Irish property developer Archtree Developments has emerged as the purchaser of Marlet Property Group's 20 acre (8.3 hectare) site at Hollywoodrath, Dublin 15, which hit the market in April guiding €13 million.
It’s understood that bidding on the site exceeded €15 million with strong interest expressed by a number of developers. Marlet and its backers M&G Investments paid a mere €3.275 million for the site at the bottom of the market, and look to have more than quadrupled their initial investment.
During its ownership, Marlet secured planning permission on the site for 31 two-bed houses (89.8 sq m), 125 three-bed houses (111.6sq m – 114.6 sq m) and 27 four-bed houses (150.6sq m – 153.8 sq m).
Archtree, headed by Shane Barrett, Paul Whitaker and Tom Gilligan, expects to begin construction of the scheme as currently permitted in the coming months.
The company made its first acquisition last year when it purchased the 3.44 acre (1.39 hectare) Saint Pancras site in Terenure, Dublin 6W, where they are currently developing one of the largest new homes schemes in the capital.
Following a recent planning permission grant, the overall number of new homes that will be built on site has increased from 66 to 71, comprising both houses and apartments. Sales are clipping along on the first phase, which includes 159sq m three-beds priced from €800,000 and 186sq m four-beds priced from €890,000.
The Hollywoodrath site is just one of a number of sites that Marlet has sold in recent months, including a site at Coolamber in Finnstown, west Dublin, which is believed to have sold for more than its €7 million guide price set by agents CBRE. Two other sites, one at Duinch, Hollystown, and another in the vicinity of the Long Mile Road have also sold and it is believed more of the company's sites will be brought to the market this summer through agent Savills. It is consistent with a Marlet strategy to sell sites it considers non-core to its business in order to redeploy the profits into the build out of larger-scale developments, in particular its Private Rented Sector (PRS) apartment schemes around Dublin.
