Just what are the protocols around turning a funeral parlour into a family home? Do I need to call an exorcist? And other questions answered.
A commercial premises that was once a landmark café and more recently an undertaker's would make a great family home if its recent usage doesn’t spook buyers
Currently number 1a Carlingford Road, offers a work/live opportunity to a buyer unperturbed by its past.
The 203-square-metre, E1 BER-rated property is just metres from upper Drumcondra village, its shops, cafes, Griffith Park, the Tolka River walks, and its many bus routes and commuter train line.
Address: 1a Carlingford Road, Dublin 9, Drumcondra, Dublin 9, D09 P768
Asking price: €600,000
Agent: Move Home Estate Agents
“It hasn’t fazed buyers,” says selling agent Ronan Crinion, MD at Dublin 9-based Move Home Estate Agents, who is also from Drumcondra and knows just how appealing the address is.
One even quipped, “I’d kill to live there”, he says, before he put in a low-ball offer.
The redbrick building isn’t overlooked and is south-facing to the front.
It has two separate entrances, a pedestrian one at the end nearest the tree-lined Drumcondra Road Lower and a second, via a shopfront at the other end of its ground floor, where the property abuts a vehicular lane cul-de-sac.
If you enter the property via the pedestrian entrance, it opens into a hall with a small room off it that could become a downstairs bathroom.
From this hall, it leads through to a long rectangular room that gets southern light and could become an open plan living room cum kitchen.
At the far end of it is a door that opens out to the stairs.
Upstairs, as the current layout stands, there are potentially three small bedrooms. The two to the right could share the existing bathroom if you changed it to a Jack and Jill set-up.
The bedroom to the left is an ensuite.
You could close off this part of the property and make it the live part of a work live set-up.
The rest of the ground floor features a large broken plan space, comprising a lovely shopfront and shop space and a large internal room that would have been used as a reposal room by the most recent tenant.
A hall to the side links the front to small rooms at the back that include two bathrooms.
The issue here is that all of this space is internal.
It receives little natural light, save for the shop area.
The current layout may work for a commercial venture, be it an office, workshop, showroom or another café.
But, given the residential nature of the street and the demand for larger family homes in the area, Crinion expects there to be interest from those willing to breathe new life into all of its 202 square metres and set up home here.
What would really transform this space would be to bring light in from the western side of the building, the one that abounds the lane.
The use of glass blocks could allow for privacy while washing this part of the property in light, and giving you two to three
This will require planning permission, which will also be needed should the entire property be converted to residential.
Currently, a mixed-use property, expect stamp duty on it to be considerably higher.
Under Revenue rules, mixed-use property, which includes a shop, office, or workshop with residential accommodation, is apportioned between residential and non-residential rates.
As for exorcising any ghosts of the past, it is something healer Patricia O’Keefe is familiar with.
She is often called to cleanse the energy of a building.
"Energy within a home can be cleared," she says.
“It’s a role priests used to play when they blessed a home. Anyone putting the energy into peace and clearing energy from spaces must be trained,” something that she is and can sometimes do remotely.
Fees start from €30.
The real spectre here is one many home hunters face.
The only way to purchase this by way of a residential mortgage would be if the purpose of the property was changed from commercial to residential, says David Bailey, mortgage advisor at Finance Solutions.
Even with its current mixed-use status, “lenders will not lend on residential rates, given there is still a commercial element to it.
If it were part residential, then potentially a buy-to-let could be done, but it would be solely based on the residential rental yield attainable on the residential aspect of the property.
"To qualify for a private dwelling home residential mortgage (PDH) would mean that the sole purpose of it would need to be lived in as the individual’s primary home.
"Any element of commercial will mean lenders won’t lend as a PDH mortgage.”
"If there is a residential element to it then yes, a residential mortgage could be raised, but it would solely be on the property rental yield on the residential aspect [to it], with the commercial aspect ignored.
"Outside of this, it would be a full commercial mortgage."
