Dermot’s €649,000 home did have room to improve
Celebrity architect will pump €380k return into dream house… and ‘gets’ why his clients f lip out
CELEBRITY architect Dermot Bannon has made a considerable profit on the sale of his home, which fetched €680,000, the Irish Mail on Sunday can reveal.
The Room To Improve star had put his Drumcondra house on the market in May with a guide price of €649,000 and there was huge interest in the property.
The sale on August 10 saw him net €31,000 above the original asking price.
With a mortgage of just €300,000 on the house, Bannon has yielded a return of €380,000 on the sale, much of which he will plough into the renovation of his new family home, which he bought earlier this year.
The Bantry Road house was advertised by DNG as ‘a simply beautiful family home complemented by a wonderfully designed extension to the rear overlooking a mature west-facing garden extending in excess 65m’.
The ‘impeccable’ 1920s home features some lovely details, including high ceilings, cast-iron fireplace and solid wood flooring.
Property records show that the starchitect had a mortgage of €300,000 with Ulster Bank on the Bantry Road house. The mortgage was dated in January 2006, which is when he and wife Louise bought the home.
Bannon’s new fixer-upper is also in Drumcondra and he is prepar- ing his own makeover. Talks are underway to film the renovations for Room To Improve but he has yet to convince Louise to take part. ‘It was broached. My wife is incredibly private and always has been. She always stands about 40 metres behind me in case a camera might see her. But we might do something. We are looking at filming it as people would like to see it. We have moved out and are in rental accommodation, so we are getting ready to start the build.’ Speaking recently to the Irish Mirror about the new home – which he has doubled in size – Bannon said the renovation was making him better able to relate to what his clients go through on his hit show.
‘We had to sell our own house to afford to buy the next one and now we have to do that up. It’ll be six or seven months before that’s finished.
‘I’d love not to be in charge of it. It feels a bit like the shoe is on the other foot. It’s not just the pressure of getting it right and all that but there’s also now money pressure. Every time something gets delayed, it’s another month’s rent.’
He continued: ‘It is a lot of pressure, a lot of stress. It’ll give me a new understanding of what the clients on Room To Improve go through.
‘I’d say [on the show] if there was a delay of a month, “It doesn’t matter.” But now I know it does matter – it’s a month’s rent, which isn’t cheap in Dublin.”
DNG’s Brian Dempsey said: ‘His dream now is to take on something you see every Sunday night – what he does for everyone else on [Room To Improve] he’s now about to embark on for himself.’
‘Every delay is an extra month’s rent’