€2.4m home sale in Cork ‘a sign of recovery’

A Cork suburban house sold for €2.4m — more than €500,000 over its asking price — is being hailed as evidence of recovery and emerging confidence in the upper end of the house market outside of Dublin.

Sat, 16 May, 2015 - 01:00

Tommy Barker

Very recently sold after a bidding spree by two locally based bidders, and after almost a year on the suburban Cork house market, is Curraghbeg, a 1920s home at Woodview, off the main Douglas Road.

It has not been lived in for several years, and the key to its strong sale result is its site of a rare and private 1.5 acres, seen as making this a bit of a trophy buy as the house itself needs lots more additional spending.

Selling agents Michael O’Donovan and Catherine McAuliffe of Savills have not disclosed any details of the sale other than to say their understanding is that it was bought as a family home, and not for site development/value.

The sale result is now on the Property Price Register, officially marked as having made €2.3m, but it is understood it made more than that, as part of the 1.5 acres of grounds are valued separately.

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Savills put Curraghbeg on the open market in June 2014, guiding €1.85m, and it is only in recent months that interest peaked, with two bidders going head to head, as the price was first met and then far surpassed. The €550,000 or so that it made over its €1.85m asking price would still buy a very fine family home elsewhere in Douglas, or indeed in any other city suburb.

Built in the 1920s, Curraghbeg has belonged ever since to the Murphy family who were builders in earlier decades, and who constructed a number of Cork churches among other buildings, according to market sources.

Built in a vaguely French Manor-meets-Colonial style, with five bedrooms, and 3,600sq ft of space, it is large but not an absolute mansion. In fact, many Celtic Tiger homes far surpassed Curraghbeg’s size — but none got to be built in recent years on an acre and a half in the heart of ‘old’ Douglas, near the Well Road.

When it went for sale almost a year ago, it had not been lived in for a while and got its last revamp in the 1970s, and more than half the grounds (stretching back towards GoGos cafe on the Well Road) were totally overgrown, so the new owners will be tackling work inside and out for some time to come, and may even decide to rebuild.

“It shows a return to confidence again at the upper level of the market. We’ve seen Sterling buyers coming over for county and coastal homes, but what’s notable here is the fact the bidders were local,” says Savills.

When they launched Currghbeg last June, they followed the next week with an Edwardian classic, in walk-in condition, Ellerslie on the Well Road, and it was guided at €2.85m.

Ellerslie is now under offer at €2m, and is about to be joined on the market later this month with several other new arrivals via several estate agency firms, at just under and over the €2m mark.