You don't need to be flush with cash for €45k West Cork island home with no loo

Prepare for WC Fields jibes for abandoned Cape Clear island home on tiny site with no toilet or waste tank: compost toilet, anyone?   

Setting at The Glen,  Cape Clear Island where  derelict house has a €45,000 AMV via agent Andy Donoghue of Hodnett Forde

Cape Clear Island, edge of Europe, Atlantic Ocean
€45,000
Size	79 sq m (850 sq ft)
Bedrooms	3
Bathrooms	0
BER	G

YOU could nearly see the buyers coming, from over the Atlantic Ocean and past the Fastnet Lighthouse, Ireland’s teardrop, as this cheap-as-chips Cape Clear island home buy comes to market.

Keep clear. Ireland's teardrop, the Fastnet is just a few miles off Cape Clear Island

Listed this month with a €45,000 AMV is a derelict stone house, near the South Harbour in the island off the country’s stunningly beautiful, rugged and wave-lashed location.

The Glen Cape Clear

The low AMV is driving interest of course, and the immediate calls and inquiries on it are coming from far and wide, says selling agent Andy Donoghue of Hodnett Forde, adding that there’s been a very sudden surge of activity in the past month or some from American buyers, buoyed by the strength of the US dollar, almost on a par with the Euro.

His observation chimes with the experience of property sellers in the UK, and across Ireland and especially in the south-west, with the New York Times running a lengthy piece on West Cork and the wider Irish market in late September, focusing on a listing in Glengarriff, The Courtyard at $1.3m/€1.35m (we scooped them, running it here in July when it had first launched with a €1.65m asking price before a price drop!)

That extensive NYT piece also quoted another West Cork auctioneer saying Americans “have been coming here in droves” over the past six or seven months, and US bidders are understood to be to the fore in bidding on Dripsey Castle in the Lee Valley, which has gone well over its €2.95m AMV, heading closer to an unconfirmed €4m in recent days.

And, that makes this Cape Clear renovation job look even cheaper, doesn’t it?

Small site for sure

Set on a very tiny site, with newer builds (including a B&B) within a hop, skip and a jump, this cottage was built in the early 1930s and was vacated in the 1950s, with family scattered to the US and the UK, according to Mr Donoghue who says it will have to be bought sight unseen pretty due to safety concerns (though it looks to have a pretty decent roof still.) What it doesn’t have is a toilet, a septic tank, or even much space at all to provide one, given its postage-stamp site size.

Cape Clear

The auctioneer is advising people to do their own research on a biocycle or other ‘state of the art’ waste treatment, and already some have considered a compost or ‘dry’ toilet as a possible solution if there isn’t an option to go biocycle.

VERDICT: You don't have to be flush with cash to scoop up this island one-off.