AUCTIONS step back into the sales fray in early 2015, with Allsops set to auction more than 220 lots later this month, while Iam-Sold is now stepping up to at least 14 auction events this coming year, moving now to Dublin after establishing in Galway and Cork/Munster in 2013/14.

The top German-born actor paid over €1.4m for the office building through Allsops property auctioneers.

Auctions were where much of the sales activity was for the Irish market in 2014 — with Shame and Hunger actor Michael Fassbender among those showing an appetite for a slice of the action. 

Further office sales and investments beckon on Cork city’s South Mall traditional offices heartland, hot on the heels of a building investment sale by Allsops last month, for €1.4million.

AN 81% sales record was achieved at last week’s Munster Property Auction, with 21 out or 26 lots selling at Cork’s Rochestown Park Hotel. It comprised 16 Cork lots, five from Kerry, three from Limerick and one apiece from counties Waterford and Tipperary.

One of the country’s top hotels, the Aghadoe Heights in Kerry, has been sold to an international hotel investor.

An IFSC Dublin investment in an historic old building, a thatched Co Tipperary holiday village, clusters of apartments on Cork’s MacCurtain Street and a number of bars are among the next auction date — Jul 4, Independence Day — for Allsops.

Foreign investors aretaking advantage of sharply reduced prices, with the sale of the Burlington, Fota Island Hotel and others attracting American and Chinese investors. Realistic prices are helping to attract these overseas buyers and breathing some life into a moribund market. Tommy Barker says major property sales were also a good sign and it’s likely that receivership sales will feature more strongly in 2013.

A CORK city pub with a chequered history may prove to be one of the year’s smart purchases.

EVEN the opposition says it — the Allsops auction arrival has helped shift the Irish property market out of its moribund stupor over the past 18 months, with hundreds of properties sold, and price levels benchmarked — however unpalatable they may be.