Entire 14-house estate sells for €235,000

It’s the fabled home of Jack Duggan but there was also something wild and colonial about the Kerry town of Castlemaine’s other claim to fame — one of the country’s most notorious ghost estates.

The entire 14-house Annagh Banks estate, branded an “eyesore” by locals on the Dingle Peninsula, yesterday sold at auction for €235,000.

The scale of Ireland’s property crash can be judged by how the asking price for individual houses in the estate, which is located on the outskirts of Castlemaine on the main Killarney-Dingle road, was €200,000 when the scheme was first launched.

Yesterday’s sale of the three-acre estate to an anonymous telephone bidder at the Allsop property auction in Dublin now values each house at just over €16,785.

The reserve price of €50,000 on Annagh Banks was reached with the opening bid, although it took Gary Murphy another 15 minutes before bringing his hammer down on the sale as five bidders vied to secure the property which once featured in a Green Party pamphlet to illustrate problems with the Irish planning system.

“You just don’t know what they are worth. We are making history,” commented Mr Murphy at one stage.

At the outset, the auctioneer had warned potential bidders that there was a last-minute addendum as a neighbouring landowner was claiming he had a right to connect to a sewer running through the estate — a claim strenuously denied by the vendor.

“I suspect it’s a spoiling tactic. I suspect the claimant is here to buy. I wonder if he is here in the room,” Mr Murphy mused.

He also pointed out that the site had planning permission for nine apartments, a pub/restaurant, a 12-bed hotel !and two retail units which subsequently lapsed — an example of the ambition of the estate’s developers at the height of the property boom.

The bids initially went up in increments of €2,500 before falling to €1,000 as the pace of the offers slowed at €140,000. However, it jumped to raises of €2,500 again before a mystery phone bidder, believed to be based in Co Kerry, won with his bid of €235,000.

More than 1,000 people crowded into the Shelbourne Hotel for the latest Allsop sale of distressed properties.

A total of 82 properties were up for sale, with only three failing to sell.