Everybody loves hearing their house has crept up in value, but between now and November 7, Joachim Burger, a German author living in Co Wexford, needs only to open his e-mail account to watch the price of his Curracloe home appreciate.

Burger has just become the first person to place a house for sale in Ireland by private internet auction. He has ditched the conventional estate agent, valued the property himself and is now waiting for technology-savvy house-hunters to bid for his four-bedroom beachside home, using a purpose-built website.

“My neighbour, another German, sold his farmhouse recently and had to pay the selling agent €5,000, just to answer the phone and show people the house,” says Burger. “I thought it was a crazy situation.

My background is in marketing, so when I decided to sell my Irish house, I tried to think of a creative solution. With the success of eBay and other auction sites, an internet sale with zero commission seemed the best solution.”

Last week, Burger set up a website with a facility to bid on the house confidentially in increments of €5,000. The starting price is €1.2m, and the novel auction campaign launches tomorrow.

“The starting price is approximately what my neighbour made for his house recently. It’s an old farmhouse on a smaller site with no views of the beach, so I think €1.2m is a fair guideline,” he says.

Burger, a bestselling self-help author in his home country, moved to Ireland with his wife, Roswitha, 16 years ago to write. Although he availed of the artists’ tax exemption, he insists it was the Irish countryside that seduced him.

“You can get similar tax breaks in other countries, but none with the charm of Ireland,” he says. “We had holidayed in Ireland before and decided to move over in 1989. We flew into Dublin, hired a car and headed for Wexford with the intention of finding a nice village. The area surrounding Curracloe beach was the first place that really wowed us.

“We drove on to the village and visited the local auctioneer. He had only two houses for sale beside the beach. The first was a farmhouse without sea views and the second was Pinedale, 400 yards from the strand. When we saw it, it was damp and in need of money but had potential, so we bought it on the spot. The whole process took just two hours,” he says.

Burger hopes that the sale of his renovated country home will be as painless. “We want to move to Lake Garda in Italy, a much milder climate for my old bones, but we are waiting to sell before we buy. At the moment, it looks good. We’ve had 400 hits on the website already, so there is interest. One of the benefits of the internet sale is its ability to tap into the overseas market. Curracloe is close to the airport and Rosslare ferry port, so that could be its strongest selling point. We’ve had interest from the UK and America already. Everyone knows Curracloe Beach because of Steven Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan,” he says.

Burger has held on to his German base, a converted Dutch-style windmill near the border with Holland in North Rhine-Westphalia. “But thankfully, because of technology, I can spend most of the year in my writing base,” he says.

In the past 16 years, Burger has spent €300,000 bringing Pinedale up to what he describes as “typical German condition”. “The house was built in 1974 for a former director of the Bank of Ireland, but was quite

run down when we bought it. It was very poorly insulated, so the first thing we did was to add rockwool to the walls and roof. We also put in teak double-glazed windows, which are essential if you’re living close to the sea,” he says.

Set on an elevated one-acre site 1.6km from Curracloe, the 1,900 sq ft of accommodation comprises a reception room, kitchen, utility, living room, bar, four bedrooms (all with beach views), an office and bathroom. There’s also a built-in 390-sq-ft garage. A neighbouring one-acre site is available separately. “It’s in a valley behind the house and has sufficient space for a tennis court, swimming pool or horses. It could also be developed, subject to planning permission,” Burger says.

The house borders a wetlands nature reserve, so other development in the area is off-limits. “It’s the only site left to build on. It’s a fantastic place to live because of the wildlife in the nature reserve. We’ve spotted ducks, pheasants, rabbits and foxes in our garden,” Burger says.

Described by Burger as “the California of Ireland”, Curracloe is 3½km from Blackwater, 10km from Wexford town and 15km from Enniscorthy.

Although Burger is the first person to put a house up for sale by private internet auction in Ireland, two other properties have been marketed on eBay’s Irish offshoot, Ebay.ie, since its launch in June. Only one of the properties, a holiday chalet in Majorca, received a bid, although it did not meet the reserve.

“It’s a new concept, so it may not work, but if it doesn’t, I can always go back and sell it conventionally,” Burger says.

www.pinedalehouse.com

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