Join the list for new schemes: Property people will be converging on Adamstown this weekend to check out what will undoubtedly be the development of the year in the greater Dublin area.
Castlethorn, who gave us the Dundrum Town Centre, is the driving force in this first phase of the new town which will have a direct rail link into the city and all the appropriate shops and leisure facilities. Though the site only has minimal infrastructure at this stage, the development of the homes is tied to the provision of all the other facilities, including schools - the first time planners have insisted on this kind of phased development. Today's launch is likely to be a sell-out, since there are just 330 homes for sale with the next lot not likely to come on until early next year when the rail service must be ready to roll before house building can continue. Interestingly, the selling agents says they will sell only one unit per buyer to keep investors out. However, it might be difficult to police this procedure knowing how canny investors are. Certainly it's a scheme that would appeal to them, given the broad range of selling prices - from €280,000 to €520,000 and overall quality of the development, which both Castlethorn and the architects, O'Mahony Pike, will be hoping is an award winner.
Meanwhile, elsewhere in the city, long lists of buyers are now the norm in the run up to the launch of housing developments, with one agent saying that any decent scheme would have at least several hundred names in waiting. It's good news for housebuilders but it is also making some of them nervous and reluctant to sell until the very last minute. With the market still obviously on the rise, buying off plans generally costs less than when a home is completed.
Meath masterpiece: Castlethorn's Joe O'Reilly has a lot more on his plate than just Adamstown and Dundrum. He's also behind a massive country club scheme at Killeen Castle near Dunshaughlin where Starwood Hotels is to run a five-star hotel which will be based in the ancient castle. So pleased has Meath County Council been with the project that it has just green-lighted a further 36 houses on the estate, bringing the overall number of homes in the demesne to 162. Killeen was the home of advertising guru Basil Brindley and was burned by the IRA in the 1960s after they mistakenly believed that it belonged to a local titled family. O'Reilly bought the estate for a song about eight years ago, and is well on the way to making it a showpiece for the county.
Same old story on AMVs: Oh dear. Any hope that the new system of AMVs would ease the plight of auction bidders has proved wide of the mark if this week's auction results are anything to go by. The new system introduced by the Irish Auctioneers & Valuers Institute was designed to bring pre-auction guide prices onto a realistic footing but, alas, this doesn't seem to have happened. Yesterday, Daphne Kaye sold a detached house at Knocksinna, Foxrock for €5.3 million - way ahead of the €3.75 million she suggested as an advised minimum value. And she wasn't the only one. Lisney sold 196 Upper Rathmines Road for €2.2 million (AMV €1.4 million), while in Avoca Park, Blackrock, it sold number 2 for €2.7 million, well over the AMV of €2.25 million. Sherry FitzGerald fetched just under €2 million for a modern five-bed in the St Gabriel's development in Cabinteely. The AMV was a mere €1.5 million. Which all goes to show that there's no accounting for what people will pay for a house in the heat of the auction room.
