Another Section 23 apartment scheme comes on the market today at Townsend Street, Dublin 2, two weeks after a similar development sold out on the opposite side of the road.
The 57 apartments in Trinity Plaza are being built on part of the site of Tara Street Fire Station. The redevelopment will also include a 90bedroom hotel for the O'Dwyer Group, which will front on to both Pearse Street and Tara Street when it opens early next year. With the Section 23 tax breaks due to run out by the end of next month, Hamilton Osborne King is confident of an early sellout of the Trinity Plaza development, which will have an almost equal number of one and two-bedroom units.
Prices for one-bedroom apartments with 500 sq ft will range from £155,000 to £170,000, while twobedroom homes with 680 sq ft to 700 sq ft will cost from £200,000 to £230,000. The agents will also be taking bookings for nine penthouse apartments on the fifth floor, some of them onebedroom units with 500 sq ft, which will cost £175,000. The remainder are two-bedroom homes with 680 sq ft, which will be pried from £215,000 to £220,000. Although the apartments are among the most expensive in the inner city - equating to £300 per sq ft - developers have been getting premium prices for the ever-dwindling supply of Section 23 schemes. Trinity Plaza also has the advantage of being exceptionally well located - it is less than five minutes' walk from Trinity College and Grafton Street.
Not surprisingly, Ronan O'Driscoll of Hamilton Osborne King describes the Townsend Street site as "undoubtedly the best residential investment location in the south inner city". It is a strong letting area which is also close to the International Financial Services Centre, where in the past week, Citibank announced that it would be employing more than 2,000 staff.
"A great many of these will be looking for apartments to rent in the city centre and Trinity Plaza is likely to be at the top of their list," says Ronan O'Driscoll.
The development will include retail units at street level and apartments on the four upper floors. All windows will be double glazed to ensure that traffic on the busy Tara Street side does not impinge on life in the apartments. Residents will have access to a large landscaped terraced garden at first floor level. There will also be a roof garden with superb views over the city centre and the Trinity campus.
The selling agents promise that apartments will be finished out to a high standard before they are handed over to the purchasers by the end of the year. It will be interesting to see how many avail of the option of buying car-parking spaces, which at £30,000 each, are the most expensive in the inner city.
