People queued in the rain from almost daybreak yesterday to buy homes in what is planned to be the biggest purpose-built neighbourhood in the Republic - Spencer Dock in the Dublin docklands
By teatime yesterday, 330 apartments along with parking spaces with a total value of €150 million had been sold in almost equal numbers to investors and first-time buyers.
The day-long selling frenzy set records even by the standards of the boom years of the 1990s. And this time around the apartments do not carry the tax breaks which were available when most of the first 1,000 apartments in the IFSC went on the market.
Yesterday's rush to buy in Spencer Dock was prompted in part by the fact that the development company, headed by Treasury Holdings, has promised to turn the 51-acre site between the IFSC and the Point Depot into a vibrant new quarter of the city with the usual mix of offices, shops and leisure facilities.
For some buyers, the attraction was that they only have to pay a booking fee now of €5,000, a further €15,000 when completing contracts in three weeks' time, and the balance when the homes are ready to move into in 2005. "People are buying at today's prices and there is only one way the market can go over the next few years - higher and higher," predicted Mr Ken MacDonald, of selling agents Hooke and MacDonald.
One-bedroom apartments sold from €290,000 to €320,000, two-bedroom units were priced from €350,000 to €500,000 while three-bedroom homes made between €500,000 and €600,000. Basement car-parking spaces cost an extra €40,000 each. Almost 50 of the apartments were sold on Wednesday night at a preview in the sales centre at Spencer Dock, which includes a full-scale apartment complete with fittings and furnishings.
Although the sales centre was not due to begin taking bookings until midday yesterday, Hooke and MacDonald opened the doors when the first buyers started queuing outside the complex at 7.30 a.m. The first advertisement for Spencer Dock appeared in yesterday's Property Supplement in The Irish Times. The original plan to release 150 of the 600 apartments in the first phase had to be scrapped by mid-morning as ever-increasing numbers arrived at the sales centre.
By evening, bookings had hit the 330 mark and, with deposits coming in hard and fast, Treasury instructed their agents to keep going until they had 530 bookings in the bag - a figure that it likely to be reached by this weekend.
Although a lot of money has already changed hands, construction of the apartments on the old CIÉ freight marshalling yard is not due to begin until the new year.
Treasury, along with a design and marketing team headed by Robert Tincknell, spent months selecting a range of materials and fittings with a view to making Spencer Dock stand out in comparison to developments of similar size in the city.
