The immense scarcity of new apartments in Dublin city centre will be eased somewhat in the coming months when bookings are taken for most of the 460 apartments planned for two sites beside the International Financial Services Centre. The supply of new homes in the Dublin suburbs is also due to be stepped up with several major developments aimed at primarily first-time buyers.
Gannon Homes has lodged a planning application for 1,944 houses and apartments at Grange Road, in Donaghmede, Dublin 13, making it the largest single scheme to come before the planners in the Dublin area in recent years.
Another development of 1,520 houses and apartments is to get under way in the coming weeks in the grounds of Blanchards town Hospital following this week's decision by An Bord Pleanala overruling objections by local tenants' organisations. The planning permission in this case will run for 10 years instead of the customary five years.
Development work has already started on 189 apartments beside the new Citibank office complex in the extension to the IFSC. Profits from the project will be shared equally by the Dublin Docklands Development Authority (DDDA) and Campshire Partnership, a development consortium formed by Pierse Contracting, businessman Paddy Kelly and Alanis, the company controlled by the McCormack family.
A condition of the contract is that the consortium will have to hand over 36 of the apartments to the DDDA for allocation as social housing. These units will occupy one of six new apartment blocks at the North Wall Quay. Joint agents Hamilton Osborne King and Ross McParland are to start taking bookings within the next three months for the first 100 apartments, which will be completed before the end of the year.
Prices are expected to be pitched around £300 per sq. ft, working out at about £240,000 for two-bedroom units with 800 sq. ft. Large penthouses, some of them with views over the city quays, are likely to fetch at least £450,000. Because the site does not have tax designation, the developers will probably have to settle for lower prices than on the neighbouring tax-driven site assembled following the demolition of the Sheriff Street flats.
Douglas Newman Good still has a waiting list for apartments in Custom House Square almost 12 months after the first phase of 260 apartments was sold out within days.
Keith Lowe of the selling agents expects that prices will be around £400 per sq. ft in the next round of sales due to get under way in the middle of February. About 100 of the 270 homes still to be completed will be offered for sale off the plans.
Chesterbridge Developments may provide an apart-hotel on part of its site.
The apartments are expected to sell rapidly because apart from the Temple Bar area, Custom House Square is the only significant scheme in the city centre still offering tax breaks.
