Twelve golf homes are being launched for sale this weekend on the Mount Juliet Estate in Thomastown, Co Kilkenny – six of them on a two-year sale-and-leaseback basis.
The two-bedroom apartments, built in the 1990s and rented out since then by the estate, have been regularly upgraded according to the agent, and are the first major sale on the estate since Irish investment company Tetrarch Capital bought it in mid-2014.
Rose Garden Lodges are apartments located between the clubhouse and Mount Juliet House, overlooking the eighth fairway. They range in size from 116-144sq m (1,249-1,550sq ft) and will cost from €340,000 to €390,000. Six are at ground level, six on the first floor, all with their own hall door and space for parking. Kitchens, dining areas and lounges open on to patios at ground floor level and balconies on the first floor. The apartments have high ceilings, coving, period-style fireplaces, polished granite worktops in kitchens and hardwood floors.
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Six of the 12 are being sold on a sale-and-leaseback basis with Mount Juliet guaranteeing a yield of approximately 4.5 per cent to investors – about €15,300 to € 17,550 per year. Two golf memberships are included in the sale price, subject to an annual subscription of about € 2,000 a year. Other costs include property tax and maintenance charges on the houses being sold – although these have not yet been fixed. There are no maintenance charges on the sale-and-leaseback properties. Mount Juliet currently rents out the Rose Garden Lodges from about €260/€300 per night upwards. Owners can use the property for four weeks a year, on the basis of one week per quarter. Unused weeks can be carried forward, but rent won’t be paid for them and owners would get these extra weeks subject to availability. After two years, the properties revert to buyers for their own use. If they want to lease them back again, that would be subject to negotiation with Mount Juliet. Owners can of course rent their properties themselves – for example, a three-bed house on the estate is currently for rent for €1,000 a week.
There are about 100 properties on the estate, ranging from the apartments up to four-bed houses. There has been a steady demand for Mount Juliet properties in the past few years – the property price register shows, for example, that seven were sold so far this year at prices from €650,000 to €1.3 million and nine in 2014 from €280,000 to €1.4 million.
