The Irish housing market is at last in some kind of recovery mode which is a moment for huzzahs if you're selling and a moment for huzznots if you're buying. Either way, buying a house remains possibly the most stressful activity one can undertake. According to Which? magazine, in fact, house-buying is considered by 91 per cent of those surveyed to be more stressful even than having a baby.
So here is a quick and handy guide to a blissful alternative; buying a fun car instead of a house. Cars are cheaper to buy, generally cheaper to run and if something goes badly wrong with a house, you can move into your car (temporarily at least).
The reduced purchase price and loan repayments means you should sleep a little better at night (assuming you have somewhere to sleep) while the total lack of surveyors’ reports or planning permission rejections makes the whole process so much easier. Enjoy . . .
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1 Instead of . . . A sprawling country mansion
You could buy . . . A Rolls-Royce Silver Shadow
Anyone who's ever visited a stately home has dreamed of it. Dreamed of having for their very own a massive chunk of country real estate. A long and winding driveway, manicured lawns, maybe even a trout stream running between the trees. Of course, at the centre will be the stately pile itself; all eye-pleasing Georgian cornicing and winding, climbing ivy. A house to truly feast the eyes upon.
Pity the reality can never be that good. Those lawns have to be manicured by a massive gardening staff, the trout all have fin-rot and when it comes to the house itself, you may as well just dig a deep whole in the ground and pour wheelbarrows of cash into it. Dry rot, wet rot, heating bills, listed-building complications and that climbing ivy has gotten in between the bricks and is starting to dismantle the house like a Triffid on acid.
Instead, why not just buy the car that, classically, goes with the country house – a Rolls-Royce Silver Shadow? In production for 15 years from 1965 to 1980 (longer if you count the convertible Corniche version), it is the most populous Roller with almost 30,000 produced. It's the one you can see floating in the pool on the cover of Oasis's Be Here Now. The big 6.75-litre V8 engine is a low-revving, near-silent delight, while the cabin is that traditional Rolls riot of wood, chrome and leather only the Brits can get away with. Comfort is the order of the day, and if rear seat space isn't quite a big as you think it should be, then at least the softly-softly suspension will iron out the usual road imperfections.
Now, let’e be honest; a Silver Shadow is not going to be an exemplar of reliability. Everything on them breaks (especially anything with a wire hanging out the back), everything is expensive to repair and if you see 12mpg, you’ll be doing well. Still, think of the money you’ll make back renting yourself out for weddings.
Besides, any bills the Rolls generates will still be less than those for a major heating system overall or paying to get the bats cleared out of the servants’ quarters . . .
How much? Circa €20,000 should get you an immaculate one, or you could take a flier on something cheaper – Shadows have been seen for as little as €6,000.
2 Instead of . . . A cottage by the beach
You could buy . . . A Volkswagen California
Who wouldn't want to step outside their front door and immediately find their toes sinking into golden sand, a gentle sea breeze tickling their cheeks and the gentle caress of the morning sun warming their skin? A house by the sea is often seen as the ultimate and that's why they're so expensive. Just type "beachfront property" into any house search engine and check out the lines of zeroes. Only the very wealthy need apply.
Of course, owning a beach-facing house isn’t necessarily everything it’s cracked up to be. Coastal erosion is just a random phrase until the edge of the cliff starts disappearing under your front doorstep. Flooding is a constant worry, and low tide is never an appealing scent. Oh, and you can’t eat lunch outside because the seagulls will have your sandwiches away. Squawking airborne horrors . . .
There is a solution though and it's the Volkswagen California. Now, clearly, a California could be a potential alternative to any house – it does after all offer sleeping space for four, plus a built-in sink, cooker and dining table. It's the modular answer to every complaint you've ever made about seaside B&Bs and, best of all, it's all made by Volkswagen. Most camper vans are built up by outside companies on bare chassis, but the California is made in the same factory as the rest to VW's T5 Transporter vans, so if anything goes wrong, you know where to go to either complain or just buy a replacement part.
Now, you could also consider one of those big, white-plastic gin palaces so popular with the camping fraternity, but I'm going to say two words to you; size and character. Those big campers are too big to drive into city centres or underground car parks, whereas a California will fit nicely in either. As for character, well which would you prefer – a faceless collection of beige plastic built up on a Fiat Ducato or a vehicle that can trace its lineage directly back to the iconic Type 2 "Splitty" of the 1950s?
They’re perfect for parking on the beach, primarily because you can outrun both the incoming tide or any erosion when you need to, but also because the abundance of dunes makes up for the California’s one failing; there’s no onboard toilet.
How much? Californias really aren’t cheap – a new one will run you a minimum of €50,000 and with a few extras that price will quickly spiral to €60,000 and beyond. They are much cheaper second hand though, and €20,000 should land you a nice one.
3 Instead of . . . A trendy city centre apartment
You could buy . . . A Renault Zoe
It's the image that sells it. All those moody Michael-Mann-style shots, backlit in blue, of our hero standing in his/her gorgeous top floor apartment, staring out across the the city's carpet of twinkling lights. They know their nemesis is out there somewhere, but they'll have to wait until morning, or at least until this gorgeously framed shot is finished.
Apartment life should be perfect for most of us. They're usually a useful amount cheaper than a house, there's no garden to maintain and you can generally walk to the pub. Plus there's that view – the city and its coterie of angels and demons, just waiting for you to step out into it and right its wrongs. If Bruce Wayne can do it, so can you . . .
Reality check. Most apartments are terrible. Your view is most likely to be either of bare cement or of the apartment opposite. The lifts will generally fail about once a week, leaving you with 12 flights of stairs to climb with your bags from Lidl, the parking garage is a foul-smelling den of inequity and someone's put chewing gum on the lens of the doorbell-camera again. You're not Batman, you're Flatman.
So instead, why not just get a car that’s been perfectly designed for living in the city, while you fall back on the old reliable of renting a nice house in the suburbs with some friends? The Renault Zoe should do the trick nicely. It’s one of the first pure electric cars to be reasonably priced (about €17,000 if you do your sums right) and while it feels a touch cheeky for Renault to then charge you extra to “lease” the batteries that drive it, it’s still a heck of a lot better than trying to get the apartment’s management company to clear up all the dead pigeons.
It's also close to perfect for city driving, That silent electric drivetrain is shown off to its best by short urban driving distances, while the low-down oomph means you can power into gaps in the traffic on a torquey wave of electrons. True, the ride quality is a bit hard-edged and the handling balance is nothing to write home about, but you're not exactly tackling Eau Rouge on your way to work, now are you? Best of all, the cool blue glow of both the badge and the instruments means that you get the Michael Mann effect without the crippling negative equity issues.
How much? €17,490 base price, plus a minimum of €49 a month for the batteries.
4 Instead of . . . A suburban semi-d
You could buy . . . An original Ford Focus
Ah, the uncomplicated comfort of a suburban semi-d. They have become so alike, so cookie-cutter, that you could probably swap my own house for yours and still be able find everything, whether you're fumbling for a light switch or looking for the water mains connection. They are the Ford Model T of houses – standardised, homogenised, productionised. Nothing changes, all remains the same.
That standardisation has its benefits. After all, if everyone’s windows are basically the same size, then buying curtain poles just got a lot easier, and it goes likewise when measuring up for carpets or floors; the local shop probably already has the dimensions for your place filed away somewhere.
Needless to say though, the downside is the sensation that all is the same, all is decreed, all is unchanging. Your house is the same as the next house is the same as the next house and so on. It all gets a bit 1984 after a while. The Department Of Housing Similarity will be calling around soon to make sure your coffee table doesn't exceed the stated maximum dimensions, citizen.
You could say much the same about the humble family hatchback. An Astra is much like a Golf is much like an Auris is much like a 308. Wedge styling, seats for five, five doors and a reasonable boot. They all cost about €20,000, all now come with a 1.6 diesel (or a 1.4 petrol if you're winding back the years a bit) and are so similar that we may as well do away with badges and start buying our cars from the Central Committee For The Purchase Of Reasonable Family Motoring.
There was one tearaway though, one Winston Smith, one Vladimir Illych Hatchback, that dared to be different and it was the 1998 Ford Focus. It may now seem as similar as all the rest, but trust me, when that first Focus was launched, it was as if someone had parachuted a Gaudi apartment block onto Seaview Terrace. Those slashed and angular lines, the massive cabin space, the handling and steering tweaked by three-time F1 champ Jackie Stewart and the rest of the engineering (including that expensive "control blade" rear suspension) honed by the legendary Richard Parry-Jones, who decreed that the dashboard should contain panels that mimicked the titanium finish of his Longines wristwatch. Even today, an original Focus is nicer, sweeter and more balanced to drive than about 90 per cent of the other cars on the road, yet it's as practical and useful as any five-door family hatch. It will one day, you make my words, appear on the cover of Classic And Sports Car magazine, under a headline that reads "Best Family Car Of All Time."
How much? You could probably pick a tired example up for under €1,000, but pay a bit more and track down a really nice, well-cared for version. Or stump up extra for a (desirable, sporty) ST170 or a (wild, legendary) Focus RS.
5 Instead of . . . A French farmhouse
You could buy . . . A Citroen 2CV
Hands up anyone who has ever had a holiday in France and not thought "it would just be great to live here and have this lifestyle". I thought so, no hands up. The French, for all their foibles, do get an awful lot of stuff right. When work is finished, it is fini. Your boss is barred from calling you after 6pm, so the time is yours. Business will cease every day for a long, preposterously tasty lunch and there are few, very few, of those pretty French villages which have been scarred by the addition of a McDonald's. Bon.
Property prices make equally pleasing reading and it's a rare crumbling chateau indeed that would cost more than an average four-bed semi-detached in the Dublin catchment area. How très jolie it would be to live out that A Year In Provence fantasy of working three hours a day, soaking up the hazy sunshine and having a gorgeous bottle of €3 rosé every evening.
Not that easy though, is it? French laws can be baffling even if you are fluent in la langue and while it’s nice for you to be able to knock off work early, it’s not so nice to discover you’re fresh out of pain and the boulangerie doesn’t open again until 4.30pm. Tomorrow. Any complaints about this will result in naught but a caustic shrug and an accusation that you’re acting like an English tourist. There is no lower insult in French.
So why not just bring the best of France back here? We may have crippling working hours and terrible weather, but you can at least speak the language and Spar usually has baguettes for €1 each. To transport them home, get yourself a Citroen 2CV. Yes, it's ugly and staggeringly slow, but trust me, it's the perfect car for living in modern Ireland. Get a 1970s example and it will qualify for classic tax, so you'll pay almost as little to the exchequer as Apple. The tiny two-cylinder engine will run on a thimble of fuel and the low top speed and sluggish acceleration mean you'll never suffer the ire of the Gendarmerie, sorry, Garda. Yes, the metal has a habit of dissolving into a rusty puddle if you get overnight rain, and the brakes and steering have but a passing acquaintance with anything involving control of the vehicle, but you'll never be going fast enough to do too much damage if you hit something.
Best of all, that squashy, compliant ride quality aided by those sprung hammock- style seats will soothe away the stresses and strains of non-French life. Let the rest of the world have their German saloons and boring, identikit houses – you’re going home driving the motorised apogee of French style and practical engineering. Vive la Tin Snail.
How much? About €6,000 for a nice one. Much more for a truly desirable early 1950s example. Much less for a perambulatory pile of rust.
