Kerry woman misses out on buying her home of 12 years

Resident says receivers did not tell her the house was for sale — and she watched later as it was sold online

Caherciveen salon owner Lisa O'Shea described her shock at hearing her home was for sale — in a text message from a friend. 

A Kerry woman has described how her dreams of buying her home, where she has lived for the past 12 years, disappeared in four minutes as she watched on from a computer screen.

Lisa O’Shea, from Caherciveen, had been renting her home from a private landlord for over a decade. Two years ago, the house was taken over by receivers.

Lisa, who owns a beauty salon, immediately expressed interest in buying the property, and continued to rent it from the new owners, all the while saving as much as she could in the hope she could buy the house that she and her 15-year-old daughter have lived in.

Text message from a friend...

Then, a month ago, Lisa discovered that her home was for sale online.

“I was at work and a friend just texted me to say ‘Lisa, your house is up on Daft,’ and I just thought, 'you’re joking me',” Lisa said.

"The receivers had sent me no correspondence. They did nothing to let me know that it was coming up to go on sale."

The reserve on the house was set at €90,000, but early bids put it to just under €100,000.

The format of the online auction includes a time limit of one hour and 50 minutes. 

After that is up, the clock resets to 60 seconds and resets again every time someone bids.

'It went up by €36k in four minutes'

“Everyone's waiting for the last five seconds to get in the last bid and it literally is blowing up in front of you. It went from €99,000 to €135,000 in a matter of about four minutes,” Lisa said.

"I’m sitting there knowing that I'm the only one that's going to lose something here."

Lisa had a budget of €110,000 but ended up bidding €129,000. However, it still wasn’t enough and she lost out.

'I just went to bed and cried'

“I knew last Thursday when I found out there was another bidder, that I was gone. I just went to bed and cried. 

"Then sitting there watching the computer screen for two hours waiting to find out how my life was going to go,” Lisa said.

"My daughter thought we'd get it. Then when she realised, in the last few minutes with the craziness of the bidding, she just went hysterical." 

Lisa added that the new buyer hasn’t seen the inside of the house, and says she has heard locally it is an investment firm that has purchased it. She added that monthly rents, which she was paying, were advertised as an incentive to potential buyers.