Houses to Restore influencer got lucky when he bought the place, and has some sound negotiating advice to impart.
Address: 42 Millstream, The Links, Station Road, Portmarnock, Co. Dublin, D13 RR60
Asking price: €420,000
Agent: Noel Kelly Auctioneers
Houses to Restore Instagrammer Shay Lally is a quantity surveyor by trade and knows exactly the value of everything. It’s what his 67,000 followers love about his posts.
He also has a good eye for elegant features and good locations.
Lally is a director of renovation firm We Are Renew, a refurbishment company with both commercial and residential sides to the business, so he has access to top-quality tradespeople and sub-contractors.
He started the account five years ago, but had the idea in the mid-noughties.
His home hunting story is like many others. He bought the B3 Ber-rated two-bedroom, two-bathroom, ground-floor apartment in 2017.
“I had been outbid on several properties, and when it went about €70,000 over the asking, I pulled out."
He took a break from it and went to Berlin for a holiday. While in his hotel room, he got a call from an unknown number.
It was the agent about the apartment. The sale had fallen through, and he was willing to accept Lally’s last offer.
Lally was having none of it.
“We’re going back to the start,” he said. “My original offer of €280,000 still stands.”
The apartment was a bit tired, but the grounds were mature and surrounded by greenery. It was a peaceful spot and just what he wanted.
“I got it for about €280,000.” The property is listed on the register as having sold in November 2017 for €286,000.
The 69 square metre space has a light-filled living cum dining room with a broken plan set-up between it and the kitchen.
A bank of glass blocks filters natural light into this internal space.
The living room opens out to a timber deck and overlooks a large green space.
He upgraded the bathrooms and installed new wardrobe fixtures and colour drenched the hall in a liquorice grey.
The principal bedroom is ensuite.
It’s a five-minute walk to the centre of Portmarnock and about a similar distance to its train station, where there is a direct Dart to Connolly Station, which takes between 17 and 25 minutes.
The plan had always been to move on.
For, in his heart of hearts, he’s been dying to get his teeth into a project all this time.
"Portmarnock is very much a family area. I’m 37. I’m single, not married,” he explains.
Keen to get back into town, he has finally managed to buy a charming Edwardian doer-upper in Drumcondra.
It feels like things have come full circle, for it was in Drumcondra that he first had the idea for Houses to Restore while on a field trip to the Dublin 9 village as a geography student.
It was while standing in a rundown house on the Clonliffe Road, admiring its period features, that he wondered 'why there wasn’t a MyHome for these kinds of houses' – homes in need of a little TLC.
“There was no Insta back then.”
Agents Noel Kelly Auctioneers are seeking €420,000 for the property.
