Wheel goes full circle in Mallow farm sale
At the time, in 2004, there were hysterical headlines about the value of land sales. By that stage, sense was truly left behind and builders vied with one another for choice pieces of ground.
Money was no object and often, competing builders were backed by the same bank.
The result was a sale price of €40 million for St Joseph’s Road in 2004, or the equivalent of €220,000 per acre, a record breaking land sale for that year.
Today, in an climate of economic meltdown for indigenous industries, farming is thriving, relatively, and those who eschewed the services of besuited, investment advisers back in the boom, and stuck to what they know, have managed to nurture their nest eggs. And the sweetener is that farmland prices have come down to such a level that two of the vendors at St Joseph’s Road are now the purchasers of their old land at realistic per acre levels, compared to the original sale.
Of course, the sale by Castlelands Construction is part of a business plan agreed with Nama, and down the line, it’s the citizen that picks up the tab for the difference between sale price and buy-back price.
As had been suggested on these pages, tillage farmer Denis Crowley, who has holdings in Cork and Tipperary, was one purchaser, and the second was farmer and auctioneer John Cronin who has again regained the land sold eight years ago.
Peter O’Meara of Savills brokered the deal, but was unavailable for comment. However, it’s believed the Mallow lands sold for a sum in excess of the guide price of €12,500 per acre — the overall guide was a sum in the region of €2.25m, in the private treaty sale. The farm was offered in lots of 100 and 80 acres, and in the entire.
The second purchaser, Denis Crowley made the headlines last year, when he purchased Caherduggan Demesne, a top dairy farm comprising 270 acres in one block, which he sold within six months to the the underbidders, the Cremin family of Glanmire. Mr Crowley almost immediately re-invested in a farm at Ballyclerihan, in Co Tipperary. John Cronin is a tillage farmer and auctioneer with a long standing lettings business in north Cork.
This is the second, high profile sale by Savills for Castlelands Developments, following the disposal of 450 acres at Douglas and Ballinrea, Cork, in late April of this year, for John and Elaine Barry, of Castlelands Construction, and for Nama.
That land, which was purchased for sums ranging from €60,000 to €300,000 an acre in the mid-2000s, sold quietly to a dairy farmer from north west of Cork City for a per-acre sum in the region of €15,000 to 20,000 — or a total of between €5m and €7m.
