LISA O’BRIEN’S REVAMP

LISA paid €270,000 for a 1930s cottage with outbuildings on an acre in Co Meath just over a year ago. “When I bought my little 550sq ft cottage, it needed extensive work. I was buying the location, the school bus went past the gate. I would have paid €100,000 for that — I’m a single, working mum, I can’t do the school run. I knew the area well. I was also buying the site, as there it has an acre and, potentially, down the line, I might get planning for a house. “The whole roof had to come off. It was completely rotten. Even with my contacts, it cost €12,000. I never envisaged that. This coming from me, the professional. “I did all the demolition work first, rewired, re-plumbed. I put in €100,000 just to get it liveable. There were single-glazed windows and I lived with them for a good year. You couldn’t close them. I had tea towels stuck in them in the winter to stop the spiders getting in and the draughts because the windows I wanted cost ten grand and I didn’t have it. So I left the windows, they were fine. I phased that. “If I had to sell my cottage tomorrow, would I lose money on it? Yes. It wouldn’t be valued at €370,000 if I was to put it back on the market. It would be prices at around €320,000, it’s still two bedrooms. But I just wanted to get on the property market and I see the potential of this site. I probably will get planning permission, so I’d have a site with planning and I’d sell it for €120,000. “I got draft plans for an extension drawn up and took them to a local estate agent to get valued. They told me that, as a four-bed, my house would be worth €550,000 to €600,000. I knew then what I could spend on an extension and still have equity in my house if I sold up. That’s the next phase. “As it stands, I’m not in negative equity, but I’m in a position where I haven’t covered the cost of the renovation if I sold out. “But the potential for me overrode the risk. The affordability of the payments on my own, what my mortgage payments are on a monthly basis — it was cheaper for me to pay the mortgage here, than it was to rent a similar size house. My mortgage payment is €500 less than my rent was.”