The new selling season is doing better than the cynics through the lofty but tired accommodation. One viewer described the crowd as a Who's Who of Dublin 4 so there should be no shortage of bidders on the day.

However, this is no run-of-the-mill D4 townhouse. It's bigger than others on the road, it's semi-detached with offstreet parking, and there's lots of room to make it even bigger and more impressive. One swallow, as they say, doesn't make a summer and the next month in the auction calendar will largely determine whether the renewed appetite for property will be sustained. Poor auction results last autumn gave the market a severe case of the jitters as buyers decided to pull back from a runaway market that often did not make sense.

The spring selling season has become the most important in recent years, invariably producing the best property and the most surprising results. Agents specialising in the most expensive houses will be cautious not to flood the market, but if clients want to sell, and more of them do, prices are unlikely to race ahead as they did in the heady days of 1998 and 1999.