Troubled Dundrum apartments make €7m

Property consultants Savills have secured just over €7 million for 80 apartments in Dundrum, Dublin 14, which have been vacant since last summer when they were found to be in breach of building and fire regulations.

Tenants living in the seven-storey complex were obliged to leave the building within 10 days.

The Laurels, which overlooks Dundrum Town Centre, is understood to have been acquired by the Dublin-based CMP Investment Partners, a group headed by lawyer Enda Connolly.

The upmarket Dundrum complex was built between 2006 and 2008 but fell victim to the property crash.

About 40 individual investors from around the country invested a minimum of €100,000 each in The Laurels with the aim of buying apartments on completion.

Bank of Scotland Ireland, which lent more than €40 million to the project, took control of the property in 2010 and appointed Kieran Wallace of KPMG as receiver.

The individual apartments, which are fitted out to a high standard, were rented until Dublin City Council and Dún Laoghaire County Council were notified by the receiver through Dublin Fire Brigade of construction defects in the development.

Liquidation
The Laurels was one of a number of property ventures embarked upon by Tuskar Property Holdings, a property syndicate and precursor to a company called Tuskar Asset Management which collapsed in 2009 with debts of about €50 million.

Pierse Construction, which handled building work at The Laurels, also went into liquidation with debts of €200 million.

Estimates of the cost of carrying out remedial work on the building now that a new owner has emerged has varied between €4 million and €5 million.