Ballinrobe estate to sell for bargain price

Ballinrobe estate to sell for bargain price


Ciara Galvin

AN ENTIRE Ballinrobe housing estate will go for auction later this month for the knockdown price of €400,000 – less than €30,000 per property.
The freehold residential development of 14 houses will go for auction on October 15 next as part of the Allsop Space property auction.
Reserve on Military Close Estate, located just off Creagh Road in Ballinrobe, is not to exceed €400,000 which puts an average value of just under €29,000 for each house in the development.
Three houses are currently being rented in the estate for in the region of €530 per month. If the previously proposed ‘rent to buy’ scheme was applied, a current tenant of a house could possibly own a house in just under five years.
The site was bought for €700,000 in 2007 at ‘the height of the boom’ the local developer told The Mayo News yesterday (Monday).
“It went from being a €3million project to a one million project now,” said the local man who, along with the bank, agreed to put the development up for auction.
The initial average price for a house was envisaged to be €200,000 in 2007 but quickly slipped to €125,000 in 2009 when the ‘rent to buy’ programme was explored. According to the developer, a fully finished house in the estate now stands at €85,000.With the development open for viewing from tomorrow (Wednesday), to October 9, the developer says interest should be there.
“It’s coming to the stage where there’ll be cash buyers deciding things will have to move in the next three years. There’s a lot of interest in it. As there’s not a lot of ghost estates in Ballinrobe, this would be the first to be finished when there is demand.”
The estate consists of one four bedroom detached house, nine three bedroom terraced houses and four three bedroom semi detached houses. The detached house and two semi detached houses in the estate are finished to showroom standard with the others requiring inside works.
The total area of the Military Close estate extends to approximately 1.89 acres, with a communal area in the middle of the development.  
Auction of the development will take place at the RDS, Merrion Road, Ballsbridge, Dublin on October 15 next.