Best way to rent in Dublin

August 28, 2006 3:27 PM

Cardboard-boxes-get-damp-filter: Slothrop and I are less than a week away from our big move to Dublin. Help us negotiate the landmines.

We have always owned our home (spoiled Americans), and have no idea about how to go about renting a place. Do we use an estate agent? Go with a landlord? How much cash do we need on hand? Can we use travellers checks? What kinds of documents to bring?

We've done a fair amount of research, but it is always hard to know if what you're getting off of sites like Daft is textbook unworkable drivel, or actually true and accurate information.

We know that we'd like to be in Dublin 8, close to the National College of Art & Design, but we don't know if we should be looking for a complex, something in a house, if over the river would be better (cheaper or otherwise) - all the things that are hard to suss out from across an ocean.

If you'd like to give us extra help, or even offer to go have a pint with us when we get in, my e-mail is my profile.

Please help us, fellow Mefites. I don't want to spend nine months in Dublin living in a cardboard box.

posted by dirtmonster to home & garden (5 comments total)

Make that IN my profile.
posted by dirtmonster at 3:31 PM on August 28, 2006

You've probably found www.let.ie, but it lists 21 properties in Dublin 8.

I'm afraid I can't help much more than that. All I know is that Dublin is expensive. Good luck!
posted by knapah at 3:57 PM on August 28, 2006

Ireland's property bubble is the most extreme in the world, no shit. Property has appreciated *extraordinarily* over the past 12 years or so. The average Dublin house price is now around $525K.

As a result, the supply of rental properties has been squeezed. At the low-end, much of it has been consolidated into single-family homes and sold. What's left is sub-standard or beyond consolidation and demand from east european and african immigrants is fierce. There is no real middle end: the high end consists mainly of condos/apartments and townhouses owned by investors desperate to cover their mortagage payments.

You should check here. Short-term is easy to get through brokers, but affordable long-term (6/12 month leases) are harder. You really need to grab the morning papers first thing and literally get several people calling different numbers. Turn up an hour or two early for a viewing - there may already be a line.

Dublin 8 (I grew up there, and owned a house there) has veryu sketchy patches. It's got one of the highest unemployment rates in Europe (which in today's Ireland takes some doing!), and one of the highest rates of heroin addiction. There are a lot of very dubious public housing projects. Street crime and larceny is quite high. If you rent in that area, you really need to see the place at night and check the environs to see what you are getting yourself into. That's not to say it doesn;t have nice parts, but the bad parts are very, very bad.
posted by meehawl at 5:45 PM on August 28, 2006

By the way, "across the river" is known as "The Northside". In Dublin there's a north/south Liffey divide that's embedded even in the zip/post codes. All south side postcodes are even, and all north side postal codees are odd. Except for the post code for the President, who lives on the northside but gets herself an honourary even number.

Anyway, many southsiders will tell you the northside is more dangerous, or skankier, or something. But this is not really true. There are more posher districts on the southside that were developed earlier than any on the northside, so that's where the envy began. But in the city centre it doesn't really make much difference, and the south and westside of Dublin has some awful slums as well now. "Across the river" could be closer to your college than many parts of D8, and you could avoid having to go through some of the dodgier areas at night.
posted by meehawl at 5:52 PM on August 28, 2006

What meehawl said. You really don't want to be spending much time around the NCAD/Thomas Street late at night (I rarely go to gigs at Vicar Street because I'm too uncomfortable walking back alone to my bus stop).

Besides, Dublin is a pretty small city, and you can afford to look for any place within a 5- or 6-mile radius of the city centre without being too distant from the college.

Meehawl's right about the north-south divide, too. Don't fall for the 'Northside is dangerous' crap, as there are fantastic and shitty areas on both sides of the river -- and even adjacent suburbs can have a totally different vibe. I live, for instance, in Raheny - which is next to Clontarf (posh, big money) but also to Kilbarrack (or 'Barrytown', to the Roddy Doyle readers out there).
posted by macdara at 2:12 AM on August 29, 2006