Buying low and selling high, a formula that never gets old

The repackaging of Kilcooley Estate in Tipperary on its original 1,200 acres represents probably the biggest residential flip since the downturn if the owner achieves the €8 million sale price following its total acquisition for just €3.6 million within the last two years.

But the Newry businessman and energy exploration entrepreneur Tommy O’Gorman has form in the acquisition of distressed property.

He also bought the Blarney Golf Resort for an estimated €2.5 million last year and Galway’s Clybaun Hotel for more than €3 million – both of which were in receivership. The acquisition of distressed properties at knockdown prices only to be swiftly refurbished and sold for a healthy profit is a growing trend.

Many Nama and bank properties sold at cut-down prices to cash-rich investors were flipped soon after for huge profits, and while residential properties are proving lucrative, the biggest profits so far have been confined to Dublin’s commercial property market.

In 2013 a site on Sir John Rogerson’s Quay in Dublin 2 was sold by Nama to an Australian firm for €7.5 million, who then sold the site to Hibernia Reit for €17.75 million one year later.

Also in Dublin 2, US investors purchased the One Warrington Place office building for €27 million in 2012 before selling the building two years later to Irish Life for €42 million. There is a galling irony that our market recovery is bound up in acquiring properties at substantial profits from canny investors who picked the same bricks and mortar up at bargain basement prices when the market was on its knees.