A COUPLE who weren’t allowed to view their cheap home before they bought it say the gamble paid off.
Shane Fleming and his wife Christine purchased a derelict house in the Portobello area of Dublin in 2020.
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The two-storey terraced property had not been lived in for several years before the couple bought it.
Shane, a chartered valuation surveyor, knew how ambitious the project was having worked in real estate for 20 years.
However the 40-year-old had not anticipated just how difficult it would be to bring the old building back into use.
With a budget of around £300,000, the three-bed house had no central heating and plumbing only in the kitchen.
Shane and Christine, who is originally from New York, have improved the house’s energy rating from G to A2.
The pair have also knocked down the back of the house creating an open-plan ground floor.
“If you asked me would I do it [the rebuild] again, I’d say yes,” Shane told the Irish Independent.
“I love dealing with property, I’d happily do it again. If you asked Christine, she would say, ‘Absolutely no way’.
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“I do think people want to live in these homes but I’m not sure how many people have the appetite to do all the work because it’s scary to take these projects on.”
He added: “It comes at a cost but being able to live in a house in the city is fantastic. We’re dying to get in.”
It comes after a woman revealed how she bought the “ugliest” house on the street but gave it an epic transformation.
In a video which has racked up over 1.6million views, she showed how the property came with some very garish carpets and an overgrown garden.
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