Going, going... gone for €10.5m
ONE of Ireland’s most expensive houses has finally found a buyer – after almost two years on the market.
Sorrento House – a townhouse in the exclusive south Dublin suburb of Dalkey – has been sold for €10.5million, more than €1.5million below its asking price.
An unnamed US buyer has purchased the house which sits at the end of Sorrento Terrace – a series of eight Victorian houses which boast views of the sea from Killiney Bay down to Bray Head, all framed by the Wicklow Mountains.
The new owner will have Neil Jordan and property developer Robin Power for neighbours but with six bedrooms, a gate lodge and direct access to the sea on two sides, the new occupants will have plenty of space for entertaining visitors.
The 714 sq m property has been extensively refurbished and renovated, according to selling agents Sherry FitzGerald with ‘ excellent ceiling heights, open fireplaces, sash windows with working shutters and antique Jerusalem stone flooring’. Solicitor Brian O’Donnell – who was evicted from nearby Gorse Hill earlier this year – had agreed to buy the house for a reported €22million at the height of the Celtic Tiger years.
Its owner at the time – businessman Terry Coleman had dropped the price from the €30million he was originally seeking a year earlier – but because of legal issues with an adjoining house, the deal fell through.
Mr Coleman himself bought Sorrento House i n 1998 for approximately €7.5million – the highest price ever paid at auction for a Dublin property at the time.
It had been in the same family for more than 50 years and Mr Coleman embarked on an ambitious €13million refurbishment, almost doubling Sorrento House in size with the addition of an extension, summerhouse and gate lodge, together with garages and staff accommodation.
Although its selling price has echoes of the prices paid for property at the height of the boom, Sorrento House is still far from the most expensive price paid for a residential home.
That honour goes to Walford on Shrewsbury Road in Dublin 4 which was bought by developer Seán Dunne and his wife Gayle Killilea for €58million in 2005.
It suffered a massive write- down when it was sold in 2013 for just €14million.
€1.5m the sum below the asking price the house sold for