Dublin 4 home put up for auction six years after it was fraudulently sold for €525k

9th December 2024

The sale of a derelict house in one of Dublin’s most exclusive areas raised many eyebrows in 2018 when it sold for €525,000.

The boarded-up house on Ballsbridge Road appeared on the Property Price Register as having sold for half a million euros when houses in the same condition, on the same street were selling for roughly four times that.

After an inquisition into the sale, it appeared that the Victorian house at 13 St Mary’s Road in Ballsbridge, Dublin 4, was sold in a ‘fraudulent transaction,’ however the house is back on the market, and it’s for real this time!

Court documents from the famous case showed that the house’s seller in 2018 ‘never owned the property’ in a situation that High Court Judge Brian O’Moore described as ‘truly extraordinary.’

The house is now set to go back on the market six years later, and will be auctioned this week with a guide price of €1 million.

In October, a trial began at the Dublin Circuit Criminal Court in relation to the fraudulent purchasing of the Ballsbridge house and another property in Phibsborough.

Herbert Kilcline, 62, a former solicitor was found guilty of eight counts, which included ‘failing to apply the required measures as a designated person, using a false instrument, and fraudulent procurement of entry to the land registry’ between September 2016 and June 2018.

Philip Marley, 53, a businessman and former owner of Ely properties, pleaded guilty to three counts, which included ‘procuring the registration of a false deed, fraudulent procurement of an entry into the land registry, and deception.’A spokeswoman for PTSB revealed that ‘complexities regarding title issues’ had previously halted the bank from progressing with the sale of the house. However, she added that ‘as these matters have recently been fully resolved, the bank is now in a position to progress the sale of the property.’

The house, which is a protected structure, was bought by Liam and Keira Curran in 2006 through a mortgage with PTSB in 2007, but in 2015, the bank repossessed the house and became the legal owner.

When the house appeared on the PPR in January 2018, neither the bank, nor the Currans, had any knowledge of, or involvement in, the ‘sale.’

The bank took legal action against Hamilton Holdings, a US-based company, that had been registered as the new owner of the house.

In his June 2023 judgment, Mr Justice O’Moore said Hamilton had been sold the house on purpose by a company called Kent International Holdings with an address in Nevis, in the West Indies in January 2018.

Kent, in turn, revealed that they had acquired the property from the Currans in July 2014, which was ‘a matter of some surprise to the Currans and to PTSB,’ according to Mr. Justice O’Moore.

The evidence before the court was ‘that the Currans never sold the property, either to Kent, or to anybody else and the alleged deed of conveyance of the property from the Currans to Kent has never surfaced.’

Mr Justice O’Moore said that he had ‘no option but to find that the asserted conveyance of the Ballsbridge property to Kent was a fraudulent transaction,’ saying it ‘never happened. Any deed purporting to have effected such a transfer is a fraud.’

The subsequent transfer of property to Hamilton was ‘a fraud and/or a nullity and is void and of no legal effect’, the judge ruled

See more pictures of the property below:

The house is definitely a fixer-upper but with the right owners it could be transformed into something so beautiful.

We think the high ceilings will make the end result worth it the hassle!

It may look a bit shabby now, but they always say to buy a bad house in a good area over a good house in a bad area, don’t they?!

All this house needs is a bit of TLC to restore it to it’s original condition.

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