Two former hotels in Douglas have been sold at auction.

The Wyndham and Pitcairn hotels on Church Road Marina, were sold as a single lot by London-based Allsop auctioneers.

While the identity of the new owner is not yet known, the winning bidder bought the buildings for £100,000.

The buildings had not been subject to any reserve price.

This led to the opening bid of just £100 very nearly being a winning one, with the auctioneer being within a second of slamming his gabble down when a bid of £500 was entered.

Sale

What followed was a back and forth with the bids rising steadily before the winning bidder’s £100,000 offer.

The new owner is not only taking on the buildings, but a list of structural issues and ongoing enforcement action from Douglas Borough Council as well.

An email from MannBenham Advocates outlines on the auctioneer’s website what the council want the new owners to do. This includes work to commence by August 10 on the recommendations outlined in a structural report by civil engineers Curtins.

The recommendations include interior scaffolding to support all the floors and allow work to begin from the bottom up to repair the buildings and remove any remaining fixtures and fittings.

Once the building has been secured, the report recommends fixing the holes in the roof by removing loose tiles and placing a seal to prevent further water damage.

The final recommendation is for a monitoring system to be set up to gain a better understanding of what Curtins believe is progressive movement in the front walls.

The report states: ’If the monitoring identifies that lateral movement of the front wall is progressive then the only course of action would be to demolish the properties.’

However, due to their location in Douglas, with the promenade regeneration to come, the land value will surely only increase.