Buying an apartment in Waterville.

It totally depends on where you buy in Waterville. I would never want to live in Waterville Terrace (density WAY too high), Annagh Court (very heavily rented) or Skelligs Court (not as well maintained as other clusters, horrible double yellow lines painted all over the place).

I would however recommend Aran Court, Garnish Square or Dursey Row. Not too sure about the newer clusters, though I know the ones closer to the hospital have issues with hospital visitors and staff blocking parking spaces.

I live on one of the three clusters I have recommended and am a director of our management company. I know the directors in the other two and can tell you that the negatives mentioned below are not normal issues for those clusters because the directors (all owners, all working for free to ensure the development is a pleasant place to live and own) are very involved.

Management fees vary from cluster to cluster, as does management agent though SPM still have a lot of the clusters. The older clusters have been/are being repainted and I disagree that the place is not attractive. Our bins are collected every Monday even bank holidays so no problems with that.

The new build apartments are much better value than what we paid years ago but they have changed some of the layouts for the worst. The ground floor 2 beds have an arch between the kitchen and living room which creates no barrier for smells. The older units have a kitchen door.

markas wrote: »

Negative:
For some too high density may be an issue
problems with parking spaces, vandalism not uncommon
high maintanace costs
full bins not being removed for long periods of time around holidays
mind who is behind the wall/floor, as the sound proofing can be insufficient
lack of schools (and other facilities)
The neigbourhood is not too atrractive, but who needs to go there..


Overall the location is the biggest asset, but the apartments are overpriced, imo.

Edit: Safety: not rated... although garda station is just across, they are not too often there.. a car can be burnt without intervention, laud partying in the apartments is also quite tolerated. In case of emergency.. luckily, one can walk to the nearby hospital

kyub wrote: »

- Clampers are a bit of a pain if you have frequent visitors at all as they have to find a visitor parking space or drive to the end of the estate to the Overflow car park

Just to say that parking isn't allocated in all of Waterville. We don't have allocated spaces, it's first come first served. We do however have clamping for those who decide they'd rather park on the path outside the apartments or at gable ends then walk 100m to the nearest space.

kyub wrote: »

Yeah, it's first come first served for us too but the clampers can clamp anyone parking in a non-allocated parking space and also anyone who does not display their token/badge showing that they are a resident.

Ah, I see. We don't have residents badges or permits - yet. May come in down the line though, it has been discussed at the last two AGMs.

casey80 wrote: »

How high are the maintenance fee for apartments at Waterville at the moment?

It varies from cluster to cluster and depending on apartment size. Some clusters have fountains which are an additional expense to maintain, some have playgrounds which boots the insurance cost, some have lifts which again are expensive to maintain.

Each cluster has it's own management company and budget and therefore fees.

casey80 wrote: »

is it really? I know people who pay 600-700 euros for detached houses, never mention apartments.
950 euros is extremely expensive as far as I'm concerned

Fees for houses would generally be less than apartments. A house owner owns their house so they pay to insure their house, the bricks and mortar of an apartment block are insured by the management company. Similarly the management company would be responsible for maintaining the common areas in a shared entrance unit as the poster who gave the €950 lives in. That's regular cleaning of common areas, lighting of same and fire alarm maintenance.

To the poster that said their fees in Waterville were €1600 - do you live in a phase with lifts? Maintenance costs for lifts are horrendous and may explain that huge variation in fees.

I live in neither of those clusters, I think a 2 bed in ours is around the €850 range but not certain.

fptosca wrote: »

according to the accounts Lift Maintenance was €5,260 for the year. Other big charges were €7,800 for Cleaning/Caretaker/Materials, €8,832 Management Fee and €9,355 Insurance Block/Engineering, €4,625 Gardening / Landscaping, €6,900 Sinking Fund.

I know comparing different buildings is not accurate but, to get an idea, is anybody paying significantly less for anything of the above?

Those amounts sound cheap in most cases, and it really doesn't sound like enough money is being put into the sinking fund at all which is worrying.The MUD act suggests that €200 per unit is put into the sinking fund per year. Particularly given that you have lists, I'd be worried about fees being increased massively to make up a shortfall.

anniehoo wrote: »

Even with the lift maintenance taken into account i still dont see how you're paying €1600 month. I would be physically broke if i had to pay that on top of my mortgage. Surely all of the contracts are standard across all of Waterville, so im struggling to see where the huge difference is coming from.

They're not. Because all the clusters aren't the same. The structures are different, particularly in Waterville Terrace. Lifts, fountains, playgrounds all bring additional costs to run, maintain and insure. The non-tower clusters have similar leases but from Dursey Row onwards, the leases were changed to allow fee calculations based on services rather than a general percentage of the budget. We got legal advice to see if we could change our leases to do that but unfortunately we can't as our phase was built before Dursey.