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Why housing is so expensive today.

roc_abilly

roc_abilly

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I wanted to make a start on this. I'll come back to it when I have more time.

The analysis needed to answer the question encompasses a system that has existed with certain purposes for a considerable time period.

Within this system encompasses other sub-systems and institutions, encompassing banks and our governments who create and uphold certain facilitative legal rights and privileges that create the mortgage market etc.

And in this country during the critical period 1997-2007 this system encompassed auctioneers, developers, publicans, politicians, estate agents, the public sector, mainstream media, land owners, the mediocre and their professional institutions, and so on.

Not forgetting the Irish people as a whole within this system who voted for the paradigm of strokes 1997-2007. Who voted for a paradigm where mortgage burden steadily increased, and who were happy to acquiesce in a paradigm where they would take on a 35 year double income mortgage, as compared to the previous generation's 20 years single income.

(Of course, as long as the following generation would take on 50 years, and so on... Sure didn't Japan get to the 100 year mortgage.) Then, when the paradigm came tumbling down, when later generations came close in fact to being saved from this greed, they voted in a party they knew would be the least sparing on the welfare class and other vulnerable etc.

But look. I need to separate the strands. Where to start with it.

With the young people who were cajoled into signing a piece of paper that promised 30 years of their working life in exchange for 317,500 or so euro, which promise was instantly monetised and instantly pocketed by developers, lawyers, estate agents, commissions to banking management, taxes to pay politician and public service fat cat salaries, ad infinitum?

Or with the fact that when the system came tumbling down it was rescued by the same people who were the financial architects of the system? Larry Fink of Blackrock, and Blackstone, KPMG etc.

(And putting aside for the moment the three white-wash reports with carefully restricted terms of reference that were claoimed to be investigations. I may return to that as well).

Yes, perhaps I will start with Blackstone and Larry Fink. Begin at the beginning.

Because Blackstone takes its name from Sir William Blackstone who writing in 1753 was the man most responsible for the philosophy of property ownership that property interests have ever since championed towards their own rights.

While Larry Fink was the guy who pretty much created single-handedly the market in mortgage backed securities back in the late 70's, and he was the first person that the Irish government reached out to when the system faltered. (Fink owns Blackrock, the largest money and asset manager in the world, which Blackstone financed for him in the beginning, and housed it in its offices, in return for a 50 per cent stake. And Blackrock of course was the outfit that undertook the bank stress-testing for us, analysing potential loan losses under "stressed conditions" in the four main Irish owned deposit banks - to inform the calculation of capital requirements under the PCAR etc.)

Anyway, I'm getting bogged down. For the first post I just wanted to throw a bunch of stuff up here. I will try to gradually whip it into shape. Let's properly answer the question of why housing is so expensive. Fuck this simplistic shit about immigrants etc.

So I will revert below with a post on Sir William Blackstone in the next couple of days. Let's get at the very roots of the whole thing. (After that I will do a post on the credit cycle and accompanying boom and bust, with an eye to the devices deployed post the 2007 bust that replaced the broken money markets with private equity and venture capital etc.).

To revert.
 
The traditional house with front garden, back garden, a parking drive, and as much privacy as possible on a massive sprawling estate of other two-up, two-down little piggy-bank domiciles. Paddy hates the idea of living in a shoe-box apartment, which to him is a failure in life: a house is a home, a flat is a temporary solution to a longer term problem.

Land becomes very expensive when city planners, county council, and developers crawl into bed with each other. They build out, not up. City limits becomes a moving target between the city and the suburbs and on out into the sink estates. Mica, pyrite, shoddy building practices, cheap materials, imported workers with no stake in the end result, the legal apparatus set up to protect the developers from any moaning and groaning about ten year old houses starting to cave in and sink into the bogs.

Collusion on a grand scale of nods and winks, brown envelopes flying all over the place, backroom promises and stabs in the back, the honest brokers thrown under the bus (think Tom Gilmartin Snr and the whole Liffey Valley project - which yesterday was named as being the location for another 8,500 or so six to a block type housing) and quality builds voted out in favour of quick-fix solutions, estates in the middle of nowhere with fuck all facilities: no shops, schools, etc.

Young people too stupid to question the narrative who allow the media to pressure them into buying into three quarters of a million lifetime debts on shitty houses they'll never be able to pay the debts off and will never own, and investing it into houses that begin falling apart pretty much as soon as the mortgage holder sticks their keys in the front door and walks in. Sales price on said house suddenly becoming worth less than half the deposit the fools put down on it several months before.

The sheer number of parasite leeches involved down the chain: the engineers, the builders, the legal conveyancing, the civic authorities, the housing tax, the property tax, the water tax, the extra box room tax, the surging energy costs, the desperate need for private transport - two cars in the garage to get the kids to school fifty miles away and Ma/Da taking turns at being late to work as a result.

Then there's this:

Airport in chaos, thousands miss their flights, their connections, their vacations, their pick-ups, and their luggage?

We're sorry.
Sunday DART service at the height of Irish summer overcrowded, lacking air conditioning, space, seats, an open window to breathe, out to watch an air-show in their thousands?

We're sorry.

Hospital services unavailable, no beds, no English speaking doctors, few facilities, beds in corridors, long waits for life-saving operations?

We're sorry.
Ten thousand homeless, hundreds of them kids, junkies in the dorrways all over the capital, children eating penny dinners off the cold concrete outside the GPO?

We're sorry.

Fuel prices soaring, electricity bills increasing, food prices surging, apartment costs through the roof, impatient banks and other loan operators?

We're sorry.
We're sorry.

Rain, endless rain, storms, seas, oceans, rivers, lakes, ponds, streams, estuaries, channels, puddles, and they introduce a water tax?

We're sorry.

Crime escalating, dead bodies in the cities, guns, rifles, gang warfare, drugs on the streets, drugs in the estates, no cops, no security, no safety?

We're sorry.

You show up half an hour late to work on Monday after a hectic weekend with the kids, the granny, sorting out Sunday the roast, and balancing the monthly spend?

You're fired.

Ireland is too far gone to rein in. The damage was done long before the cornerstone was even lifted and the governmental stop-gap of mass emigration becomes a necessity again and again each time they drop another whammy. Then they blame YOU on it.

It's a win/win for those running outside the loop.

Those inside are fucked. For. Life.

But not me - after seeing the changes around 97-99, I got the hell out when my rent was taking more than 50% of my income. Any fool could see what was going on. The only upside I personally considered was after a conversation with my kid brother. He said: 'fuck it, let them do what they want to. It'll all fall apart like it always does - but at least we'll have a vibrant city center rebuilt and modernized'.

He was right in one way - the city center is completely different now, bit not in a good way. I opted for emigration because I found a better place to operate with my skills set and preferences in life. He kept working his fingers to the bone, living in a rental out in Clonee, another sprawling estate of boxes and winding streets full of house with fuck all facilities near by. He saved, as did his lady and now they own a massive five-bed on two acres of land surrounded by trees and farmland, fully modernized and beautifully appointed. They're also 75% paid up and will own it outright in another shirt few years.

Meanwhile, many of the suckers I hung with up until I left are in penury for life. Others couldn't stomach it and opted for the exit: rope, car crashes, gassing themselves, overdosing, alcoholic poisoning, etc, etc. All fucked, all dead now.

That's the model Ireland STILL favours, so not much has changed and nor is there the will to change it.
 
Building out instead of up causes all sorts of problems for a not very rich country like Ireland. I reckon the front and back garden routine is a popular tradition that we brought in from the countryside life we used to lead long before the cities tenements were built, used, abused, and then leveled again. A lot like Finns trying to be invisible to their immediate neighbours. The general rural unwillingness to meet or speak to people who live nearby simply in order to try to feel somewhat anonymous. But we built apartments because the finished version had to offer certain necessities.

A transport grid for an apartment based city is simpler to design, will remain longer in use, and will serve extremely well because we all live tightly woven in apartment blocks. The city is tightly interwoven to the degree that if you're coming in from from the suburbs and rural areas, you can also use the underground city and its roads to get to where you're going.

Dublin is a mess, the grid is hopeless - it could only have been better designed of you gave one of Val's cows a bucket of paint and a boreen to scribble on. Building out instead of up means everything you get and use will always cost more. The bus lines are longer and serve multiple areas and estates en route. Totally impractable. They're also NOT connect via circling ring roads laid out like web, meaning that if I need to get to Castleknock from Ballyer I have to bus into town and then take the Castleknock/Blanchardstown line back out again. Or I could walk the valley down into Chapelizod in fifteen minutes - then thumb a ride up to the village (cars always stop if you stick out your thumb at Knockmaroon Hill, it's criminal not to) in five minutes. Traveling to that same destination by bus will take at least two to two and a half hours. Fuck that.

Walk, thumb, twenty minutes - done.

Sprawling estates are harder to maintain. The budgets are always small, the work arduous and always the same end result: part finished, but sure we'll give it a lash and you know yourself. Blah fucking blah. You need more staff covering more ground with housing estates. Blocks up here require one professional team and they can finish a block scrub-up in an hour or so.

The only positive with the front/back personal garden ideal is having a wee token of fresh green grass to look at. But you can have that on a balcony too, if you want. Lots of people lay a sealant, then clay, then grass seeds, and grow a patch for themselves. Others buy in pre-grown grass and lay it like carpets to walk on outdoors. Then they recycle the matt when winter kicks in. I've grown herbs and flowers in buckets and pots on mine, and I have a sea view to the south east and of the forests to the north west.

So I don't miss or need a garden. What I also don't miss is a fucked up transport system like Dublin's. It's carnage. Fucked up. But up here it's all running to the second, and the entire grid itself runs on automatic programs that set the timing of the traffic lights depending on where the clog-ups are as well as where everything else is too. It's a self-sufficient system and human input is minimal.

Apartments are cheaper in Ireland but then again anybody buying one is doing so because they have to because a house is simply too expensive. Up here apartments come in all styles and standards: from great to fucking awesome.

The place I'm doing the finishing on these last few days was bought by the investor for €135,000 but we ripped everything out down to the concrete and rebuilt. We also added an extra bedroom and knocked a few walls out for a more open and spacious feel. With the extra bedroom making three and with a large balcony, large hallway, own sauna, separate wc, laundry room, and three beds? It'll whizz off the listings for at least €230,000+.

Money well spent: these blocks are built with solid cast cement over a foot thick between apartments. With minimal support structural walls added, everything can be moved around and made to serve different functions depending on your family lifestyle. Walls added, taken away, later added again. We have to cater for a potential buyer on Wednesday (he knows the renovation/work is in progress and things are piled up for a five-man complete renovation team).

Old Ballyfermot and the entire estate is familiar to me. But when I was staying out in Ongar (for example) I got lost in the estates every time I tried to get home. It all looks exactly the same, and they don't bother with signposts on many smaller streets. I've knocked on the wrong doors, been attacked by snarling Alsations, fallen knee-deep into a stream of filthy water at one in the morning after a long day. It fucking horrendous. Like some surreal movie set. I'd go mad living in a place like that.

Fuck that.

Depressing looking, grim to live with, and with the rain and grey clouds all fucking year?

Nah, not for me.

Most cities build up rather than out have a hell of a lot more options than sporadic services scattered here and there among so many separate Dublin estates. Plus: if you don't get on with your neighbours? Messy. On the whole, I'll take a sturdy and near-vacuumed sealed Finnish built apartment every time. The Irish are still trying to figure out how to build an apartment block that's been designed to last at least twenty years. In fact, many of the Celtic Tiger apartments are now fire and general health hazards. The buyers got royally shafted, every one of them. Many can't live in them, but still have to pay for them? Think about that. Then think about that happening in Finland?

See?

Fucked up: the poor suckers.

Wouldn't be allowed to happen at all up here.
 
Building your own place straight from the box isn't that expensive. Most money would go on land and adding the necessary in/out water and energy supplies, but still: Nordic builds in County Cavan might go a long way towards reminding filthy pigs like Val how the rest of us live.

This one's a pre-pack log cabin home and like many Finnish mokkis, it can be shipped in and built in a short period of time, provided you've already sorted your foundation and supplies. There are three bedrooms, but in Finnish tradition, rooms can be for whatever you want them to be. The price is also ridiculous by comparison to your regular shitty Irish builds at just €180,000.

The front exterior offers you a nice veranda set up for drinks in the evenings watching the sun go down:



The kitchen and dining area are cozy and warm:



Above the staircase, a mini bar for drinks and play room:



The bedrooms are angular and again very cozy:



The outside decking offers plenty of space for your party and event needs. You could fit a live band and a gangload of people onto this one:




And for only €180,000 you can add your own outdoor wood burning sauna. If you're nearby a like, even better: you can sauna and swim in the Nordic tradition and enjoy the quiet life away out in the woods next to nature and the elements.

I've stayed at many of these pre-packed log cabins and they're sealed tight and very easy to heat. Being mostly wooden, the wood retains the heat and keeps you warm long after your fire has gone out. They have character, style, and a rustic sense of rural adventure about them.

Given the choice, would you go for say this at around €240,000 on some estate in Dublin's suburbs?



Or this for 35% less?



Jeez fuck but I couldn't bear to live in Ireland again.
 
I could see myself scratching the Royal Irish arse of a Saturday morning with the papers and kippers and coffee alright the Mowl, in a mokki in Finland.

And being quite happy while doing it.
 
Lumpy Von Talbot said:
I could see myself scratching the Royal Irish arse of a Saturday morning with the papers and kippers and coffee alright the Mowl, in a mokki in Finland.

And being quite happy while doing it.
Click to expand...

This weekend we celebrate Juhannis, the Finnish midsummer party.

Even now I can hear how few people and how little activity there is in the city; everyone's gone north to get the mokki sorted and to begin their summer. There's no-one around. The streets are empty, the shops quiet, little traffic and little noise. This happens every year, yesterday while heading out I saw lots of my neighbours packing the cars with their necessities so they can spend as much of the summer as possible outdoors, in the wilds, at one with the elements.

Traditions matter.

It's a Saturday afternoon, all I can hear is the birds chirping.

It's magical.
 
I was again looking at the listings on the Finnish sites to help a friend along in his search for a new place here in Arabia.

Average prices for studio-type accommodation (one room, open plan, own balcony, own WC, shower, etc. inc private/group sauna access) are currently low as the summer break sees most students head home for the summer. Shares are also available with very competitive prices, but you'll still be sharing communal space with others.

One bed apartments are many and the prices aren't bad: average of say €600.00 p/m for 50SqM, own domestic facilities, balconies, storage spaces, all services included (garbage, sauna, storage, car parking, bike lock-ups, etc) and lots available for short periods with even cheaper prices. These are usually third level students planning on return after summer. Nice choice of neighbourhoods to suit different tastes, and the price variations still cover everything you might want at your new address.

I'll select one of the ads and you can see for yourself what you get for your money up here.
 
Okay - this one was one of the first I looked at, and it's going for €550.00 p/m for one or more persons.

Screen grab of full page for your confidence this is for real:



Situated in Espoo, a town about fifteen minutes from central station. Own sauna, two bedrooms, lots of light and fresh air, traditional wooden flooring throughout, bathroom fully tiled and glazed, own sauna, central heating/cooling included, with storage facilities, own balcony, garbage, laundry, and janitorial services included.

Some more shots:















So tell us: how would THAT work out in Dublin?
 
Or we can play a game: you tell me how much you want to spend per month on how many people and how close to the centre of town you want to be and with what facilities you desire to have in your new home. I'll source something for that price and that distance to town and we can take it from there. But be warned: you're NOT going to like what you see.

I mean, you'll LIKE what you see but it'll burn you that you can't have it.

At least not in Ireland, anyway.

Fire away.

 
It's now €700+ a month to rent a mattress in a bunk bed going by Daft.ie, or €8,400 a year. Fingers crossed the lad above you isn't prone to snoring and farting after a night out on the town.

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If you'd like something fancier such as a box room that'll be €900 a month, or €10,800 a year.

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Jesus fuck - I've seen bigger prison cells. That shit's not just depressing, it's fucking criminal.

I'm fairly sure that if I were living in either of those situations, then suicide would be a fairly practical option. No heart-ache, no fussing, just a length of rope and a solid cross-beam or lintel to loop it over. Three minutes and you're gone. Given also that as soon as you walk out the door of your shared barracks, you're walking out into the filth and grime of Dublin city. The smell of piss everywhere, dog-shit on your boots, horrible accents, nasty bastards every ten paces, the grim old buildings that lack any character at all. Hopeless architecture, cables and wires overhead from the days of the common domestic telephone, the television cables, and now the electric feed for the trams.

The only cables you'll see up here are for the trams - everything is underground. Not under cement, mind you - but under easily accessible tubes/tunnels that can be opened, the innards repaired, updated, and locked closed again without any digging, drilling or otherwise. Traffic continues to flow, the air above you is clear and the skies are big. Burying your service ducts under concrete? In the middle of the fucking road? Think about that? Why the fuck do they STILL do this? It's horribly inefficient, expensive, ugly, time-consuming, and hopelessly complicated. And so very fucking Irish.

I'll see about adding a few comparable to let ads from up here over the weekend.

It'll make you fucking sick with rage at what they're charging you for what little's on offer.
 
It is. You can almost smell the damp and humidity of the breeze blocks these crappy houses were built with. It's amazing that a landlord can actually publicly lease such below-par conditions on the Irish people. There are prison cells with more space, less damp, and far less depressingly suicidal rotten conditions. Ireland never ceases to amaze me with the endless extremes of ignorance and lack of care fostered on her citizenry.

I remember all too well staying with extended family when visiting home in the newly built houses out in Clonee and Ongar. They looked fine from the outside, (if terraced housing is to your taste) but inside was another story. Sleeping at night and someone gets up to use the toilet. The creak of the staircase. The grind of the toilet handle, then the entire network of pipes inside the house began to groan and rattle. The thump of footsteps on the stairs, and then the house would settle down after the cistern was finally full again. You'd think that 'grand, now I can sleep' would be nice, except for the house next door and someone else thumping up and down the stairs to use their toilet. It was all the same noises and at the same level of volume too. The radiators clicking and rattling. The doors slamming.

It's nice to get to know your neighbours, but when you can track their daily life and personal habits by listening in the dark while trying to get some sleep is a few steps to close to bizarre intimacy to me. I don't want to hear the man next door having a piss like he's in the room with me, for fuck's sake.

Shoddy wasn't the word for it. Primitive would be a better and more suitable choice. And these were the same houses that back in the noughties were going for nigh on quarter to a half a million euros. A knacker's caravan would have a more solid structure. Many of the poor bastards living on the streets of Dublin city in shop doorways are the same fuckers who bought into these estates at the peak of the boom and couldn't keep up with the mortgages and were eventually booted out by the banks. The same banks who charged them astronomical fees before they sunk themselves and charged the public with the massive bill that still stands at over two billion euros. I can even remember when Brian Lenihan Jnr (RIP) made a bare-faced live statement on the RTE news that, after the banking collapse, many people were going to be out of work and would have no roof over their heads after the banks called the mortgages in.

Fast forward twenty years and look at your streets today?

Those sad and broken people you see lining the high streets today are the same poor bastards (and their children) the banks and the state fucked over. They're the same people Brian Lenihan told us were going to lose everything. And still all the same faces (bar the dead) still haunt Leinster House today, like none of it was their fault. It was YOUR OWN fault, as far as they're concerned. You bought the Kool Aid and drank it down in one gulp. Now you're out of the game and your kids are fucked. For life.

This is one of the major reasons I loathe returning to Ireland. After the plane lands and I hop the bus into the city, and the closer I get the more the streets are lined with broken people and trash. Garbage everywhere. Decay. Empty shops with boarded up windows. 'To let' signs everywhere. By the time I'm on foot on O'Connell Street, the dread grips me and stirs up my adrenaline and all of my senses start to peak. The horror kicks in. The everyday carelessness of the shoppers compared to the starving faces hiding in the crowds, shuffling this way and that. Nowhere to go, nowhere to be. No possessions bar what they can carry. It absolutely crushes me and my mood remains depressed for days after.

When my time is up and I'm heading home to Helsinki, the dread slowly begins to leave me, but it never really goes away. I carry it with me like scar. That could have been me. Or one of mine. Had I borrowed when the banks were sending me credit cards with ten grand available with no questions asked every week, then I too might have out on my ear. Thankfully, none of my family were suckered in by the Kool Aid. We kept working because we knew this wasn't going to last and when it finally broke we had fat bank accounts and some degree of security going forward. I saved all the cash I made from every trip home during the fat bastard years and it paid for my expenses up here. I'm proud I managed to make it and refused to announce it to the tax bastards. Fuck 'em. I paid out more than enough to Irish landlords until I left twenty-five years back. Fuck you and your 32% 'commercial artist's' rate.

To lubricate my flight home I'd usually buy a bottle of Bailey's in the city and drink it en route to the airport. After check-in, I'd go back outside and finish the bottle with a fat spliff, then go to the gate. As the plane took off, I'd see the Phoenix Park, Dublin Bay, Ringsend, all the major sites. Once we reach cruising altitude I finally start to unwind my head of everything that just happened for the duration of my visit. I can never get my head around why Dubliners are so cocky and full of themselves. Maybe it's a protective armour they wear to stave off the reality?

I have a bag of mushrooms a friend gave me. I'm waiting for the right day to do them. But I was thinking how the experience of mushies up here would compare to the experience in Dublin. The single worst thing I can think of is tripping in Dublin. The mere thought of it gives me the fear instantly. I'm fairly sure it would give me severe and permanent brain damage, never mind tearing my soul out and shredding it in the mincer. Holy shit. The fear? Years back I did a trip with a mate up in the Dublin Mountains. Afterwards, en route home, I walked down through Ballyer to my Mam's house. It was around seven in the evening. As I turned onto my street, I heard the theme from 'Coronation Street' emanating from the windows of one house. As I walked along, I heard it still playing in the next house, and the next, and the next until it was done. I was sure the mushies had worn off a couple of hours previously, but bang: the fear gripped me again and this time shook me like a leaf on the wind. I never felt so alien to this world as I did at that moment. Rows and rows of houses, all painted different colours, all with front gardens in various conditions of clean and fresh to utter chaos and motor parts, piles of horse shit, trash, garbage, broken glass, looking like they were hit by a bomb. Every time I hear that poxy fucking theme tune, my hearts starts to beat like a drum.

One thing's for sure though: those of you reading who've managed to adapt and find your niche in modern Ireland have both my respect and my sympathy. I don't know how you do it. How you keep on going when the days roll into each other and nothing ever changes for the better. Only the worst. Were it me, I know I wouldn't have lasted. I'd have given up the ghost entirely. Life would simply be intolerable to me. There'd be no reason to live. The rain. The cold. The damp. The mould around the window frames. The late busses and the pissing rain. The accents. The walking wounded eyeing the walking dead. The piss and bleach. The broken pavements and empty lots. The reliance on the rain to wash the streets clean. It doesn't work though, all that chewing gum and green phlegm spits, all that dogshite and the stink of stale piss. It's all still there the next day, the next week, month, year. But still it keeps inflating to unbelievable prices and costs for the everyday things you rely on, and it'll continue to be just as grim well into the future.
 
Even the Medieval nobility made sure to house the masses lest thousands of pitchforks arrive at the castle gates by torchlight. A volcano effectively undid the Ancien Regime. The bourgeois elite such as Varadaker are a shower of smug bastards by contrast though. It's your fault you can't afford a roof over your head...it's your fault you didn't pull yourself up by your own bootstraps.

Many of the worst tyrants in history made sure to at least make it look like they were providing food and shelter for the community. The new elites don't need to, they've campaigned for, and succeeded in convincing the masses that their plight is their own doing. And like idiots, the masses believe it. I guess all of this was common sense even a hundred years ago when 99% of the populace were impoverished factory and farm workers. Yet a population which believes itself to be equal / socially mobile can be bullshitted to no end - easily manipulated and with a misplaced optimism...the perfect prey for neoliberal bourgeois conmen and their bull manure promises.
 
€1,500 a month for a bedroom...and shared bathroom. At €18,000 a year, this would eat up 77% of a minimum-wage income (€11.30 per hour x 40 hours x 52 weeks). At €360,000 over twenty years you'd have a 3+ bedroomed house fully purchased with the amount you'd have paid for two decades renting this.

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Prisoners live in better quality than Irish tenants.

So fucking glad I got out of that fucking kip of a country; besides, even if you can afford to toss out €1500 a month on rent, the view out to the streets of Tallaght isn't exactly going to inspire you. Rather it's somewhat a suicidal looking space to inhabit. Imagine the rumble from the upstairs tenant? You could hear the fuckers fart, snore, hear every word of every row. Know when they're fucking, cooking, hoovering, or contemplating suicide.

That second shot of the kitchen? An absolute waste of space. Nordic themed design would utilize every square inch of that enclosure and make it a work of art. Irish style landlords? They don't give a fuck if you're black, white, yellow, alien, greasy, rich, on drugs, or senile - so long as they get their money. When the landlords of the nation deliberately drive down the quality and standard of available options (if there's any at all) then the tenant quotient will suffer. They're above the law, these cunts.

One of my addresses in Dublin for around four years during the 90s along the Beggar's Bush area off Haddington Road was at this lovely little spot (it's not number 3 - it's a 'named' house) which was in fact two cottages adjoining each other and a wall was taken out to connect them. The owner who bought it as an investment offered it to me to live in while I was scouting for a new address. he needed someone to live in it and I paid $15.00 per month (edit: week) for it. He covered the electricity and gas and I had the whole thing to myself. My bedroom was the little window on the upper floor to the left (the window went from the floor up to the angled ceiling). The kitchen and lounge took up the ground floor. A second bedroom opposite mine was piled high in music gear, flight cases, etc. He used it as an office sometimes, very rarely though. I used it for practice.

There were four open fires including one in my bedroom. A bathroom out back and a kitchen beside that. No neighbours at the time, the houses/mews nearby weren't there. A small garage run by the Irish mechanics who work on classic Triumph sports cars had a place thirty meters up the lane. That was it. I could make all the noise I wanted, throw big parties, dance or eat outside in summertime, and for a while I had two tables and chairs outside for passers by who might also ask for a coffee. So I kept the coffee machine on during summer days.

Fifteen Irish pounds a week.

For this:



The owner was a gas. He was my manager/agent at the time, so the deal was perfect for both of us. He lived elsewhere with his lady nearby his daily business (a rock and roll laundry shop called Soapy Joe's in Rathmines) and dropped by once in a while to collect or drop off things. No number on the door. I had my mail directed to my Mam's house instead. It's since been bought and done up to an amazing standard. One Irish paper featured it in the property supplement a few years back and the interior was stunning. Still the same red front door I had to bend down to pass through. Two downward steps onto the main floor. A spiral staircase and a windowed hallway that gave so much light. The walls are around twenty inches thick (the inside ledges beneath the windows were at least that width) and the two cottages were built around 1920/25.

It sold for stupid money, but not during the Celtic Tiger: the buyer sold it only five years back.

Of course finding gems like that anywhere in Dublin are extremely rare these days.

It'd be a hell of a lot pricier than the paltry few quid I paid for it.
 
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