Four-bed with stunning city views is ideal family home in modern estate

GREAT views of Cork city, especially with lights twinkling at night, come from the rear, bay-windowed dining area of 12 Silverlands, a great detached four-bed home of 2,000 sq ft in Maryborough Woods, Cork.

The Douglas home, built about 10 years ago, is on the market for €650,000 and is only the third in the section to come up for resale — and the last offering here 10 months ago sold in a week, notes estate agent Olivia O’Leary of Thomas J O’Driscoll & Co.

That was a five-bed, and made around €730,000 to a cash buyer, and the speed of its sale with a swift “take it or leave it” offer surprised those who thought they’d get a leisurely chance to bid, she adds.

As a result, some at least of the viewings of No 12 will include those who’d sauntered through the quickly-despatched last available offering in May 2009. Within its first week on the market this month alone, an on-the-ball cohort of nine viewings were processed at No 12.

Verdict is that No 12 is one of the better, mid-to-upper market offerings right now in the greater Douglas area. Its Silverlands setting sees it in at the very start of the large Maryborough Woods scheme, developed since around 2000 by O’Brien and O’Flynn, and it backs over the individual sloping house sites by the period Douglas House, all now built upon and home to a mix of large, bespoke and contemporary family homes to the well-heeled, including one sure-footed Ronan O’Gara. As Silverlands is higher up than that row of one-offs, it has even better views, notes Ms O’Leary. Silverlands has 14 houses, overlooking a green and up towards Douglas Golf Club and clubhouse, and No 12 is walk-in job, within an easy walk of Douglas village (in fact, walking is often preferable at peak morning traffic time on Douglas’s feeder hills) and it has four bedrooms and four bathrooms, two with en suites. The ground floor has a good 17’ by 11’ sitting room with bay window, formal dining room, study, kitchen, utility and guest loo. Most of the bedrooms have wooden floors, and the whole back of the house is spanned by a wide deck, with railing and steps down to the lower garden section.