Back in the late 1990s James O'Flynn of Jamor Developments sold a new-build property added on to the original Pembroke Cottages on Merrion Road, and at the time got a record price.
The Earl of Pembroke's build style has remained an inspiration and is evident in the brick detailing of this brand new property on a site opposite the entrance to St Vincent's Hospital on Nutley Lane.
O’Flynn has always favoured the auction route to selling houses, and this is the first home he has brought to market in 11 years since that gavel-loving era. The civil engineering side of the business has kept him busy supplying and installing specialised printing machines, and he’s been building and refurbing private houses quietly for a client list that includes some of the capital’s embassies.
Number 85 Nutley Lane, a three-storey, five-bedroom redbrick detached house set on about 0.18 of an acre, is being offered by agents DNG not with an asking price but with an AMV of €2.25 million. His reason for choosing the auction route is that he says the house is not a standard house. “You can only auction a one-off house.” This route also means that “the sale is done and dusted on the day”.
It's a selling mechanism that has been used to sell mainly distressed properties in the last few years but, back in 2006, the year before he purchased the property, DNG sold 1,498 properties this way, representing about 10 per cent of the overall market, explains Susan Slevin, a partner in the estate agents.
Creature comforts
The five-bedroom house that stood on the site was a two-storey residence and has been razed, save for two outside walls. Now three storeys tall, it measures 297sq m ( 3,203sq ft) and has all the creature comforts you’d expect from a top-of-the-range new-build. There is underfloor heating throughout, concrete floors to dim down intra-floor sound transference, and large casement windows by Nordan that are triple-glazed, a helpful addition when you’re positioned at the entrance to one of the city’s busiest hospitals.
Inside, the house is super-quiet. Each window has vents that you can open to aerate each room whilst maintaining security, and there are security access panels on each floor that also allow you to activate the electronic front gates remotely using an app on your mobile phone.
The stone on the granite-topped piers and flower beds was sourced from Ballyknockan-based C McEvoy & Sons. The landscaping was done by O’Flynn and features some fine specimen trees including Italian oaks and a mimosa.
He invested in solid teak doors throughout, each weighing about 60kg. Four of these lead off the black-and-white-tiled entrance hall. One opens into a guest WC, another a small study. The third leads through to a sizeable livingroom with an open fire, a real bonus as many A-rated residences have foregone the open fire in favour of climbing the Ber ratings ladder, but it gives such a focal point to a room.
Enormous
The kitchen is enormous and features units painted in Farrow & Ball's pavillion grey. These were supplied by Sean Wynn carpentry. The same firm did the walk-in wardrobes and the cherry wardrobes in the bedrooms.
Large-size sliding doors lead out to the sandstone patio and northeast-facing artificial lawn while a playroom, situated off the kitchen, can be closed off using a panel of folding doors. From the garden there is a side gate that will make the walk time to St Michael’s College a journey of less than one minute.
There is off-street parking to the front for four or five cars, where there is also an electric car charging point. There is vehicular access to the side door that leads directly into the kitchen.
O’Flynn bought the property in 2007 for €1.8 million and there have been a couple of attempts to sell it in the interim, but there’s been no market for high-end houses, he explains. “This will test the market. We will see how good it is.”
The auction takes place on October 3rd at 2.30pm at DNG's head office at 30 Leeson Park, Ranelagh, Dublin 6.
