigan’s bar. I coudln’t bear that thought that Bennigan’s would be my local instead of the Porterhouse. So, we will keep looking and see what we find.

There was also another drawback for both of us: the whole park has a cold feeling to it. There is no character and at night it is pretty much deserted other than the car traffic. We want more of a neighborhood feel and a place that has some character. New places tend to feel very sterile. They are nice in that they wouldn’t need a lot of work but we aren’t opposed to working on a place and modernizing it.

I think that we made the right decision since I would have a nasty commute from Raheny/Glasnevin to Park West and with the time that we spent walking, we could have been in Tallaght where we might be able to get a small house closer to the Luas line…