After five years on market, West Cork house sells for €4m
It is one of the highest prices paid in the past 18 months for any Irish house outside of Dublin.
The €4m sale was achieved by Seamark, a restored Georgian house on five acres in one of the country’s most special settings, looking out the mouth of Glandore harbour. It is next door to the restaurant and wedding venue The Rectory.
By way of contrast, the €4m sale is four times the sub-€1m sum being paid right now for a 30-bed hotel with eight apartments, currently going through the sale process to an overseas buyer, in another West Cork honeypot location, Schull.
The buyer of Seamark, which has benefited from a world-class renovation job, has Irish roots, but according to sources has been living and working abroad in the financial markets.
Seamark’s successful sale will cheer other Irish house vendors who’ve been struggling to sell their own homes for some time, as it has been on the market since Mar 2007.
Back then, it carried a €6m launch price via agent Charles P McCarthy in Skibbereen. Having dropped just 33% from the market’s 2007 peak, Seamark also bucks another trend, as the Irish residential market overall has by now fallen by over 60%.
The highest price for a country house sale last year was achieved by developer Niall Mellon’s Kilkenny home Coolmore, on 250 acres, bought by a Hong Kong buyer for €3.25m. The Dublin market has seen several high-end period city house sales in the €4m to €6m-plus league in the last year.
West Cork auctioneers Charles McCarthy and Maeve McCarthy last night confirmed local Glandore reports of Seamark’s sale, but they declined to identify the buyers’ identity.
It is understood the trophy buy is going to be used as a family home.
On its pristine five acres, Seamark was one of three similar homes built 200 years ago by the Allen family at Glandore.
It last sold in 1997, and was intensively worked on until 2005 by its owners, who also invested about €500,000 in its gardens.
Apart from conserving the house’s period features and replacing 80% of the roof and other key joinery, the multimillion-euro upgrade included demolishing and replacing a 1920s annex, putting in underfloor heating which is controlled through seven zones, and fitting out four plush bathrooms.
It is heavily wired for IT and music and pictures, with a drop-down 42in plasma screen that was state of the art in 2007, but is commonplace enough now as the Euro 2012 finals appear on giant screens in modest Irish homes.
And, also planning ahead for a future of global warming, Seamark has a 7,000-gallon water tank for its meticulously landscaped gardens. After a start like this June to summer 2012, it seems that giant water barrel was about the only investment here at Seamark that is not paying off.
