Bungalow measures up in prime suburban location

NUMBER 30, Richmond isn’t exactly the house that today’s demanding, discerning home-hunters want - but its location is so spot on, and its grounds so generous, that viewers will look far beyond what they see on first sight and pay handsomely for it.

It is, at present, a two-bedroomed bungalow, in need of TLC, but with good bones. It is a wholly private mature corner site, in the middle of Richmond’s chicane-like road bends, within a smart walk of Cork city centre.

A broadly similar bungalow, but with a third bedroom already provided at attic level across the road sold in recent months with another agent for over €575,000, and No 30 is a brand new market arrival with Hugh McPhillips of Marshs Auctioneers. He cautiously guides it at €500,000 because of the work it will need.

Developed in the 1960s by builder Barry Burke, the Richmond Estate crosses from the main Blackrock Road in Cork city to the Boreenmanna Road, and the latter suburban road is now the focus of several new house and apartment building projects.

But Richmond seems pleasantly impervious to the pace of development almost on all sides: there’s even a 50,000 sq ft state of the art, third generation office building just completed opposite Richmond’s entrance on the Blackrock Road, with 250 jobs confirmed for the first few leased floors, so the area is under scrutiny and in demand.

The house name Kuantan doesn’t appear anywhere on this corner bungalow, but the house number, 30, seems to be the moniker of choice.

The measure viewers will be interested in is square feet, and the numbers here do, indeed, add up: the site at 110’ by 100’ is the guts of a quarter acre, with parking for several cars in front, and with side and wrap-around rear gardens which are a sheltered, private and not over-looked sun trap, with tall hedges and mature trees and shrubs.

The house has 1,250 sq ft of space, all on the one level, and if you were to integrate the roofed car port area there’s up to 1,400 sq ft of space.

And that’s before you go up into the attic, which is easily big enough and tall enough to take another few bedrooms.

As the houses on both sides are a full two storeys tall, a new owner might want to knock, or peel off the roof altogether and go up: the site is plenty big enough to allow a larger footprint or extension, so call in the design experts or put on your thinking cap.

At present, number 30 has a carpeted hall, 27’ by 12’ living/dining room with large, south-facing window, serving hatch to the kitchen, which is oh, so 1960s. Richmond houses have cedar cladding, back in vogue with a bang since the late 1990s.

There’s also two bedrooms, one with shower enclosure, main bathroom, guest WC, and two hotpresses, one with a central heating boiler, although the original blown air heat ducts are still visible in the house.