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A SUBURB under everyone’s nose has hit the right mark, as a million euro-plus house sale beckons in Cork’s Mahon.

The extremity of the city’s boundary with the harbour, this undeveloped hinterland was slow to be capitalised on, despite its manifest attractions of waterside location and open aspect framed by mature trees.

But the arrival of the Mahon Point shopping centre just a year ago, and its spin-off neighbourhood transformation, has placed the peninsula firmly on house-hunters’ map, with tall apartment towers, €560,000-plus penthouses, and that ultimate arbiter of status, a €1 million house sale. Where developer Owen O’Callaghan instinctively saw retail openings many moons ago and went eagle-eyed for the bulk of the 111-acre Mahon land sale by Cork City Council in the late 1990s, joint site developers, the McCarthy family, saw a waterfront residential enclave.

Their determination, well ahead of a cautious marketplace, has born fruit, and those who needed to see the Mahon retail phenomenon in the flesh will now pay a premium price for a residential property foothold here. Ironically, prosperous Cork citizens and city burghers such as the Pikes and Crawfords prized this estuarine land in previous centuries with houses such as the Crawfords’ Lakelands and the Pikes’ Bessborough built on Lough Mahon’s shores, back when a tunnel under the Lee seemed about as likely as a visit from aliens.

McCarthy Developments’ Jacobs Island scheme will have 400 units coming on stream by 2007, in a mix of apartments, duplexes, semis, and detached. Perhaps, though, the developers were shy of Mahon’s locational pull, and opted for conservative house designs that look more 90s than noughties. The newest apartment blocks now skirting the busy link road, however, carry the imprint of modernity in their curved, wave-like roof profiles, and were allowed to rise up an extra two levels by planners to maximise the site’s values and assets.

Latest releases here include highly-lettable one-beds at €290,000 (670s sq ft) and two-beds (875 sq ft) from €335,000. A couple of penthouse apartments are left at €560,000, while four-bed semis of 1,300 sq ft are €510,000.

Given the prized position in a crescent with water vistas, the pity is that the detached houses aren’t bigger, more bravely designed and on larger, breathing sites: such a formula could see Mahon houses enter the multi-million euro league all the sooner. As it stands, Nos 62 and 63 point the way forward, with the new-build No 62 of 2,200 sq ft under offer at €875,000 with Trish Stokes of Sherry FitzGerald, while No 63 is pitched at €1m-plus.

This home, pictured above, has been bulked up quite a bit more than its 24 detached predecessors to about 2,700 sq ft, with a more sharply pitched roof which allows two extra attic-level bedrooms, each of which opens out to a crow’s nest-like balcony with south-east water views, finished in cedar, stainless steel and stone. It has three fine reception rooms, a large kitchen/dining room, four first-floor bedrooms with two en suites, plus the two top-floor rooms with bathroom.