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While we might slobber, or growl, our way through the room to improve and House of the yearFor most of us, the budgets involved make them programs that fall into the fantasy category, with pads you could only afford if their EuroMillions numbers appeared.
Much easier to relate to, especially if you’re looking to buy your first nest, is Cheap Irish Homes (RTÉ One, Tuesday, 8:30 p.m.), in which Maggie Molloy offers help finding houses to people who dream of going up the property ladder but whose mortgage approval would hardly buy them an outside bathroom.
Molloy, who runs a Instagram account Based on the same idea, he found himself in that position in 2004, when, on a budget of € 110,000, he began to believe that he would never be able to pay for his own home. But, as he drove through the country, he saw “bargain basement bungalows, forgotten farms, and cheap country houses.”
He ended up buying an abandoned three-bedroom country house, complete with outbuildings and an acre of land, in Co Tipperary for just € 80,000, leaving it enough to work on the renovation. “It has taken me years of hard grafting, but today is the house I always dreamed of having,” he says. Your mortgage? Only € 280 a month.
That’s the kind of figure Leanne, the young Dublin woman who appears on the opening show of this six-part series, could only fantasize about. Tired of paying an exorbitant rent in the city but with a maximum budget of € 100,000, she saw no possibility of buying. Then he met Maggie.
Leanne and her sister Vanessa at Cheap Irish Homes. Photography: RTÉ
Accompanied by her twin, Vanessa, Leanne is taken to four properties in Sligo and Mayo, three of which she likes. The second, a shack on the market for € 39,000, is so run down that it seems reluctant to get out of his car.
“This is very … different,” she says, not even influenced by the peculiarity of the bushes that grow through the walls. “Open minds, now,” says Maggie, but Leanne has none of that. “That is a gem for someone,” says Vanessa when they return to the car, disappointed by her sister’s lack of imagination. Leanne puts the pedal on the metal, unable to escape quickly enough.
In the end, she falls in love with a 200-year-old half-acre two-bedroom house with apple trees in the garden near Castlebar. With its price tag of just € 85,000, half the audience is probably tempted to bid. “It is very peculiar,” says Leanne (checked box), “and there is a bird box on the back, which is really encouraging.” She, she says, will definitely consider making an offer; she just wants to do a little research first.
“It has opened my eyes to what’s out there for less than € 100,000,” he says, calculating that home ownership might not be an impossible dream after all. For Maggie, then, mission accomplished.
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