An Irish Taste for Real Estate in Manhattan
By PATRICK McGEEHAN
New York Times, May 8, 2007
They live an ocean away, but that has not stopped the Irish from lining up to buy condominiums in Midtown Manhattan, often years before they are built. In some cases, entire buildings or large blocks of apartments in unfinished high-rises are being sold to Irish investors hungry to own a piece of New York City.
Neil McCann, an entrepreneur in Belfast, joined the rush of would-be Manhattan landlords last year when he said he signed a contract to buy a one-bedroom apartment near Gramercy Park for $600,000. “It’s an Irishman’s dream to be able to go to Manhattan and be able to buy property there,” said Mr. McCann, 36, who added that he hoped to buy more New York apartments.
With a weak dollar, Mr. McCann said, the New York apartments are relative bargains compared with real estate in Ireland and Britain. After a long economic boom that earned their country the nickname the Celtic Tiger, the Irish are flush with cash and searching the globe for places to invest it. The westward flow of money “seems to be another example of how, in the wake of the Celtic Tiger, the relationship between Ireland and the United States has flipped,” said Linda Dowling Almeida, who teaches Irish studies at New York University.
Of course, people from all over the world have been contributing to the sustained demand for apartments in Manhattan. But developers and brokers said the Irish seem to be the voracious newcomers of the moment, though their purchases have drawn less attention than previous buying sprees by the Japanese and the Saudis, who made splashes by acquiring trophy properties like Rockefeller Center and the Plaza Hotel.
At the heart of this investment surge lies some simple math, brokers said. With the dollar at historically low levels against the euro and the British pound, apartments generally cost less in Manhattan than in Dublin or London. But they still rent for more in Manhattan.
...[Irish people] have bought so much property in England, Spain and in countries in Eastern Europe that they have been dubbed Crispies — short for cash-rich Irish seeking properties in Europe.