Last September or October I went sale agreed on a three-bedroom house in Inchicore, but about a fortnight ago I withdrew my offer. I had been made aware of multiple legal problems, and while my research had mapped a way to get round all the problems, I eventually decided that I was not going to clear up someone else’s mess.
The property was typical worn-out ex-rental which landlords are off-loading en-masse due to the ever more punitive environment that small-fry landlords have to put up with. The asking price was in line with other ex-rental houses I had seen in the area, which in turn was the typical circa €50,000 discount from the bidding I had seen on comparable well-kept owner-occupied properties. The surveyor highlighted various problems, but they were ones I had already priced into my offer. The real problems were on the legal side.
The first of these problems was that the property was actually leasehold — something that in the UK would render it worthless but in Ireland there is the Grount Rent Purchase Scheme which allows leaseholders to buy the freehold. There is still the potential issue of working out who the freeholder is, as the leasehold dates back to the 19th century, but I was pretty sure that it would only cost around €5-10,000. A potentially tedious and drawn-out process but not particularly expensive.
The second and more serious problem was that the outfit who built the house back in the 1980s never had services taken charge of by the local authority, in all probability because the developers went into receivership before they got round to it. This meant the house owner was still liable for things such as the road and sewer connection. Again the Taking in Charge Initiative could sort this out, although there were still unknowns that could derail the process. My solicitor had asked the local authority for clarification on the exact situation, although I had my suspicion that Dublin City Council would at least drag their heels on anything that might actually cost them money.
A third problem was planning permission compliance, since the certification provided lacked some of the authentication it was supposed to have, and my solicitor had requested a properly stamped and signed certificate. The age of the house meant it was just about covered by a general amnesty on past less-than-kosher developments, but this was predicated on there being no planning complaints, which would have meant commissioning a planning search. Only €35 or so but it meant yet more digging to see if the property was good to buy, which adds to lead-time.
It did not help that the seller was unable to furnish the original title deeds, and since Ireland only relatively recently started having an authoritative land registry, this meant potential issues registering the change of ownership. The solicitor mentioned something about memorial copies of the documents, and in the longer-term I think the certificates that come with buying the freehold would supersede them anyway, but there is always something unholy about someone who is unable to present any properly authentic paperwork.
Of course I was never going to take on problems associated with the property for free, but in order to price them into a discount on my offer I would need to quantify the resulting impairment. Without a definite upper-bound of what I could be on the hook for all I could do was run for the hills.