What the flip? Icon boss buys and sells Ailesbury Road house in five months

Icon chairman and former chief executive Ciarán Murray sold a €4.96 million house on Dublin’s exclusive Ailesbury Road, just five months after quietly snapping it up for almost €4.88 million. Murray last year paid the top price in the capital for a home when he purchased Clonmore on Shrewsbury Road for €8.1 million. It now looks like the businessman had originally planned a move to Ardmore at 34 Ailesbury Road, just around the corner, when he purchased the house last July in what was the third-highest value sale of the year in Dublin.

But two months after buying the semi-detached Ailesbury Road house, developer Paddy Kelly’s Clonmore hit the market seeking €10 million. Kelly said that only one interested party emerged for the house, and Murray shelled out €8.1 million for it at the end of December, having managed to offload Ardmore one week prior in an off-market transaction.

Murray may just about have broken even on the deal in spite of the sluggish upper-end of the property market, as he achieved €87,000 more for the house than he paid for it – roughly equal to the amount of stamp duty he likely paid upon its acquisition. It's likely that Sherry FitzGerald, who brokered the sale to the businessman, also handled the off-market disposal, earning two commissions selling the same property in a five-month period.

Four Ballsbridge homes

Since 2010, Murray and his wife have purchased no less than four Ballsbridge homes all within a two-minute drive of one another. On Merrion Road, they paid €1.03 million for a 226sq m (2,432sq ft) two-storey detached home with five bedrooms. In 2016 they picked up a 203sq m (2,185sq ft) house at nearby Ailesbury Wood for more than €1.5 million. They then acquired Ardmore on Ailesbury Road last year and, soon thereafter, picked up Clonmore on Dublin’s most exclusive road. All told, their acquisition spree on Dublin 4’s golden triangle has totalled more than €15.5 million.

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The couple may well opt to follow in the footsteps of their Shrewsbury Road neighbours in demolishing their latest buy, rather than upgrading it. Meanwhile it seems unlikely that the road’s residents will ever see an end to the construction of new homes and extensions. Lissadell, whose colossal extension took place from around 2014 to 2016, is set to become a building site once again. Its owners obtained planning permission last month to demolish a lavish conservatory they constructed at the front of the house and replace it with a three-storey extension, bringing the house to 1,185sq m (12,755sq ft) in size.