Ubiquitous Albany

Albany Avenue in Monkstown, Co Dublin, is a short road between the main Monkstown Road and the coast road: it has few houses but has seen a lot of selling activity in the past few years. Passersby may have started to notice it in the past 12 months or so, as huge cranes went up on a site on the corner of Albany and the coast road.

This week, Casa Tina, a house on a lane just off Albany Avenue, went up for sale for €1.15 million. Albany House at the end of the lane sold for €3.74 million in 2010. Another house, The Albany, a pink Regency villa on Albany Avenue, sold for €3.3 million in 2014, after which permission was granted for the building of a supersized super-modern house nearing completion in its long front garden. It is called – on a plaque outside its walls – The Albany Cois Fharraige. And Albany Lodge, another Regency villa at the top of Albany Avenue on the opposite site of the road, on the corner with Monkstown Road, is for sale for €2.995 million through Knight Frank. A large pink house on the other corner is called St Alban's.

This must cause a headache for postal workers – and we won't even go into the confusion that may be caused by two newish new homes developments near each other in Killiney, one called Albany, the other, Albany Lodge.