There’s a sort of musical chairs series of moves afoot at several of Munster’s TV, audio and white goods retailers this month. As one Cork city centre retailer prepares to move to an edge-of town spot for a larger footprint in coming weeks, the first out of the traps to officially confirm a relocation is the well-known and long-established Soundstore.

In hindsight, the name Phoenix House has proven particularly apt: rising from the crash, Cork’s €20m-plus Phoenix House third generation office building a mile from City Hall has secured its first, sizeable tenant, Regus — almost 10 years after it was built.

Guided at €4.25 million for owners Aviva Investors, the sale of the landmark 1970s office block 89/90 South Mall is in a pivot position in Cork’s CBD.

A warehouse building with other potential higher-end uses in Cork city’s western suburbs, close to third-level college CIT, has had a price slash, so that now it can be bought for one third the cost of comparable construction.

A single building let to Logitech at Cork Airport Business Park is for sale for €2.4 million, a year after the separate sale of five investment buildings there to Norwegian trust Adel Crest, for €15.1 million.

STRONG, five-yearly rental increases, with the next hike due in summer, 2016, underpin the attractiveness of a bank building investment, in Cork’s redeveloped Ballincollig Town Centre.

A run-down cottage has been beautifully incorporated into a contemporary extension, says Tommy Barker.

BACK at the commercial market’s height, land in key Cork suburbs was fetching €2.5m/3m an acre.

ONE of Ireland’s top ten accountancy firms, Moore Stephens Nathans, is to sell its Cork HQ — a former Bank of Ireland premises on the South Mall — on a new 12-year lease and at a rent of €180,000 pa.

Two former Cork City sites, associated with boom-time purchases involving Oyster Developments, are being brought to market by Savills.

A €4m, Cork City office investment by a Hong Kong-based buyer, is one of the first significant overseas swoops outside the Dublin office market.

CORK’S commercial property market may be heading back to equilibrium by 2013, with transaction numbers rising, a recovery in Dublin leading a cyclical trend, and an improvement in both Cork and Dublin’s urban residential markets.

Savills are bringing a prime retail investment premises at Main Street Ballincollig (presently tenanted by Bank of Ireland) to the market this week and are pitching the building with streetfront loggia as an investment buy.

BUSINESS users take the early train, and astute business looking to future prime locations in Cork will have an eye on the Kent Railway redevelopment and piggy-backing on the massive investment set to flow on the Horgan's Quay site rein.