In one of the biggest residential deals of 2014, Singaporean Cynthia Chua spent almost 8 million euros on “Deepwell,” a coastal mansion to the south of Dublin built by the Guinness family in the 1850s.
“By international standards, top-end properties are relatively cheap,” said her husband, Nick Holman, who returned home last year after working abroad in finance. “They’d compare to the cost of a nice detached house in London.”
Embassy Belt
Edwardian houses on Shrewsbury Road in the heart of Dublin’s embassy belt, once home to some of the nation’s biggest property developers, are now selling to a different kind of buyer.
The National Asset Management Agency, the state’s bad bank, in April sold “Mugnano,” a 5,000-square-foot (465-square- meter) home on the road. The buyer was Aengus “Gus” Kelly, chief executive officer of Dutch plane-leasing company AerCap Holdings NV, according to two people familiar with the matter. A spokeswoman for AerCap declined to comment.
“What’s happened on Shrewsbury Road over the last five years is that all of the new guys who’d come in, they’re all gone,” said Peter Kenny, an estate agent with Colliers International, as he walked the oak-paneled floors of a mansion on the street he’s trying to sell for 7 million euros. “There’s a new set of wealthy people who are coming in to take over.”
Kenny is selling the property for creditors of developer Sean Dunne, he said. About half of the buyers of the properties he sells are Irish expatriates,’’ he said.
NAMA’s Support
Back in Howth, Cosgrave ponders how times have changed over the last six years, since the National Asset Management Agency took over the 500 million euros of debts he owed to Irish banks. The agency is now helping to finance the construction of his Howth development, where he hopes to build about 30 of the five bedroom, 3,358-square-foot homes.
Plenty of local Irish people can afford this sort of property, Cosgrave said, helping keep alive the business his family started in 1979.