The upper end of Dublin’s residential property market would appear finally to have awoken from its annual festive-season slumber, judging by the Sold sign that has just popped up on Kerrymount Avenue in Foxrock.

Having come to the market with an ambitious guide price of €5.5 million in March of last year, Baile an Mhóta – the former Dublin home of Paul Fitzpatrick, of the well-known hotel family – was sold in recent weeks to an overseas buyer. While the details of the transaction have yet to appear on the Residential Property Price Register, the new owner is understood to have paid slightly less than the property’s recently reduced asking price of €4.6 million.

Since being acquired by the former Beacon Hotel owner and his wife, Lisa, for a reported €3.15 million in 2005, the substantial south Dublin Edwardian has been extended and transformed into a luxurious modern home of 538sq m (5,500sq ft) with six bedrooms, numerous bathrooms, a home cinema, a cocktail bar, and gardens designed by Diarmuid Gavin.

The new owner will have little to do to make Baile an Mhóta, which was rented until recently to the Moroccan ambassador, feel like home. Before offering the house for sale with Sherry FitzGerald, the Fitzpatricks, who moved to California in 2017, ordered a full refresh of the property to ensure that it was presented in turnkey condition.