The home of the late senator and businessman Eoin Ryan, 81 Park Avenue, Dublin 4, sold yesterday for €7.1 million, the highest price paid for a Dublin house at auction this year.
Accountant and property investor Mr John Pugh was the successful bidder for the large Edwardian five-bedroom house which stands on three-quarters of an acre in a prime Dublin 4 location.
It is understood he has bought it as a family home and there are no plans for development on the site. The underbidder at the Lisney auction was Mr Johnny Aird, another property investor who already owns a house on Park Avenue. The property was sold in an executor's sale.
The Ryan family lived on Park Avenue for over 40 years. One of the late senator's four children is a new MEP for Dublin, Mr Eoin Ryan.
Park Avenue, which runs from Sydney Parade Avenue into Sandymount Village, is a low profile address - a quiet tree-lined road where big redbrick houses sit on generous sites behind electronically-controlled gates. A handful of the houses have very long gardens running down to the DART line, and the Ryan home is one of these.
It is a substantial double-fronted house of around 320 square metres (3,400 sq ft) with large formal reception rooms on either side of the tiled hallway, and bedrooms on two floors above. There is a grand drawingroom opening into a conservatory which overlooks over 100 feet of lawn.
The house is in good decorative order and has all its original features intact, though the new owners, who have six children, may extend and redecorate.
The strong price underlines the continuing demand for solid redbrick homes in Dublin's best neighbourhoods.
Despite reports and warnings on house prices from the Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund, investors are still focused on the property market as interest rates remain low.
