AroundtheBlock

Record sales at Adamstown: Dublin's new town, Adamstown, got off to a flying start this week with an astonishing 500 sales notched up since last Thursday.

Castlethorn's Adamstown Castle was the first housing scheme to be launched in the west Dublin neighbourhood that will eventually house 25,000 people, and it being a first, every developer and estate agent in town was watching to see how it would go. After all, before last week, very few people even knew where Adamstown was, though now it's firmly on the map. Even the drama of the Joe Duffy Show caller claiming he had been overcharged for his house didn't dent the buyers' enthusiasm and selling agent Gunne sailed through the week, notching up €180 million worth of sales. Now all they have to do is get the train station up and running so that the residents, who will begin to move in this summer, can get to work on time.

Mad for Manhattan

Sales weren't just good in Adamstown over the weekend. At the Berkeley Court Hotel, Cathal McGinley's KMS agency took no less than 90 deposits on apartments at its Gramercy Green development in Manhattan. There was a certain amount of competition for the units, which started at €340,000, and at one stage two lady buyers got into a tussle over one of the more expensive pads. In the end, however, everyone seemed to get the pied-à-terre they wanted in the Big Apple.

Knock-out result in D4

Dublin 4 is hotting up with another knock-out result yesterday - the €7 million paid for 1 Elgin Road. This type of house is being bought almost exclusively by investors who are hungry for anything redbrick in the grid between Raglan and Clyde roads. The area is seen as a reasonable alternative to the stratospherically expensive triangle of Shrewsbury, Ailesbury and Merrion where residents are regularly approached by buyers with open cheque books looking for a quiet deal. No surprise to learn that the buyer of Elgin is Derek Quinlan, whose hugely successful investment company Quinlan Private is around the corner on Raglan Road.

Brenda Fricker's kitchen

Oscar-winner Brenda Fricker is selling off one of the three cottages she amalgamated on Watkin Square in the Liberties as her home. Rather bizarrely, though, the section she is selling is her kitchen. The price? €300,000.

Located off Ardee Street, the 34sq m (366sq ft) cottage which has security grids on the windows is on the market through Mason Estates. Any buyer who finds it impractical to live in an L-shaped kitchen is advised by the agent, "this room comprised the original livingroom, bedroom and kitchenette and could easily be divided back to same". The brochure adds "while the plumbing and radiators are in place, a separate gas central heating burner will have to be installed".

One viewer told Around the Block that another drawback is the absence of the dividing wall between it and Brenda's place. Viewers were told that on purchase the block wall will be built between the two houses but any plastering will have be carried out by the buyer!