Top property sales 2016 – who bought and sold

DUBLIN

Dublin 6 dominated top-end sales this year and, in particular, Dartry. Whereas in other years coastal south Co Dublin and Shrewsbury and Ailesbury Roads have dominated, Dublin 6 and the area around Temple Road have become hot property.

Top of the list was the purchase in May of Alston at 19 Temple Road for a whopping €10.225 million when former Paddy Power boss Patrick Kennedy traded up from his home on nearby Palmerston Road. In a quiet off-market deal, the Victorian property, on one acre, was sold by barrister Vincent Foley and his wife, Helen, who have lived there since the late 1980s.

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Lyons Demesne estate in Co Kildare which sold for around €18 million

Around the corner at 5 Temple Gardens, €6.5 million exchanged hands when the detached redbrick house on a third of an acre owned by the late barrister and former attorney general, Rory Brady, sold in another off-market deal.

Not long after Subiaco at 1 Temple Gardens sold for €5.85 million shortly after coming on the market. It's believed that the buyers of both properties are Irish families planning to live there, however the Sherry FitzGerald broker facilitating the deals, Geralyn Byrne, refused to comment.

And if three of the top five sales weren't enough for Byrne – aka the "Queen of Dublin 6" – she was also behind the sales of Helen Dillon's famed Georgian home and garden at 45 Sandford Terrace, Ranelagh for €4.5 million; 1 Richview Park in Dartry for €3.075million and St Philip's at 42F Palmerston Road for €3 million. Not a bad year's work and presumably a very merry Christmas awaits Byrne.

Sherry Fitz completed a clean sweep of the top five Dublin sales when its other star agent, Simon Ensor, brokered the sales of Beulah in Dalkey for €6 million and 51 Ailesbury Road for €5.9 million. Beulah, a fine 465sq m (5,010sq ft) Victorian, on 1.7 acres, was the family home of the late Finn O'Sullivan, founder of transport and logistics firm Irish Express Cargo.

The sale of 51 Ailesbury Road for €5.9 million only closed recently and its buyer remains something of a mystery as the property was bought in trust. Even the vendors don’t know their identity. Certainly one to watch when the removal trucks roll up.

COUNTRY

The seeming never ending on again, off again sale of the late Tony Ryan's former Lyons Demesne estate in Kildare came to a conclusion when it appeared on the Property Price Register as sold for €12 million in October. Factoring in the 600 acres on which the lavish Georgian mansion stands, the total sum paid is closer to €18 million. The property had been on the market for €25 million with Knight Frank when it was withdrawn in 2014 just as it looked like it was about to be sold close to the asking. It seems the ultimate buyer emerged from within the Ryan family, with Shane Ryan understood to have bought out the other members' share, further bolstering his substantial prime property portfolio.

The next biggest country estate sale was that of Bective Demesne, a walled estate on 180 acres in Navan, Co Meath which sold for €4.2 million in recent weeks through Sherry FitzGerald.

In July Renville House, a Georgian property on 135 acres overlooking Galway Bay, sold at auction through Paddy Jordan Estates for €3.2 million – €1.2 million above the guide price. It soon emerged that the buyer was none other than Galway entrepreneur and owner of the Supermac’s chain of Irish fast food outlets, Pat McDonagh. The Residential Property Price Register recorded the sale of the house at €475,000 and coach house at €75,000, presumably the surrounding land accounted for the balance.

Shearwater in Kenmare, an unusual and beautiful contemporary thatched property built by Roland and Veronica Blennerhassett in 2010, came on the market in 2015 asking €2.75 million and sold in August to an undisclosed buyer for €2.7million.

This year also saw the sale finally of former AIB chief executive David Duffy's, Glebe House in West Cork for €2.25 million. The modernised 929sq m (10,000sq ft) mansion had been placed on the market in 2013 for €5million and, following a series of price drops, it was finally bought by British peer and House of Lords member, Sir Wilf Stevenson, as a holiday home for him and his wife who has connections in Glandore.

In general the country estates market had a very quiet year by comparison with 2015 when sales from €4 million upwards were not unusual. It may be the case that many of the finer trophy estates have now found their buyers, but the impact of Brexit and Trump’s elevation to power in the US are certainly being attributed to a fall in buyer confidence particularly among overseas buyers.