Ronan scores again with €725,000 site

IRISH rugby international Ronan O'Gara has put a firm boot into Cork house site prices.

The out-half place-kicker has lashed out virtually a record €725,000 for a site on Maryborough Hill in Douglas.

A large finished home on such a site could, be worth €1.5 million by the time he has built on the three-quarter acre plot, it is reckoned.

O'Gara, who was linked with a multi-million move to American Football side the Miami Dolphins last year, but stayed with his native game, has shown a keen eye off the ball, making what could be a very astute move buying in a gilt-edged address.

He has secured the last site in the approach to the original Douglas House, a period place once owned by the Horgan family, and where a half dozen or so newly-built homes cater for a new millionaire and wealthy professional class.

The site was sold by Tony Sexton of MortgageChoice/Property Choice (he was also the vendor, and had planned to build there himself, until he bought instead in Carrigrohane) after an earlier deal close to €750,000 fell through.

"There were five or six bidders for the site when it came back up for sale," Mr Sexton noted, and several made bids over €700,000. (Woodwards also got c€700,000 for a house site at the former Church of Ireland rectory on Carr's Hill over the summer months, showing demand for sites for large new homes in the locale.)

It is understood that rugby star Ronan O'Gara will build a house for his own use on the Maryborough Hill site, and the Rochestown/Douglas area is a popular residential haunt with professional Irish and Munster rugby team members. There is planning permission for a 4,000 sq ft house on the hilly site, which steps back into the tree-line.

The major site price secured, meanwhile, is just one of PropertyChoice's recent successful forays into the upper echelon of the Cork house market.

They got a hefty €925,000 for a large 3,500 sq ft house in Abbottswood, near the monastery in Rochestown, sold to Cork Airport's new boss Joe Gantly, and who touched down in his new base during the summer.

There is another five-bed, three-storey home here in the new-ish development currently for sale for €855,000-plus, according to Con Dennehy of Property Choice, has also just sold Avondale, opposite Garyduff sports grounds, for over €900,000.