32 North Great Charles Street, Summerhill, Dublin 1

134 Navan Road, Dublin 7

You'd nearly miss this one because its surrounded on all sides by very mature trees. Its right up the road from the previous entry, and again just on the corner of the Nephin Roadand the Navan Road. Its a big, detached house on a corner site, with a large (overgrown) garden, and a small shed to the side with vehicular access from the Navan Road. I seem to remember the entire site being for sale recently within the last two years maybe, billed as "development potential", so its quite possible the whole house will be knocked and some low-rise apartments built on it. There's no planning permission notice up as yet but I wouldnt be surprised if one popped up soon. The rest of the area is all 2-storey semi-detached houses so any high rise development would probably encounter local opposition. If you hop the front gate, and walk around the back of the house, you can access the garage via a back entrance. You can also see a couple of accessible open windows around the back, so for junkies and squatters its pure bingo - the only drawback to this of course is that its right across the road from Cabra Garda Station. The photos below (very tricky getting the hang of this) are from the sitting room, the back door (note the open bathroom window), and the inside of the workshop/shed next door to the house. ** update ** This house is known locally as "Cabra Farm", and I really should have seen the sign with this name when I was hopping over the front gate. There's a planning application in the works for a 7-storey apartment block on the site. Thanks to P for the info.

142 Navan Road, Dublin 7

This is one of a few small cottages near the junction of the Navan Road and the Nephin Road. I guess you could call it Cabra but people just generally refer to anything north of that junction as the Navan Road. The other cottages behind are called the Roosevelt Cottages, so that name might warrant further investigation, although I dont recall any American president ever claiming to have ancestry near Cabra.. This house doesnt look too bad from the front, apart from the plastic sheeting taped up over the smashed glass on the front door, but if you go around the back, all the windows are boarded up and graffiti'd on (and I'll happily post some extra pictures of it up once I get more to grips with the blogging technology, forgive my ignorance), and the generously sized back garden is heavily overgrown with tall weeds. The cottage itself isnt that big, possibly two bedrooms, with a small kitchenette extension out the back, and would be a decent home for a small family. The stepped entrance down to the front door with the gate is a nice touch. There's a planning application stuck up on the side wall by a Michael McGarty, but the date has faded from it with age. The application was for alterations and an extension, but what possibly got turned down was the request for vehicular access from the Navan Road. The house is right next to a bus stop, and its hard to see how this could be altered so a driveway could be constructed. Its still no reason to let the house fall into disrepair though...

202 Clonliffe Road, Drumcondra, Dublin 3

Ooooh. This is a real nice one. Not sure if its Drumcondra or Ballybough, but I've been reliably informed that 'Ballybough' is vanishing off the face of the earth these days with estate agent imperialism-speak, and this gaf is closer to the Quinns pub end of Clonliffe Road anyway. Its next door to some sort of religious order building, so maybe thats why nobody is living there. I wanted to have a peek at it a couple of weeks back but there were some buzzies having some cans and works at the ground floor level flat (also boarded up). Its got a lovely long driveway (littered with cans, suitcases, plastic bags, a few needles, and some mature trees) leading up to the house. The gaf itself is large and stretches a good bit back, you can see a return from the car park of the religious place. Just above the front door though there's a large crack snaking its way up the front of the building. Nothing that couldnt be repaired though. With a bit of landscaping the garden could be nice, other houses in the same strip have big grassy patches in front of them, very pleasing indeed.

100 St. Mobhi Road, Glasnevin, Dublin 9

This one's been in shit for a few years now, definitely. I've passed by it on numerous occasions on the way out to Ballymun, noticed it getting slowly worse with time. Not sure if its empty or just neglected, but the front door looks totally fucked with several missing panels and a frame that looks chewed with woodworm, the blinds inside are all dusty and rotten, and the front garden is completely overgrown. But the Black bin and the Green bin are still sitting in the front garden, and the gate wasnt locked. Maybe its just the sign of a nice neighbourhood (which it is). It definitely looks like nobody's been in there for a long time though. I cant be arsed looking through Daft for a comparison but my guess would be somewhere around the €750k mark.

112 & 113 Phibsborough Road, Phibsborough, Dublin 7

These two gafs have been like this for as long as I can remember. They're right next to the "Cross Guns Bridge", which is at the junction of the Phibsboro Road and the Canal/Villa Bank/Whitworth Road. You can see that at some point they made a bit of an effort to clean them up by putting in paintings of window frames but they're still a fucking disgrace. I remember a planning application up on them a while back but nothing seems to be happening with them, except people parking their cars in the front yard. I think they may have been sold as one lot along with the pub next door, which was once the Cross Guns Inn (I think? I was never in there anyway), now called Smyths and gone more upmarket. So maybe the pub owns them and will do something with them. They're on a prime site, the apartments around the corner - with a wonderful view out the back of the Mountjoy Wall - sold for shitloads.

2 Carnlough Road, Cabra, Dublin 7

This is one of these two-up two-down gafs that you see around Cabra, Whitehall, Crumlin, Larkhill, East Wall, off Clonliffe Road, etc. I think these ones in Cabra were built in the 40's and 50's, most if not all by Dublin Corporation, rehousing people from town. A lot of them around Cabra I think are in private ownership now, and they sell for around €350k. Although an ex-work colleague who lives down around Imaal Road was saying to me before that the Corpo (now Dub. City Council) were buying them back off the older folks. This one on Carnlough Road near the Old Cabra Road junction has steel boards up and spikey fencing at the side garden. Next door didnt look too healthy either, it had the same temporary steel gate to the side, and an overgrown garden... but the windows were still intact. This gaf might have something to do with a future redevelopment of the area behind, next to the railway tracks. There used to be some sort of chemical plant there (you can still see it) next to the underused connection between Heuston & Connolly stations. I think there might be apartments going up, so maybe this one might be getting the chop. Still, its shit that it isnt being used as a temporary rental space.

OK here we go.

Coming soon. I swear. An antidote to the property porn of Daft.ie and the Irish Times Thursday supplement. Images and videos of a city crumbling around you. I'll try. I promise.