Millionaire buyers continue to snap up €2m-plus homes in capital

The early months of 2016 have seen buyers slug it out in Dublin 6 for Victorian redbricks, with a number selling well beyond the asking price.

Take the €2.53 million achieved for 11 Rostrevor Terrace in Rathgar – 20 per cent above its asking price. The property was laid out as three separate units and required restoration. Just two years earlier, another house in superior condition on the same terrace sold for €1.4 million.

Meanwhile, 16 Northbrook Road in Ranelagh, a recently refurbished end-of-terrace house, secured €3.4 million. The house had been laid out as flats for decades and was renovated by its long-time owner, helping it to achieve 15 per cent over the asking. In December 2012, a lavishly refurbished and extended house on the same side of the street sold for €2.05 million.

This month, gardener Helen Dillon’s house on Sandford Terrace sold for an estimated €4.5 million in just four weeks, just short of its bullish €4.6 million asking price.

Elsewhere, however, bidding was less heated. Numerous houses in Dublin 4 that sold for more than €2 million failed to meet their initial asking prices, including 70 Ailesbury Road, which sold for just slightly under the €2.3 million sought.

Around the corner, 57 Merrion Road sold for €2.29 million, significantly below its €2.5 million asking price. The near-identical house attached to it, 55 Merrion Road, sold for €2.26 million at the bottom of the market in March 2013, suggesting that the new owners of number 57 picked up a bargain.

Closer to the city, 11 Herbert Park sold for €2.5 million, down from its original €2.95 million asking.

Number 6 St Mary’s Road sold for €2.06 million, €240,000 below its asking, though the owner, who lives in a neighbouring house, only paid €1.76 million for the property in 2013.

Number 31 Wellington Place, a 503sq m house renovated to exceptional standards, sold after just a fortnight on the market for €4.98 million, €330,000 above its asking price.

One of the biggest sales of the year took place in Clonskeagh, where 9 Maple Road, a 303sq m house on 0.49 acres, requiring updating, was sold to a local family for €3 million, 11 per cent above its €2.7 million asking price.

The price paid for the home equates to €9,900 per sq m, or €6.1 million per acre.

This price represents a staggering increase in home values on the tree-lined street since prices bottomed out during the recession.

In 2011, the sumptuous former home of the late George Cecil Crampton, whose family built Maple Roads, sold for €1.6 million, just €5,500 per sq m, or €2.54 million per acre.