Publicly available documents in the US indicate a company associated with Minister of State Frank Fahey has made more than $1 million (€739,000) from property dealings in a town near Boston in recent years. Colm Keena, Public Affairs Correspondent, reports.
Fahey-Higgins LLC, a company registered in Massachusetts, sold three apartments in a building on Strathmore Road, Brookline, Massachusetts, for a total of $2.13 million in late 2004 and early 2005, documents available online from the Norfolk County Registry of Deeds, in Massachusetts, show.
They show that the company bought the building for $1 million in January 2004, renovated it and won permission to convert the basement into a fourth apartment. The company took out a mortgage for $900,000 at around the time of the purchase of the building from the People's Federal Savings Bank, Massachusetts.
The company is still registered as the owner of one apartment in the building, to which the Brookline local authority has assigned a value of $519,400 for the purposes of its property tax calculations. Records at the assessors' department of the town of Brookline website show Fahey-Higgins purchased a property on Tappan Street, Brookline, for $1.18 million in July 2005. In the same month it took out a mortgage for $1.185 million on the Tappan Street property and the remaining unit on Strathmore Road.
Tappan Street is a highly desirable residential street, according to the chief assessor of Brookline, George Moody. He told The Irish Timesthat property prices in Brookline generally have increased by approximately 80 per cent in the past five years.
The Fahey-Higgins property in Tappan Street is a large residence divided into two homes. Mr Fahey has declared his interest in Fahey-Higgins and its properties in Brookline in recent registers of Dáil members' interests. However, the details of what the company owns and owned, and the transactions involving the properties, have not been published before.
The register of Dáil members' interests for 2006 shows that Mr Fahey has a large property portfolio that he has built up in recent years. The portfolio includes properties and shares in properties in Ireland, Belgium, France, the United States and Portugal. Mr Fahey had no comment to make on the two properties last night.
