Maggie Molloy: 'When a photo arrives of house hunters outside their new home I feel amazing'
Irish Homes Presenter Maggie Molloy Cheap
Fastening her seatbelt for another odyssey helping budget-conscious buyers turn their dream of home ownership into a reality, Maggie Molloy is as excited as if she were embarking on a search for a place to hang her own hat.
She teams up again with building engineer Kieran McCarthy as returns to our screens on September 7.
This is season four of the RTÉ One series and since it began, in 2019, has the Wexford woman ever been tempted to snap up any of the bargains she’s discovered?
“It’s dangerous — and my family probably curses the job I have now because back in the day, I’d just be online looking at these properties [Maggie started out with her blog Cheap Irish Houses],” she says.
“But now, the owners are right there and the estate agents are there — and that’s a dangerous place for Maggie to be!”
The potential of a house with a former pub and grocery shop attached, in County Offaly, in the current series set in motion a showreel of ideas in her mind the moment Maggie laid eyes on it. “Honestly, that one really tempted me,” she says. “It was partly the building itself — it was a vernacular cottage that looked like it had been a terrace. It was basically a whole street. So, I was thinking: 'This is a valuable little property.'
"I’m always looking at commercial spaces, even if you never use it yourself, you can rent it out, and you can always use it to pay a mortgage.
"This property was all on one floor, and I thought it would have been lovely to split it up into one-bedroom cottages and maybe rent it to elderly people.
"It could have worked in a lot of ways."
“I did have a serious conversation about it with my husband when I arrived home, but over a couple of days, I was brought back to reality. I can go off on a tangent and be daydreaming about a property or an idea and fortunately, my husband will think about it logically: How will we go about this, can we drive there.”
That episode, week seven in the series, features a Birr native who wants to move closer to her parents in County Offaly. “The cottage was fully furnished, it was like a little museum — the iron beds were still in it,” says Maggie. “It was like a little dollhouse — it was immaculate.”
It’s the whimsical notion of playing house and the “what-if” factor allied to building engineer and
columnist Kieran’s professional know-how — and the can-do spirit of both — that injects a dash of positivity into this TV house at a time when property and rental prices are soaring.
Filming for the upcoming series took place this autumn. “It’s out quite quickly, which means it’s relevant and timely and the prices are ‘real’ — otherwise you’re giving people false hope,” she says.
This season, it not only showcases affordable homes but also introduces the Vacant Property Refurbishment and Derelict Property grant schemes available. “They’re phenomenal — every time you tell the house hunters about them — by the way this house is vacant and you get a grant — it’s like you’ve given them a gift,” says Maggie.
Her enthusiasm is infectious, whether it’s for an Ireland that Maggie believes is “just getting lost” when she peers into an old home/grocery/pub — or wandering beside the Mediterranean as she seeks out equivalent properties in Portugal, Spain and France when filming .
“There were so many different types of people on that series from retirees to digital nomads," she says.
Does she ever find out how her protégés got on afterwards?
“I don’t like to chase people up but if they get back in touch I’m delighted to hear from them,” she says. “Leonie [Corcoran] who featured in 'Maggie’s Cheap European Homes' and had been looking in Portugal was in touch to say she was over the moon to get settled and get her forever home."
And while Leonie didn’t find her property as a result of the show, Maggie’s joy when house hunters find their dream residence is palpable. “The process takes so long, the first hurdle is getting the money, and then there’s the search," she says.
Maggie enjoyed a similar feelgood factor following the last series of when Cork house hunter Steffi Toenker and her teenage son Cian featured.
“We showed three houses in west Cork and Steffi bought one of them,” she says. “She has been living in it for a year now. It’s lovely to see. We were always in touch. The day she walked into the yard in Cork, I knew, she knew, it was going to be her house.”
Maggie and Kieran return to Cork for two episodes this year, in the opening programme to help South African natives Erin and Louis who want to set up home in West Cork but would like anywhere commutable to Cork City for work.
Cork also features in the sixth episode where they meet Avril and Robert and their daughter Abby, who are looking for a countryside location near Avril’s family in Glanmire.
“West Cork is always a good draw, always a good mainstay, and we did filming around Cork city which was quite cool,” says Maggie.
“It’s not a cheap market and not an easy market — once you get into the commuter belt of Cork prices skyrocket. And the house hunters were really surprised. It was lovely to see that you could get such value in the commuter zone of a city in Ireland.”
Maggie and Kieran cross the border to Kerry, for the second episode, to assist Megan, 25, a first-time buyer from Ballyduff. “She wants to commute to her job in Tralee. She has been renting in Tralee, and it is similar to Cork — Tralee is not an easy place to buy a house."
Wexford native Maggie knows all about the difficulty of trying to buy your way back into your place of origin. She renovated her own home in County Tipperary almost two decades ago. “I’ve always thought of moving back to Wexford,” she says.
“But prices in Wexford are so crazy — like Cork — and it’s firmly in the Dublin commuter belt now too, so it’s difficult for local people to buy there.
“We actually had a house hunter in this year who was looking in Wexford, and as one that had to leave, for me, that was an emotional episode. She had looked and was looking as long as I had.
“The policies of dissuading people from living in rural Ireland, they’re not realistic. There’s a massive amount of culture rooted in rural Ireland."
- Cheap Irish Homes starts on September 7, on RTÉ One at 7pm and runs for eight weeks