Bargain guide for prime 106-acre site
Despite a drop of 0.6% in values outside of Dublin, there is consensus that the real bargains have been had and the cute money is moving elsewhere.
While agricultural property was the star turn of the recession, (or only beacon of light, depending on your point of view), and while prices are steadily increasing, the odd bargain does pop up — but that’s relative, too.
In productive terms, this 106-acre holding at Ballincolla, Union Hall, wouldn’t make the cut but when one considers that it made over €1m in 2003 and is on the market now for half of that? Well, then it’s a bargain
Now back on the market with auctioneer Charlie McCarthy after a 10-year hiatus, the Union Hall farm has a rough price guide of €500,000 in a private treaty sale. And it’s been a wild life sanctuary in all that time, (or has lain fallow, depending again on point of view), which means it would require serious hard work to bring the undulating and rocky shoreline property back to productivity. But some of the land is very good, McCarthy says.
The locations, size, and distinct qualities of this property will attract the overseas buyer. Trophy buys in European countries are the new must-have for the ever growing ranks of Chinese billionaires, some of whom have been purchasing significant hotel and land investments in Cork recently.
But as to whether the wilds of West Cork will appeal is another matter. West Cork has many discreet, indigenous, and international wealthy residents, so the new Eastern monied classes mightn’t be far behind.
The land in question has an interesting history of its own, not least that it made a record price in 2003, but also that it belonged to Barty Whelton, one of the most famous characters in an area with quite a few.
He cut a dash through the neighbouring villages in his vintage Rolls and sports Mercedes and was very much the local boy made good.
Barty, the son of a farmer, left for the US in 1937 and worked in Boston, Chicago, San Francisco, and Alaska. With his earnings, he fulfilled an emigrant’s ambition and returned home to buy 100 acres for £5,000, shortly after the Second World War. He subsequently purchased other properties in the area. His Ballincolla farm provided sanctuary for many native and migrating bird species. The property has five coves and one in particular is so deep that Whelton once said of it: “You could berth the Queen Mary in it.”
Ballincolla also has an old, derelict farmhouse, and the land includes a lookout hut (an unusual one-room derelict building) and one of its five headlands has a promontory fort. Whelton also owned land that included the Drombeg stone circle, which he gifted to the State.
His Ballincolla farm was sold to a US buyer and has lain undisturbed for 10 years. It’s now being sold on the instructions of its receiver, Carl Dillin, of Moore Stephens Nathan, Cork.
Charles McCarthy recounts that when John O’Connor of the Old Head Golf Club eyed the place up as a golf course, part of an idea he had was a string of courses all along the south-west coast — sic transit gloria mundi.
