Sully in the money as Kinsale home sells for close to €5m
Float my boat? Raffeen House, at Scilly, Kinsale, has just sold for close to its €4.9m price tag to an overseas buyer.
AN international buyer has just paid the top price ever for a Kinsale home, securing a waterside pad for close to €5 million, after just three months on the market.
Signed, sealed, and about to be delivered early in the New Year is Raffeen House, owned by food entrepreneur Colum 'Sully' O'Sullivan of the Cully & Sully food brand.
It's a restored and upgraded Georgian period home at Scilly, with the harbour at its feet, has its own private boathouse, jetty, and the town of Kinsale on the doorstep.
Raffeen House went for sale in September with a €4.9m price guide, and has sold after swift competitive interest, confirmed estate agent Ron Kruger of Engel & Voelkers who said: “it received very good interest from all over the world.”
Even though the exact price paid isn't as yet disclosed and is understood to have been close to the €4.9m officially sought and which commentators thought was very high when it launched (it will appear early in 2022 on the Price Register) it sets a new benchmark, even for Kinsale, which regularly sees homes transact in the €1m+ price league, typically to overseas buyers.
The same E&V agent Ron Kruger had sold an adjacent contemporary home at Scilly, Corafinne, in 2018, for €2.55m to a Cork buyer based in the Bahamas.
Here at Raffeen House, in the heart of Scilly and facing Kinsale's Pier Road, Mr Kruger acted jointly with Callum Bain of Colliers International.
The same paring of estate agents had also sold Horse Island in West Cork last year which had carried an even higher price tag, €5.5m, after overseas bidding interest, and that luxury island retreat's buyer was said to have bought it during Covid lockdowns, sight unseen.
In contrast, the new owner of Kinsale's Raffeen House — also from overseas and likely to use it as a holiday home — is said to be familiar with the area.
“They visited the area on numerous occasions, and fell in love with the property on their first visit,” said the joint selling agents saying they're “very pleased with the outcome".
"We wish the vendors every success in whatever venture they turn their hands to in the future. We further wish the purchaser many years of happiness in this wonderful property.”
Vendor Colum ‘Sully’ O’Sullivan bought Raffeen House after selling his food company Cully & Sully (co-founded in 2004 with Cullen Allen of Ballymaloe) to a major organic food company, Hain Celestial, in 2012 for an undisclosed sum, likely to be double-digit millions of euros.
The Price Register shows Raffeen House selling in 2013 for €1.5m, and it resurfaced there again in 2016, at €1.9m.
An adjacent Scilly property, Pallace Wharf, had sold in 2004 for c €4m during Celtic Tiger times market froth.
So, the swift 2021 pre-Christmas scooping the pot deal done on Raffeen House appears a second windfall 'helping' for Mr O'Sullivan, his wife, UCD law lecturer Joanne Blennherhasset and family, who said at the time of going to market they were hoping for a place with more ground near Kinsale for their young family.
They did a full restoration on the c 3,500 sq ft Raffeen House post-purchase, and the five-bay Georgian gem property is a protected structure and had been in one family's hands, the Dormans, for decades prior to Sully and family's relatively short tenure here.
The sale confirms Kinsale as Munster's unassailable property hot spot (possibly only rivalled by the more diverse West Cork) with 39 house sales at or over €1m since 2010.
Now, there's a new Top Gun in town: roll on the Property Price Register revelation and, this being Kinsale, the rumour mill grinding into gear as to who the buyer is.
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