21-acre Limerick site selling for €4m
Having sold 22.8 acres of Limerick residential development land at Castletroy for up to €8.5 million, or €375,000 an acre, agents Savills now have a similar sized 21-acre lot on the other side of the city, price-guided at €200,000 per acre at Mungret.
Launched this week is the Mungret land offer by private treaty, with a guide of €4 million. That price reflects the fact that c. nine of the 21 acres currently have an industrial use zoning, with the balance of 12 acres carrying more valuable residential zoning, and could take c 35 units per hectare or 12 homes to the acre.
Any successful application to have the land use tilted more in favour of residential development would give a good uplift to any prospective purchaser, it’s suggested, and the current zoning is from the 2011-2017 development plan, now extended until 2021.
The Mungret land, a greenfield site with good road frontage, is near primary and secondary schools, sports amenities, and parks, and conveniently set for employment bases like the Raheen Business Park , home to firms like Stryker Orthopaedics, Regeneron, and Analog Devices International.
Adjacent residential developments at Mungret include Slí na Mananch, where homes are selling at €285,000 for three-bed semi-ds and a four-bed semis at €325,000, while Homeland Projects (also building in Cork’s Carrigaline) are also due to release Mungret stock shortly.
Good interest from across the board is expected in the private treaty sale, say Peter O’Meara and James O’Donovan of Savills, Cork, and the sizeable and largely level landbank some 5kms from the city centre comes on foot of the completed sale of 22.8 acres at Castletroy, on the city’s other far flank.
That prime and fully residentially-zoned land went to market in October 2018, also with Savills with a €7.25m guides, and a sale has now closed. It has been reported locally that the Castletroy land sold for closer to €8.5m, with the purchasers also locally identified as Dublin-based Ballymount Properties, headed by Jersey-based developer David Kennedy, who is also CEO of London-based property company Formation Group, which includes Limerick TD and former Minister for Defence, Willie O’Dea, as chairman, while former FF Minister of State for Housing and Urban Renewal (2007 – 2008) is also a director of the Formation Group Plc.
“With the well-documented shortage of housing stock, developers and investors alike will welcome the site at Mungret in Limerick to the market particularly given its superb location,” says Savills’ James O’Donovan.
Meanwhile, the same agency has a tender sale date of April 11 for a larger and key-strategic Limerick landbank, the former racecourse site close to the city centre at Greenpark. That historically important site comprises 116 acres (comparable in size, and scale and potential to Ballincollig’s former army barracks, now fully redeveloped) and could take a major, strategic long-term development with some mixed uses, including up to 800 homes.
