The roof falls in on Ireland's 'Millionaires Row'

[Blue_Tires]

There is a padlock on the gate of Walford, the most expensive house in the priciest street in Ireland. Graffiti adorn the conservatory windows, the lawn is overgrown and old mattresses are piled up in the front room.

In a well-publicised deal at the height of Ireland's economic boom, this red-brick mansion, which sits on a one-and-a-half-acre plot, was sold for an eye-watering €56m (£48m) to a mysterious trust called Matsack Nominees, widely reported in the Irish media to be controlled by the wife of a millionaire property developer, Sean Dunne. The neighbours include telecoms tycoon Denis O'Brien, the biggest shareholder in Independent News & Media, who bought Belmont, a house a few doors down, for €35m.

Walford, which sits abandoned after a failed redevelopment application, is on Shrewsbury Road – a pleasant, tree-lined avenue in the Dublin inner suburb of Ballsbridge which, in the extraordinary gold rush that gripped Ireland, ranked as the sixth most expensive street in the world, ahead of Beverly Hills's Carolwood Drive and St Moritz's ritzy Via Suvretta.

Few landmarks sum up Ireland's boom and bust, culminating in last week's €85bn international bailout, more succinctly than this street, where prices have crashed by at least two-thirds. "It's right in the centre of things; it's a street that's always achieved top prices," says Peter Kenny, associate director at estate agency Colliers International. "But from the height of the market, it's fallen a very great deal. The sharpest drop has been at the top of the market."

To the uninitiated, Shrewsbury Road looks little different from the upper-middle-class Dublin thoroughfares surrounding it. On a wintry day last week, snow-covered Mercedes cars and BMWs sat in the drives of many of the timber-gabled homes, shielded by neatly trimmed hedges. But a roll-call of Ireland's most prominent business people live cheek by jowl here.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/dec/05/dublin-housing-market-crisis-bailout

[Blue_Tires]

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