Limerick’s property market booming as the city undergoes a renaissance

GOOD, very good and even better — that could be the summation of this year’s Limerick property market including a forecast for the next year.

Those agents who were boarding planes to the sun this Christmas, did so with a very satisfactory year behind them, while those at home tidied up their desks in smug preparation for the expected swell of the January market.

All of the firms in the city were optimistic for the future, in both the residential and commercial sectors and all agreed on one thing Limerick is booming.

Without a shop to let for Christmas and with upwards of 20,000 students milling around the town, the city is hugely changed from 15 years ago, when dereliction and decay were the byword for Shannonside.

Now, however, things have changed: the Clarion's bow cuts a swathe though the quayside and in a nice touch of irony, the makers of Angela's Ashes had to go to Cork to find a lane.

The foresight of Limerick's City and County Councils has seen plenty of zoned and serviced land ready for development, so supply has always been on tap. This has kept property prices low and Limerick is, perhaps, the cheapest city in the country in which to buy.

Which might also explain the push in property investment which has now led to a softening of rents in the city: according to most of the agents, these have come back by as much as €100 per month. The average income from the standard semi is now in the region of €650.

And with the investor well and truly out of the market, the property professional is now going for the off-the-peg tax shelter options like Section 23 and Section 50 developments, says John Doherty of Roberts, who has sold out his Tait's Corner scheme of Section 23 apartments and retail units.

Property sales were good and new schemes went up in all areas of the city, according to John de Courcy of De Courcy Auctioneers. Cheap money and consistent demand have ensured a good year overall for the market, he adds.

Kersten Mehl of Chesser's agrees and says the market shows the underlying strength of the economy, despite the negative backdrop.

While rents have fallen, cheap money has seen erstwhile tenants buying their own homes instead, especially as they can get up to €6,000 tax free from the rent-a-room scheme.

This is another factor in the overall fall in rental incomes, he says.

New house prices are up by 10% in the city, according to John Doherty of Roberts Auctioneers, who feels sorry for those in the €160,000 to €190,000 bracket because this level of buyer is being priced out of the market.However, from this level upwards, there's a good supply, he says, and this year buyers have a choice of developments.

Diarmuid Madigan of Sherry FitzGerald agrees strongly and sees a distinct pattern in buying.

Here, purchasers wait until the right property turns up and then make a determined effort to acquire their chosen house. As Sherry FitzGerald sell more properties by auction than any other firm in the city, this becomes very noticeable, says Diarmuid Madigan.

In a sense, it's very easy to pinpoint the prime locations in Limerick, he says, you could almost draw a line across a road and base prices on that boundary.

The North and South Circular roads, O'Connell Avenue and the Ennis Road are all guaranteed to reach good price levels on address alone.

The Cloisters on the North Circular, a medium-sized modern home sold for somewhere around its guide price of €760,000, Árd na Gréine on the South Circular sold for €490,000 just above its guide price of €480,000 and Castle Roberts in Adare, came in at €635,000.

The big sale of the year was Tudor House on the Golf Links Road which was sold by Paul O'Brien of P&W O'Brien auctioneers.

The guide price prior to auction was €2 million, it was withdrawn at €1.7 million and sold four days later for a record €3 million.

A large, practically new house with 12,000 sq ft of space and a similar price tag is still on the market with Diarmuid Madigan. Lemonfield House in Crecora, with 25 acres was launched in late summer but missed out to Tudor House as, according to Mr Madigan, there's only ever one multi-million house sale a year in the city. &

"The market was steady this year and I'd rather it stayed like this for the next three to four years. Everyone is happy and it's not volatile," says Diarmuid Madigan.