Icon boss joins affluent owners in popular Ailesbury Wood scheme

Completed by Davy Hickey around 2004, Ailesbury Wood is one of Dublin 4's best modern housing schemes. Its 1.25-acre site was formerly used as grass tennis courts by owners of adjoining houses fronting onto Ailesbury Road, before property investor Peter White assembled the site over a number of years and then sold it to Kinsale Investments, an investment vehicle. The site is accessed through a lane between 29 Ailesbury Road and 27 Ailesbury Road – a house that White sold at the height of the market for €9 million, and is now back on the market seeking €5.95 million.

The development consists of 16 houses, comprising four blocks of four terraced houses. When Sherry FitzGerald originally launched the houses circa 2004, eight houses with the longest rear gardens were retained by the developers. The first block is still owned by the wife of developer Brendan Hickey. Likewise, the last block is owned by Rena McLaughlin and Kyran McLaughlin, the well-known senior Davy executive.

Property interests

The remaining eight houses were sold to individual buyers, many of whom had significant property interests, or were involved in the property industry.

One such owner is an affluent downsizer who achieved about €3.5 million for their former home on Orwell Park when making the move to Ailesbury in 2004. The house next door is owned by businessman Lochlann Quinn, co-owner of the five-star Merrion Hotel.

Only three of the 16 houses are believed to have traded hands since the development's completion, excluding inter-family transfers, and two of those sales have taken place since 2014. One such sale was 12 Ailesbury Wood, a two-storey house sold at auction in 2014 for €1.6 million (€8,649 per sq m) by former AIB executive John Hughes.

Relatively good value

In February this year the house next door, 11 Ailesbury Wood, was sold for more than €1.5 million to Icon boss Ciaran Murray and his wife, Denise Ronan. Considering its 203sq m (2,185sq ft) of interior space, the price for the three-storey house represents €7,414 per sq m – relatively good value considering the price achieved for Number 12 in a much weaker market three years ago.

The couple were granted planning permission in recent months to demolish their nearby Merrion Road home and to build a 760sq m (8,180sq ft) replacement, and will presumably occupy their new luxury pied-à-terre while construction takes place. They acquired the Ailesbury Wood home from Galway hotelier Terry Sweeney, who purchased two houses in the development at the launch.