Irish tech executive backs housebuilder Homeland
A COMPANY owned by the chief financial officer of Dublin mobile technology firm Madme, Colm Crossan, has invested almost €2.2m into Dublin-based homebuilder Homeland.
It is another financial boost for Homeland, which is controlled by developer Neil Collins.
It follows a €3m investment made earlier this year in Homeland by Grass Lake Capital, a US private equity investment firm.
Based in Illinois, Grass Lake Capital has targeted funding at small-scale housing developers in the United States as well as countries including Ireland, Portugal, Italy and Spain.
It was the second time that Grass Lake had invested in Homeland.
Homeland has also received financial backing from a fund controlled by Signal Capital, a Londonbased property investment firm founded by former Deutsche Bank executives.
Software
Mr Crossan was chief financial officer at financial software firm Norkom Technologies until 2002. The firm was sold to BAE Systems in 2011 for €217m.
He was the chief financial officer of Newbay Software from 2008 to 2011, and has been the financial officer at Madme since 2013.
The most recent investment made by Grass Lake in Homeland was made around the same time that Homeland acquired a prime residential site on Dublin’s southside at Stillorgan.
The site was sold by stock market-listed Cairn Homes, which had bought it in 2015 for €5.5m.
Although Cairn had intended to build on the site, it never submitted a planning application for a development there.
Homeland has been involved in a number of housing projects which are aimed at well-heeled buyers.
In 2015, it launched the Silveracre development in Rathfarnham, also on Dublin’s southside.
Those homes sold for between €900,000 and almost €1m.