Receiver sells apartment owned by former Galway minister

A receiver working for a US vulture fund has sold off a two-bed apartment owned by former Fianna Fáil government minister Frank Fahey in an online auction.

The apartment in ‘The Steeples’ student residential development in Limerick City – close to the University of Limerick – sold at the Allsop auction yesterday (Thursday) morning for €57,000.

Bidding opened at €45,000, with five individuals chasing the property.

Tenants are currently in place, and it generates an annual rent of €5,400.

The second-floor apartment (462 square feet) was purchased in October 2006 by Mr Fahey and his wife Ethelle – who live in Carraig Ban, Menlo – with a 20-year mortgage of €200,000 from Irish Nationwide.

Lone Star’s Irish arm, Shoreline Residential, bought tranches of home loans from the former Anglo Irish Bank (which included mortgages from Irish Nationwide customers) and appointed receiver Tom Kavanagh of Deloitte to the apartment in February 2015.

That same month, an apartment in the same building sold for €35,000.

Mr Fahey has been investing in property since he was 20 years of age – before he lost his Dáil seat in 2011, the Oireachtas Register of Interests showed he owned two apartments in Roscommon; two houses in Gort; an apartment at Dun Aengus on the Docks; a house at Dún na Coiribe; a house in Leixlip; an apartment in Dublin; a shareholding in an apartment at Gort na Coiribe; shareholding in extended family owned properties in Athlone; shareholding in four apartments and a shop in Limerick; shareholding in two retail units, two offices and a warehouse in Gort; a house in Dubai; fifteen apartments owned in partnership in Brussels; a house in France and deposits paid on two properties in Portugal.