15 houses at £1m each sold in four hours

Fifteen houses in a new development in Dublin, costing about £1 million each, were sold within four hours of going on the market yesterday. The lavish, detached houses in the fashionable Carrickmines area of south Dublin were sold mainly to professional and business couples in their 30s, according to Mr Ronan O'Driscoll of Hamilton Osborne King.

Showhouses in the Carrickmines Wood development on Brennans town Road are not due to open until next weekend, but because of the huge interest in the five-bedroom houses, the agents yesterday decided to take bookings for 15 of them, costing between £900,000 and £1.2 million. All were gone within four hours, leaving only one still on the market at £1.1 million.

Mr Michael Cotter of the builders, Park Developments, was not surprised. He said it was obvious that a lot of young people had made "serious money" in recent years; it was also clear that many of the buyers were trading up from good houses in the area. Park has had permission for a development on the Carrickmines site for more than 15 years and recently decided that now is the optimum time to launch Dublin's most expensive housing scheme. Large detached homes on nearby Brighton Road and Westminster Road normally change hands at between £1.5 and £3 million.

Those who paid £50,000 deposits on the houses include a number of executives in the computer industry, a few professionals, a stockbroker and several businessmen. Hamilton Osborne King logged around 600 inquiries for the homes in recent months and it is believed that some of those on the waiting list managed to get sneak previews of the two showhouses.

Both house types are particularly spacious with about 3,600 sq ft of floor space. They include four fine reception rooms, making them ideal for entertaining on a fairly lavish scale. Both showhouses have double-height entrance halls and elaborate kitchens with an integrated range of electrical and gas fittings.

One of the houses has four bathrooms, the other has three. They also have huge back gardens by Dublin standards for new houses, ranging from a quarter to three-quarters of an acre. The price of each of the houses was determined by the size of the gardens.