Time was when a house came up for sale on Dublin’s prestigious Ailesbury or Shrewsbury roads that estate agents would have been fighting each other for the business. Nowadays these properties seem to hang around a like a bad smell.

Take Numbers 1 and 3 Shrewsbury Road, formerly owned by financier Derek Quinlan. They went on the market in a blaze of publicity at the end of March this year, and soon after it was reported they had been offloaded for a sum close to the asking price of €7.5 million. Imagine our surprise this week, then, when Sherry FitzGerald, who handled the original sale, posted the same two houses back on the market, this time with a far lower price tag of €4.95 million. Apparently the purchaser had signed contracts but didn’t complete the sale.

Meanwhile, St Peter’s at 91 Ailesbury Road provided a déjà vu moment this week, when, like the Ghost of Boomtimes Past, it popped up again. This double- fronted house was seeking about €5 million in May 2011 through Savills. Somewhere along the way, Lisney took it on, and the asking price was dropped to €3.95m in July this year. This week they further reduced the price to €3m. While it’s a fine home, it appears a paved back garden overlooked by an apartment block is proving something of a cooler for perspective buyers, not to mention of course, the greatly financially diminished buyer pool.