A six-bedroom house on Ailesbury Road in Dublin 4 sold for €2.23m today amid brisk trade at Ireland's second mega-distressed-property auction
The Ballsbridge house was the "jewel in the crown" at the Shelbourne Hotel, where UK auctioneers Allsop shifted 78 properties on behalf of banks.
The price was a fraction of the €8m it would have made in the boom, but still 50% higher than the reserve price of €1.45m.
"That was a big number," said Stephen McCarthy of Space, the Irish partners of the UK firm. "We're thrilled with the way this has gone," he added.
Number 35 Ailesbury Road had been empty for some time and wasthe most expensive property in the Allsop catalogue. The auctioneers believe it will set a new floor for house prices on the D4 road where some of Ireland’s richest property developers once rubbed shoulders with ambassadors and one former Taoiseach, Albert Reynolds.
An underbidder told RTE afterwards, the house would take around €800,000 to refurbish.
Another jewel in the auction were two partially built houses on Killiney Hill Road with sea views.
They were sold for €325,000, but not before a man interrupted proceedings to warn potential buyers that the properties had enforcement orders on them. This did not deter the buyers.
Other highlights of the auction included an old three-bed mill-house with an adjoining two-bed mews house in the picturesque town of Schull in County Cork.
It went for €560,000, more than twice its reserve of €270,000.
Galway house goes for triple reserve
A three-bed house on a busy street in Galway – 94 Upper Prospect Hill - went for €177,000 more than triple the reserve.
All eyes were on another Dublin 4 property - 61, Haddington Road. Split into two flats, it was advertised with a maximum reserve of €395,000 but went for €635,000.
A two bedroom penthouse apartment in Smithfield went for just €177,000, just €2,000 above the reserve. In the boom years it might have commanded a price of €500,000 to €600,000.
'Most definitely green shoots'
Auctioneer Gary Murphy said he believed there were “most definitely” green shoots of recovery in the housing market if today’s auction were to be used as a yardstick.
“The market is redefining itself. There was a confidence about bidding. It felt like bidding was more aggressive than last time.”
Many properties appeared to be going for well over their reserve, though he warned against using this as a barometer for house prices.
Allsop sold 78 of the 83 lots - a 94% sales rate, which was higher than the UK where Allsop sell an average of 87%.
Rathgar house didn't make reserve
One house that didn’t reach the maximum reserve was a red-brick house in Villiers Road in Rathgar. The house is split into two flats and was sold for €450,000, just below the reserve of €495,000.
At the lower end of the scale was a three-bedroom apartment in Waterford City which went for just €53,000, but the reserve had been set at just €35,000.
Apartments in Castleforbes Square in the IFSC proved a barometer at the first auction with investors piling in in the hope of getting a flat at a price that would deliver a high rental yield. One one bed apartment went for €132,000 while a two-bed apartment went for €148,000.
Armagh-born Kevin Toner, an investor who came over from the UK to buy the two-bed flat said: “These are reasonable prices but if you look at estate agent windows, I think prices have got to come down a bit more.”
He owns about 20-30 properties in the north east of England and thought Ireland now represented a good buy.
Allsop company said it had seen much higher interest from overseas this time round with buyer inquiries from Singapore, Switzerland, Australia, Israel, Dubai and the UK.
The UK buyers were mostly interested in commercial investment properties which came with tenants.
Pharmacies , which are still doing good business in Ireland, were among the target for investor-bidders and achieved prices far above their maximum reserve prices.
A shabby looking building in Santry with a pharmacy fetched €377,500 from a phone bidder, way above the maximum reserve of €215,000.
Another chemist in Clondalkin went for €139,000 – above the reserve of €120,000.
