Ed Williams (40) and his partner Alannah Horne (36) bought a derelict house in Harold’s Cross, Dublin 6, last year in the hope of renovating it with the help of a Government grant.
Fast forward 18 months and the couple have only just begun building work after a drawn-out grant application process and a considerably larger construction bill than they had budgeted for.
“We got three quotes from three different builders, and one of them was double what we’d originally budgeted. The lowest was still significantly more, but we managed to stretch to that,” Williams says.
This is not the first time Williams, who works for a tech company in Dublin, has renovated a rundown property in the city – but the experience this time was vastly different.
RM Block
In 2018 he bought an old property on Ormond Square in Smithfield, and spent a year renovating it before moving in.
“I was always looking at places that needed renovation. I’m pretty handy, and for this place, I did as much as I could myself to keep the costs down. I did the insulation upstairs, I renovated the floors and one of the walls, but then I got a builder for the extension,” he says.
After moving in just over five years ago he met his partner, Alannah, and the couple welcomed a baby boy, Oisín.
The couple now want more space, a bigger garden, and to live closer to Alannah’s family – all of which led them to the house in Harold’s Cross.
Buying it was a “very slow process”, with another bidder persistently bidding €1,000 more than them every few days.
It was advertised as a home that would qualify for the Vacant Property Refurbishment Grant, with the agent emphasising it had been vacant for seven years.
“I’m sure that was a factor in the bidding process,” he says, with the agent “using it as a selling point”.
The Vacant Property Refurbishment Grant was established in July 2022 as part of the Croí Cónaithe (Towns) Fund with applications managed by local authorities. The grant provides owners with funding of up to €50,000 for vacant properties and €70,000 for derelict homes. You must either live in the property yourself or rent it out to avail of it.
The State has so far paid out over €200 million on the scheme, with the number of grants paid out growing year-on-year, figures released by the Department of Housing in October show.
Minister for Housing James Browne has praised the scheme as “playing a key role in tackling vacancy and dereliction”. However, Williams says the process of applying for it and securing the funding is far from straightforward.
The most frustrating aspect of the process was having to wait for a completed builders quote before being able to apply for the grant. This meant that while the couple got plans drawn up and negotiated with builders, they could not start any work on the house because it had to be inspected by the council – and that could only happen after the application went in.
“The most frustrating thing about the grant process is that you’re not allowed to apply for it until you have a quote from a builder. We couldn’t get a quote from a builder until everything was agreed and everything was perfectly planned, so that meant we were literally waiting until the last minute before the build was starting before we could apply, and then everything was just a massive rush,” Williams says.
Once they got the builder’s quote, and put the application in, the process was “pretty quick” afterwards, he says, and the couple were “very happy” to qualify for the full derelict grant.
However, the huge jump in construction costs since Williams bought his last home meant the grant amount was really only plugging gaps in an already inflated budget.
They have had to remove a downstairs bathroom from their plans, and take landscaping and other elements of the build out of their contract in order to get the price down.
Even at that, the cost of the renovation will still have a significant impact on their finances and their future plans.
“I had hoped to change career, but that plan changed because of the cost,” Williams says.
He has been studying “quite a lot” in the last number of years, completing three postgraduate courses related to sustainability and business, in the hope of finding work in that area.
Now he can no longer afford to.
“It’s super stressful because you kind of second-guess yourself, like, am I really able to spend this much money? Is it worth it?”
Now that contracts have been signed and the build has started he feels a “weight has been lifted” because they can no longer second-guess themselves and can only look forward to the future.
“Alannah grew up just around the corner, and her parents live close by, so it does feel like we’re kind of going to be moving to a community, we’re excited about that. It’s kind of like the start of the next phase of our life, I suppose,” Williams says.
