Celtic Tiger collapse also damaged some luxury Manhattan real estate

Prestige building in hard times because Irish buyers have to sell

“Amenities, frankly, I don’t give a flying you-know-what,” said Cathal McGinley, an Irish broker who in 2005, started to export the syndicate model to New York.  “The only thing I was interested in was whether it would rent, and how quickly.”

“I would say 95 percent of my buyers have never seen their properties,” said The Corcoran Group’s Anne Marie Moriarty, who made regular expeditions to Dublin, found clients who would sometimes purchase two apartments at a time, based on just a brochure and floor plans.This makes it abundantly clear that the sole purpose in the Irish purchase of the units in The Centria was for them to be rented out at a profit.

The Centria had not even been completed when its units were being sold. And it wasn’t just any Irish people who were purchasing in the new luxury complex - it was Irish people of wealth and influence.

Now, five years later, the original buyers of apartments in the building are seeking to sell what was once considered a no-brainer purchase for a much smaller percentage of their original buying price; T“It’s the same old story: if you need cash, you’re in trouble,” says Declan Coleman, who is still planning to hold onto his unit.

Despite dramatic economic fluctuations worldwide over the past few years, “The foreign appetite for New York’s real estate seems immune to the elements.”

“If ever there were a case to test whether the city’s market is truly unsinkable, it would be the Centria,” writes Rice. “To most New Yorkers, the building is just another anonymous tinted-glass tower — it was hardly marketed locally at all — but inside, it’s Ireland.”

Paul McGennis, a commercial attorney who owns a Centria apartment, points to Ireland’s personality as a driving force in foreign purchases.“As a nation, it seems to be in our DNA that we like to acquire property.” And now, the Irish are paying for their genetic flaw at the hands of unexpected economic downturn.”

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Nster.com