House prices may be falling but you wouldn't know it in Roundstone, Co Galway, where a derelict two-storey house outside the village has sold for €1.24 million - 50 per cent over the pre-auction advised minimum value.
The house overlooking Ervallagh beach clearly ticked the boxes for lots of holiday-home buyers. Estate agents Sherry FitzGerald Kavanagh sent out more than 100 brochures and fielded dozens of inquiries, mainly from wealthy Dubliners looking for a bolt hole in the west. Roundstone has been dubbed Connemara 4 because of the number of buyers from the capital who flock there for the summer months and a week or two in winter.
Three miles from the village, the bricked-up house needs total refurbishment, but the attraction is the picture postcard location, and private access to the cove. Planning permission is difficult to obtain in Connemara, making derelict houses in seaside locations particularly valuable.
The agency had been guiding €800,000 for the ¾ acre property, but after an opening bid of €735,000 bidders pushed the price to €1 million. Two parties then slugged it out until the hammer came down at €1.24 million to a Dublin buyer. Connemara 4, unsurprisingly, is bucking the national trend.
