I was driving down the North Circular Road earlier and saw a big for sale sign on a house with Pre-63 in big letters at the top of the sign. I presume it’s a reference to the intro of the planning laws in 1963 but how is this relevant to the buyer?
Does it mean you can make changes to the property without applying for planning?
Pre-63 =
We’ve come so far with Dundrum Shopping Centres and BSQ “life cubes”, yet we still allow pre-63 laws, 45 years later.
Isn’t amazing that for all the inspectors, planners, housing agencies and government quangos, none of them ever thought to abolish pre-63 laws and introduce minimum standards of accomodation. The country’s been awash with money (and still is). There’s no excuse for people living on top of one another in bunk beds.
It typically means that the property is divided into more units that would be permissible under the 1963 and subsequent Planning Acts. It usually also means that only very limited work will have been done on the building since then, as any new work would have had to meet the requirements of the Acts.
The scumbags in power need to keep the Garda landlord class sweet. The very ranks whom protect the cronioes from the great unwashed so they dare not rock the landlords that feed em if I can stretch the metaphor so far 
So they’re basically telling you it’s in a dire state and suitable only for slum landlords without you having to go to the trouble of looking inside?
Thanks for the replies.
NJ
Many of these are prime Georgian houses, the domain of the wealthy in the 19th century, which have been consistently neglected since the wealthy classes abandoned the north inner city. Mountjoy Square is a prime example. Far superior to anything built during the boom. They’ll probably still be there in the same condition when the apartments in Dundrum are being demolished.
The nortside in many respects is the forgotten jewel.
Mountjoy square is in fact a joy in many respect.
I’ve always been frustrated since I was a wee lad that all those lovely Georgian square where dead at night, commercial in the day. Such a tragedy.
If the planners & designers could have taken the lead from the proportions of the Georgian squares as a framework Dublin wouldn’t have been so bad. Its was a good model. Right in front of our nose. We could have modernized it and moved out in a cellular fashion with square after square that could also contain centre pieces such as parks (merrion quare, st stephens green and so on), urban farms, allotments, water lesuire facilities, community areas etc. etc. there are so many variations and the city would have been an eden.
What a great loss.
Yep. It’s a crying shame.
Exactly so Jost. Post the 1800/1801 Act of Union, Ireland lost its Parliament, and as a result Dublin lost its importance.
The wealth moved from Dublin to London and resulted in what may have been Ireland first Property Crash. The grand houses of merchants, entrepreneur and politicos collapsed in value as they abandoned their Dublin properties in what was overnight turned into provincial backwater for the bright lights of London. The houses were subdivided into tenements and once wealthy areas running out from the docks became slums.
Interestingly, Henrietta Street beside the Kings Inns, which dates from the 1720’s and has many houses in pretty poor condition, was one of the most desirable streets in the city (it boasted a roll call of occupants that included peers, judges, an MP and bishops) has recently been covered by a preservation order. Nearly all the houses show the “scars” of their conversion.
Just shows how a market and area can change.
Blue Horseshoe
Very true. I had hoped that the boom might have been the opportunity for Dublin to reclaim the north inner city and at least begin the process of restoring it to its former state. It’s hard now to imagine that Mountjoy Square and Parnell Square once overshadowed the likes of Merrion Square and Fitzwilliam Square.
But the fact that even the north end of O’Connell St, supposedly the centre-piece of our city, was neglected during the boom, reflects that there was no real interest in improving this part of the city. There are a few new apartment blocks and hotels, but nothing much until you reach the suburbs. It’s nice that there are proposals now for the Carlton site and Parnell Square, but it’s too late and it’s hard to see where the finance will come from. We’ve missed the window of opportunity. What a loss indeed. Ok, end of rant 
Pre-63 does not always equate to slums. My parents bought their home in the 50s and it was bigger than we needed. They divided the house in 2 and let out part to tenants.
When we sold the house we listed the pre-63 status as a bonus. All it means is that the house can still have 2 units. We also had to prove this status.
It does not automatically mean these units are small, never updated or sub-standard just that the dwelling was divided before 1963.
My parents told me that when they bought their house in the 1950s the economy was so bad that people were handing in their keys to the mortgage brokers and leaving Ireland in droves. Jingle Mail !!
the family home was built circa 1963, beats anything built in 1993.
Coming to a For Sale sign near you - “Pre-House Building Boom”.
A relation of mine though marriage, recently deceased, was a family member of one of the more successful mid-sized builders during the building boom that preceded that slump in the 50’s. They had build parts of what is now Dublin 12 and were doing very nicely thank you. He told me about returning the keys of his own family home to the bank and just walking away with his wife and young children at the time as everything had just stopped.
Don’t let anyone tell you Ireland has never had a fall in property prices!
Blue Horseshoe
If you are going to walk away, where do you walk to ?
Australia, UK, US… but with all those second homes in Spain/Turkey/Bulgaria etc… maybe we’ll see people doing a Michael Lynn on it…
No shortage of options … emigration is of course one, rent a smaller/cheaper property is another, you could move in with family members (the back to mammy and daddy may become popular), buy a caravan, or there is always that old favourite in a down turn, squatting.
If there is a significant number of mortgage defaults then we can also expect a significant number of existing and new houses and apartments lying around empty. It also wouldn’t surprise me to see some developers (not many now) with land banks creating “trailer parks” around the city fringes.
Blue Horseshoe
Isn’t emigration a far less appealing alternative nowadays - especially seeing as this global house price boom and bust has affected the very countries that Irish people used to escape to?
Well the crash has hit in the US, so (assuming you can get a job and are entitled to live there) you can buy property over there at a reasonable price in many states.
I’m just back from a holiday there, and the general cost of living is much lower than here (aside from the exchange rate).
I get mails in to my personal inbox every day from recruiters in Canada and Australia offering jobs for my IT skill sets. They also offer relocation assistance for free.
While house prices in Aus and Canada are going up, they are no where near the prices asked here. And for the equivalent price of a one bed shoe box in Ballygowherenow I could get a rather nice large property in the burbs of Perth, Newman, Ontario, Toronto, not to mention practically a farm size property in WA or Nova Scotia.
