THE UK auction house Allsop and its Irish affiliate Space plans to hold up to five distressed property auctions a year following the success of its first auction last Friday when 81 out of 82 lots were sold for a total of €15 million.

The next auction is scheduled for July 7th, when 200 lots will be auctioned, including apartments, tenanted shops, farms and houses.

According to Space director Stephen McCarthy, his company is being inundated with requests from receivers, banks and individuals who want to sell their property fast.

Many of the properties in Friday’s auction were sold by Bank of Scotland Ireland and it’s believe there is plenty more of this stock to sell. These include apartments in the Castleforbes development in the Dublin docklands, as well as units in Dublin 8 and in Castleknock. However, the agency is also considering taking on more agricultural land. One lot, a 55 acre farm in Co Wickow sold particularly well, making €420,000 against a reserve of €290,000.

Around 20 per cent of the buyers at Friday’s auction were from overseas, according to McCarthy, including buyers from France, England, Scotland and Israel. The event was marketed heavily in the UK, and some London investors were in the room, although more are likely to become interested in the Irish scene as the auctions become more established, he says.

Among Irish buyers, the most significant group was made up of parents buying for their children, says McCarthy.

Future auctions are likely to have a similar mix of apartments and commercial buildings priced at the lower end of the scale.

“It’s clear that the easiest properties to sell are those under €200,000,” says McCarthy. “Agricultural land also went very well, and we hope to have more of that.”

However, he does not see much opportunity to sell houses at the upper end of the market. “You won’t see houses on Ailesbury Road in these auctions,” he said.