After giving up on the house in Inchicore I went sale agreed on an apartment right in the city centre. Unfortunately as things turned out this second sale is one that I have had to pull out of.
I did bid on another property in the Inchicore area but I was coming to the conclusion that aside from the Luas red line, it was not actually that good for transport. This was OK for working in Park West but it would be very painful should I change jobs to somewhere like Sandyford, and the apartment I chose was basically to optimise transport options. While my current company is a nice place to work I am underpaid and by quite some margin, so I was expecting to change companies within 18 months.
The apartment itself was basically fine, although the €290k price bidding stopped at was right at the top end of what I thought something of that size in that area was worth. To me it looked like Dublin prices had levelled off, and when considered alongside the opaque way Irish property bidding works, I felt it best to factor in a potential drop of 10% in prices. This is why all the talk of a crash with Covid-19 did not really worry me.
I became aware via my solicitor that the building had fire safety remedial work pending, and that the sinking fund was very low. However there seemed to be a healthy amount in the day-to-day fund and all signs were that the finances of the management company had improved markedly in the last year or so. Impression I got was that everything was under control.
Trouble is that the contract from the seller included information disclosure which my solicitor thought was abusive. It gave them absolute discretion in what information they can demand for know-your-client purposes, yet they would not even agree with queries that may arise from registering the property ownership. Being a receivership sale where I would have no come-back it is right that I demand all documentation be in proper order before I sign, because I know that down the line anything other than 100% in order would be trouble. I think in practice everything would have been fine, but the way they seemed to be trying to bounce me into a one-sided contract made me decide I simply did not want to do business with them.