This week I was invited to give a seminar to a room of licensed property professionals on the craft of buying agency. Nothing keeps you on your toes like live theatre.

There is a particular kind of buyer I recognise immediately.

They arrive with a clear picture. Not a list of requirements - a picture. A redbrick terrace on a tree-lined road in a certain part of this island of ours. A Georgian facade with original sash windows. A house that has been standing for a hundred and twenty years and looks like it knows something the newer builds around it do not.

They found it on Instagram. On a weekend visit. On a quiet hour browsing property portals from an apartment in New York or Boston or San Francisco, building a version of their Irish life before they have set foot in the market.

And when they describe it to me, they are not describing a house.

They are describing a feeling.

That is where the conversation needs to start.

I have lived in a period house. I have also lived in a new build. I say that not to position myself above the question but because it means I can speak honestly to both sides of it.

When you view a period house in winter - fire lit, rooms smelling of timber and history, light falling through original glass in a way no architect can replicate - the heating is on.

When buyers ask me afterwards whether the house runs warm or cold, I give them the honest answer.

Both.

The heating was on for the viewing. And it was on because it is a cold house.

Those two things are not in conflict. They are the same thing. The house was shown at its best - curated for exactly the impression it made. And you, intelligent and experienced, felt it immediately and believed what you felt.

That is not a criticism. It is human nature. Caesar understood it two thousand years ago.

The question is whether you are buying the house or the wish.

You do not buy a 1960s classic car and then complain it has no sat nav.

You buy it knowing exactly what it is. You accept the trade-offs - the maintenance, the cold mornings, the occasional afternoon it simply will not cooperate - because the thing itself is worth it to you. That is a fully informed decision.

Ireland has some of the finest Victorian and Georgian residential architecture in Europe. The desire to own a piece of it is entirely legitimate. The problem is not that people want period houses. The problem is when desire precedes understanding.

The high ceilings that feel extraordinary in July will cost you in heat every winter. The original windows that give the facade its character will not insulate the way a modern frame does. The charm of a hundred-and-twenty-year-old house comes partly from the fact that it was built to different standards, for a different life.

None of that is a reason not to buy it. It is a reason to know - clearly, honestly - what you are buying into.

When a client arrives with a strong period preference I ask them a simple set of questions.

Have you lived in one before? What is your tolerance for the ongoing relationship an older property requires - not a renovation, just the cost and attention that comes with age? What does your Tuesday morning look like when the boiler needs attention and you have an early flight?

These are not trick questions. They separate the buyer who will be content from the buyer who spends the first three winters quietly reconsidering a decision made in the warmth of a curated afternoon.

The period house buyer who gets this right is one of the most decisive clients I work with. They know that the draughts and cold spots are part of the same package as the cornicing and the proportions. They have budgeted for the roof. They know character has a cost and they have decided - without illusion - that it is worth it.

They are not buying a wish. They are buying a house they fully understand.

If, after asking all of that, the answer is still yes -

Then go and buy the house.

The takeaway

The viewing shows you the house at its best. Your job is to understand it at its most ordinary - and want it anyway. That is how you know the juice is worth the squeeze.