Oval faces into its final over

ALL good things come to an end — even a scheme of 810 new houses and apartments.

The end is in sight for the groundbreaking Mount Oval Village development in Cork’s Rochestown, with the remaining 120 or so houses likely to occupy builders O’Flynn Construction until some time in 2007. Having started in 1999, the scheme has been steadily built through the country’s most prolonged housing boom.

While the notion of 800 units, with facilities such as shops, creche, pub, restaurants, boutiques and more, seemed audacious at the time, this year now sees planning applications in areas like Cork and Dublin coming in for 1,000-plus unit developments. Watch out for Horgan’s Quay and Cork’s docklands, as well as for Council-selected commuter villages and towns in transport nodes like Carrigtwohill.

With schemes of this size, it clearly takes years to build and complete, and buyers at the start can understandably be nervous of just how a development will pan out at the end.

There are no such fears at Mount Oval: the builders ‘have done exactly what they said on the tin’. It matches what was promised on the initial master-plan.

Prices have soared too, with strong capital appreciation: the very biggest Mount Oval Dewberry houses sold initially for under IR£500,000/€625,000; now the best finished ones would re-sell for twice that amount, and the couple of six-bed detached houses soon to be released in this Rowan Hill phase will surely top the €1 million mark too.

Two-bedroom apartments in 2002 sold from €195,000; now two-bed mid-terrace townhouses in Rowan Hill are selling from €360,000. Four-bedroom detached houses in the Wrenbank phase were launched in 2002 for €315,000, now Sherry FitzGerald has just sold the former Wrenbank showhouse for a whacking €690,000.

Yet, for all the numbers, Mount Oval hasn’t just been repeating the same tried and tested design, though the exterior colours all come off a similar buttery palette, it must be said, and every second house seems to have a BMW, SUV or other elite German car marque outside the door.

In fact, there are 20 house or apartment types scattered throughout the scheme, on 110 acres of hillside land where the contours help camouflage the scale of the development, and community identities are emerging.

Not only are there 20 house types, there will have been 23 showhouses or apartments completed before the builders are out the gap: that’s enough design angst and keeping up with trends challenge for anyone.

The last few showhouses are being worked on, and three freshly-done units go on display tomorrow afternoon, kitted out by designer Stephen Dunne — with a few more, including a duplex loft apartment, done by Carmel Downey due for completion in a month or so.

Trish Stokes and Paul Reid of Sherry FitzGerald have been in the throes of coordination and preparing for sales at the Rowan Hill part of Mount Oval Village, and must have waking dreams of decor, tiles, soft furnishings and of hordes of visitors tramping over the whole lot. The charge is on tomorrow, Sunday, between 2.30-4.30pm.

The agents will release about 20 village townhouses, and this is the first part of the 810-house scheme to have brick used in the exteriors — in this case, a creamy butter shade of brick.

Prices start at €360,000 for a 760 sq ft mid-terraced two-bedroom — now a starter home possibility for those with a bit of extra cash. The other demographic and most probable cohort of buyers will be traders-down.

Traders-down, too, will look over the end of terrace three-beds of 1,196 sq ft, with a smart and new internal layout priced at €440,000, and the slightly smaller, more standard 1,112 sq ft three-bed semis, at €450,000.

The latest showhouses and their compact landscaped gardens show just how much decor standards and spending have jumped in just a few short years, and the attention now being put into bathrooms in particular.

The E1-type end terrace three-bed has a larger than usual en suite bathroom, allowing for larger, sharable showers for couples in a lather and a hurry to get out to work to keep up the double-income income stream.