With its all-white walls and pale painted floors, this two-bedroom terraced house at 10 Ivar Street, Stoneybatter, makes the most of its 56sq m (603sq ft) floor are by keeping decorative flourishes to a minimum.
There’s a Scandi-cool touch to the decor that you could say is in keeping with the neigbhourhood – many of the area’s streets take their names from the Vikings, who were once exiled north of the Liffey, with Harold, Olaf, Sigurd Road and Viking Roads all in the locale.
Asking €395,000, the house is already attracting good interest with 19 people showing up for the first viewing last Saturday, according to Patrick George of selling agents Sherry FitzGerald. It's got plenty of appeal – a pretty house on a quiet street, within easy reach of shops, pub and some great cafes, notably Slice around the corner on Manor Place and Cowtown on Manor Street.
The layout is simple with the front door opening directly from the footpath into a tiny porch and then into a livingroom with two focal points. The first is a period cast iron fireplace, the second a painted staircase leading to the first floor where there are two bedrooms, both doubles.
To the left of the staircase is a small lobby with floor-to-ceiling cupboards on one side. This lobby leads to the kitchen cum diningroom – a bright square room with units arranged along two walls and plenty of space for a table and chairs. The shower room which serves both bedrooms leads off the dining area and next to it there’s a small utility room that is in fact the back yard of the house, covered over, and with a door leading to a tiny lane that runs behind the houses.
New owners might consider extending, knocking the shower room and yard together, to make a larger kitchen, and turning the second bedroom upstairs into a bathroom cum dressingroom.
Number 10 photographs well but, in reality, there is work to do. The house has been rented out for the last decade or so and based on a recent listing for it on Daftin fact it could achieve around €450 per week in rent. While it is cleanly presented, it could now do with an upgrade to bring up its E2 BER rating.
On the plus side, it’s a very friendly area, says the next door neighbour who has lived on Ivar Street for more than 30 years and whose window sill is visited daily by a pair of pigeons and whose pet parrot, La La, can be heard trilling through the wall of number 10.
Many of the residents, he says, have lived for decades on the street, and houses don’t come for sale too often. The Residential Property Price Register bears this out showing just a handful of sales on Ivar Street in the last eight years.
In 2015, number 17 sold for €240,000; in 2016 number 14 made €361,000; while in 2011, number 34 made €167,000.
