New results from Cairn Homes has shown renewed interest in off-plan sales, a practice common in the Celtic Tiger property bubble.

The house-builder had been due to put its Rathgar development on the market early next year but brought forward sales to take advantage of what it described as early demand.

In practice it means the Marianella site has already taken deposits on 40 of the 234 homes off the plans, with a total sales value of €27.2 million. That puts the average price at €680,000. The homes are not due to be finished until March.

In a trading update for the period from July 1st to November 16th, Cairn Homes said it was making good progress in developing its land bank, whose core portfolio consists of 29 sites. The company plans to develop more than 12,000 units on these sites, 90 per cent them in the Greater Dublin Area.

Help-to-buy scheme

Cairn said it was still on track to meet its 2016 target of completing more than 100 house sales across its active sites, and said it was confident of delivering 1,200 units a year by 2019.

Boosting growth in the market could be the help-to-buy scheme recently introduced by the Government.

"Cairn occupies a strong position in a rapidly improving Irish housing market," said chief executive Michael Stanley. "We continue to accelerate our home-building operations in accordance with our IPO plans, and have a talented team to deliver on our growth targets."