No bargain basements at property auction

IT was billed as a cut-price sale to resuscitate the property market but anyone looking for bargain basement – or even a cheap attic or budget bedroom – was disappointed by the country’s first mega-auction.

More than 60 properties were on offer at the half-day super-sale organised by the Real Estate Alliance network of estate agents and eight were dispatched to new owners with the thud of the hammer.

Seven others sold prior to the auction, so the organisers were hoping to prove they had located a pulse in their moribund industry. But for most of the event, held in the optimistically titled Great Room of Dublin’s Shelbourne Hotel, the quest for buyer confidence was akin to the search for life on Mars.