February 16, 2011
By Staff Reporter
By Andrew Bushe
DUBLIN – A mystery buyer shocked the Dublin property market by paying a record _5.9 million at a ten minute auction for a semi-detached home with sea views in the exclusive Dalkey suburb – almost triple the previous record for the city.
The six-bedroom end-of-terrace home, No. 1 Sorrento Terrace, had been listed by the auctioneers with a guide price of about _3 million, but six bidders sent the price soaring in quarter million bids before the hammer came down after a final few _100,000 bids.
The four-story home on Sorrento Point had come on the market for the first time since 1949, when the owners paid _7,000.
Tommy Day of Lisney Auctioneers described the house as one of the best properties in the south of the city. He expected it would be a long time before the record was beaten again.
“In my career, I have never had the pleasure of selling a property like it before,” he said. “I think it is probably the best house in south Dublin.
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“It is a wonderful property. It stands on 1.5 acres of dramatic gardens which run down to the foreshore. The rear faces south and there are wonderful views. There are very few houses of this caliber in Dublin.”
Day said the price was the market value – what a willing
purchaser will pay and the vendor will accept.
“There are a lot of people out in the world with an awful lot of money,” Day said. “All you want is one person who will pay more.
“A wide variety of people looked at it. We had people from the entertainment world, from New York and from Britain.”
The seller was 96-year-old Dorothy Lavery, a widow, whose husband was an eye surgeon and professor at UCD. She is buying a smaller house close by.
The family are related to the painter Sir John Lavery and his wife, Lady Lavery, whose face was on the old pound notes.
The property was bought in trust for the new owner by solicitors A&L Goodbody.
The previous highest price was for a detached home, Mount Mapas House and its grounds close by in Killiney, which fetched _2.3 million last September.
On top of the purchase price, the new owner will have to pay government stamp duty of _530,000, plus legal fees – enough to buy up to half a dozen average-sized suburban homes in Dublin.
The abolition of property tax last year means the new owner won’t face an additional _86,000 a year.
The stunning price would mean that anyone on the average salary of _12,000 a year would face the impossible task of paying out all of their salary for over 490 years before they could buy the house.
In Ireland’s Celtic Tiger economy, it is estimated that millionaires are being created at the rate of three a week and the Dalkey-Killiney area has been dubbed the city’s “Riviera” because of the number of wealthy people buying property there.
Residents who have made it fashionable include singer-composer Enya, Formula One drivers Eddie Irvine and Damon Hill, bestselling author M’ve Binchy, Bono of U2 and singer Lisa Stansfield
On the day the house was sold, one of the neighbors on Sorrento Terrace, filmmaker Neil Jordan, was given a top French honor along with singer Van Morrison.