A handful of high net worth investors are back in the residential property scene - but the Revenue Commissioners cannot bank on getting their hands on their rent rolls. Four businessman went shopping at Howth Road in Clontarf last weekend, snapping up swathes of expensive apartments in the newly launched Glaslyn scheme beside the railway bridge. Three of the gents each bought half a dozen apartments and the fourth went one better and put deposits on 10 of them.

We haven't seen this type of block booking since 1998, when the Government implemented the last Bacon report and withdrew mortgage interest relief. However, the reappearance of a few investors last weekend has been made possible by an interesting little provision in the legislation which allows punters to put residential investments into a pension fund that is not subject to tax, apart from the 20 per cent capital gains tax once they are sold. This permits investors to sidestep Bacon and reap the benefits of a rental market that has gone through the roof since the Government forced the small players out of the sector.

The Howth Road apartments were by no means cheap. One-bedroom units cost from £210,000 to £235,000 (€266,64-€298,39) while two-beds ranged from £275,000 to £500,000 (€349,18-€634,87). Cathal McGinley of Keane Mahony Smith is understandably delirious over the sale of a total of 83 apartments with an overall value of £23 million (€29.2m), particularly at a time when other developments are moving slowly, if at all.

Unless, of course, these chaps know more than we do about what is coming up in the budget. Now that first-time buyers clearly have plenty of choice of reasonably priced starter homes, the Government is obviously considering reintroducing some form of incentive to residential investors to help their friends in the worried building industry and to curb rents in the city.