Whelan serves up a slice of AdamstownAfter the fanfare of publicity around the launch of the first homes at Adamstown in west Dublin earlier in the year, a new phase of housing will be quietly sold off plans in the coming weeks through Douglas Newman Good.
The initial launch was a knockout success for developer Castlethorn which has shifted no less than 632 apartments and houses in the new town which will eventually have 25,000 residents, numerous shopping and leisure facilities and its own train station. Adamstown is the first scheme in the Government's Strategic Development Zone (SDZ) initiative which was designed to fast-track planning for starter homes.
The housing element is being carved up by different developers and this time around, Mick Whelan of Maplewood Homes is hoping to sell several hundred homes from a list that's been growing since a sign went up in the area two weeks ago. So far, according to DNG, there have been several hundred enquiries though prices have not yet been released.However, they are likely to be in line with those at Castlethorn's Adamstown Castle, where apartments started at €270,000 and the largest four-bedroom houses were priced at €520,000. Interestingly, almost 25 per cent of buyers so far have been foreign nationals, many of them from the medical community. Castlethorn is on schedule to release a further tranche of homes later in the autumn and it's likely that by the end of the year, over 1,000 homes will have been sold in the new town.
We'll take . . . 10 city blocks in Manhattan
Anyone in the market for a really large chunk of real estate should head to New York where no less than 110 apartment blocks along the East River have come on the market... with a target price of around €3.9 billion ($5 billion). In what's being billed as the largest sale of a single property in US history, insurance giant MetLife is selling the 80-acre property known as Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village, which stretches along 1st Avenue between 14th and 23rd Streets. MetLife built the complexes 60 years ago with government help, creating a leafy affordable neighbourhood for generations of teachers and nurses, firefighters and police officers in rent controlled apartments. According to the New York Times, the sale has already drawn interest from dozens of prospective buyers, including real estate tycoons, pension funds and investors from the Middle East. As one executive involved in the sale put it, "this is the ego dream of the world: 110 buildings, 11,000 apartments, covering 10 city blocks in Manhattan." Sounds like one for the Irish, doesn't it?
Rainy tournament marks summer's end
The The Irish Times/IAVI tennis tournament marks the official end of the summer holidays, and this year, as in many a previous year, it drizzled and rained through the event held yesterday evening at Lansdowne Tennis Club. With play delayed, the final outcome was in the balance as we went to press, though HOK seemd to be pole postion with RonanRooney, Gerry McCarthy, Anne Kiernan and Mary Burke playing a blinder. Eighteen teams took part including stalwarts from Hooke & MacDonald. Daphne Kaye & Associates, The Law Society and Sherry FitzGerald.
