Want this home for just €2,500? Sorry, you're 62 years too late

HOME hunters in 2025, look away now: This is going to hurt.

No 23 Ardmahon Estate in the early 1960s was a shrewd move, for a family who got to buy the three-bed semi brand new for £2,000 (€2,539), opting to also pay the builders an extra £95 for an attached garage, £10 for an immersion heater, and £16 for a basic kitchen set-up.

To this, they added £2 and 15 shillings for a sink in a bedroom, bringing their grand total for a 1,200 sq ft three-bed home to £2,125 (€2,698.)

Oh, and 15 shillings/95c.

To pay for their home, they’d given over a £125 deposit in the summer of 1961, and they had an invoice from builders Bradley Brothers, noting they were to receive a £1,600 County Council loan to fund their purchase, backed up by a government grant of £275, plus a supplementary grant of £91, 13 shillings, and four pennies.

That left the proud new owners of No 23 to be billed £32, one shilling, and eight pence as the balance for their future home.

Now, 62 years later, the house is on the market for the first time since, as an executor sale, having seen a family reared and moved on.

Today, at a time of very strong price growth — over 2007 heights in many cases — No 23 Ardmahon Estate comes for sale with a €525,000 AMV, having been well-kept, but is dated and will need more spending. The £2,125 and 15 shillings it cost in 1962 might, in today’s terms and market, buy a good quality kitchen sink and/or, a new immersion?

Selling is John Corbett, of Cohalan Downing, who has started viewings, likely to have had 10 or 12 by this weekend, and he says it’s in a great location, in a settled suburban nexus where Douglas meets Ballintemple and Ballinlough by the top of the Well Road.

Apart from a long-proven location, the back is southerly, and the decent-sized back garden has a triangular green behind, fringed on another side by a different section of Ardmahon, and by homes of similar vintage along on the Well Road.

No 23 has the standard layout of its very first days: A green Murray kitchen, a classic of the 1960s was an upgrade, and that attached garage to the side, is still primed for updates and energy upgrades to address a lowly F BER.

Some neighbours have already extended, to the side and/or back, and the Price Register shows 18 Ardmahon resales since 2010, exceeding €300k by 2014 as the market started a post-crash recovery.

Just two have topped €500,000 to date, with the strongest price clearly being the €715,000 paid for No 37 in 2022. No 24 made €480,000 in 2021.

VERDICT: Wow, was a good buy in 1962, and will be again: what will it be worth in the year 2086???