At the end of 2021, an old colleague, Sean, contacted me about a house he was buying. He was a first-time buyer and he and his wife had found a beautiful 4-bedroom house in Co. Clare. They were sale agreed and wanted to arrange a survey through our other company GetHouseSurvey.ie.
I had worked with him in a US tech company based in Dublin where he still worked and asked him if he would travel up for a few days a week. Sean, very excitedly told me that the company had given him the go-ahead to work from home full time and would only need to travel to the Dublin office 2-3 times per year.
He then sent me some pictures of the house and showed me the view from the bedroom he would be turning into his office. The view was right across the inlet where Lahinch beach was located. An absolutely beautiful part of Ireland! So, I arranged for a pre-purchase survey and thankfully our engineers only found some very minor issues with the property. It was perfect for them! Within a couple of months, they were in their dream new home!
About a month later, I gave Sean a call to see how he and his wife were settling in. I was met with a big sigh. As it turns out, after he moved in he discovered that the property was only connected to the old Eircom (Eir) lines and the max download speed he could get was 100mbs. Although after signing up, he discovered he was getting an average of 40mbs. Although this is fine for email, scrolling through Facebook etc. it simply did not meet the needs of a software engineer.
So as a result, he needed to drive 10 minutes to a local co-working space. Although a very small commute in Dublin terms, Sean had completely lost out on his dream of working from home. As it stands, it may be another year before his property can get onto a faster network. They can't even watch Netflix or YouTube without it being laggy. Infact, he is even looking at Elon Musk's Starlink as an option!
I asked him "did you not check the available broadband networks". He said that "I asked the agent and he said the owner has good wifi and then I was so busy I never went to check myself". Although, unlike many people, Sean knew that checking available broadband networks and speeds for a property is really easy to do, but due ot the chaos that is the house buying process in Ireland he just never got around to checking. After hearing Sean's story and a few other cases of buyers not knowing vital pieces of information before buying, we though to ourselves "there must be an easier way to research properties rather than searching through dozens of websites to find all the information you need". After searching online, we discovered there was nothing for the Irish market.
So, we set about designing and building a product that would enable home buyers to get all publically available information in one place. After several months of building and testing, Home Hunter Report was born.
Home Hunter Report pulls information from over 10 different sources and puts it all into one document, making property research easier than ever! In fact, it saves the average person up to 10 hours of research.
It's designed to help you but with confidence knowing that the property and area meets the needs of you and your family.
To avoid mistakes like Sean's, get your Home Hunter Report by going to HomeHunterReport.ie and entering in the Eircode of the property for sale.
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