On course for the good life

LOVE it or loathe it, the game and business of golf exerts a moneyed influence on the places it lands.

Think Killarney or the K Club, the Old Head of Kinsale, Mount Juliet and more, and now, add Fota Island and its golf course lodges to the mix.

“We’ve already had international interest in buying these houses, especially from America, and there are people who want a house on the course who already own golf course homes in five or six other worldwide locations: it is like they collect them,” says estate agent Catherine McAuliffe of Hamilton Osborne King. This coming Bank Holiday weekend Ms McAuliffe releases ten houses at Fota Island (see also 1), and planning conditions imposed by Cork County Council have stipulated that they must be used for tourism-related uses: one condition is that their owners cannot occupy them for more than six months a year.

If that hadn’t been insisted upon, it is a certainty that private houses in the woodlands surrounding the two golf courses at Fota would be snapped up at even higher prices than this week’s €500,000/1.1 million range, with sprawling mansions rather than lodges likely to have been favoured by Celtic Tigers for their cubs and clubs for such a setting so close to Cork city, ferry terminal and airport.

So, instead, more modest homes are being built to date for holiday use, though there must be a temptation for the developers, Fleming Construction, to make a later planning bid for a number of unique one-off sites for spectacular multi-million euro, year-round family homes.

In all, planning is in place for 278 lodges and houses, in four or five different clusters to be developed over the next eight years or so.

“We intend to make it the premier golf resort in the south; it is going to be great for the Cork region and there are a number of other courses within an easy drive for people to play as well when they stay here, while the greater Cork area and Cobh has a range of tourist attraction which will also benefit,” says Fleming’s Vincent O’Donovan of their €150 million Fota investment.

Building has so far centred on two Fota settings, called Courseside and Courtyard Lodges, to designs (nine various house types) by architects Roderick Hogan Associates, with interior design to an unstinting specification by Jean Dougan.

Buyers have the option of using the lodges themselves for part of the year, and there is certain to be corporate take-up as well; for investors the five-star Sheraton Hotel and Spa will let the lodges and houses out to guests and maintain them to five-star standards.

Each house has hotel-like facilities, such as computer controlled swipe/access cards, hotel, golf and spa facility booking and charging facilities, plasma TVs in all bedrooms, and living room with hotel range of channels available. The hotel will even dispatch meals or send a chef around for a party night of cooking if required. Chocolates on pillows nightly might be your own affair, however.

Each house is being sold fully fitted, down to duvets, cotton bed linen and teaspoons, to a standard which leave the usual Bord Fáilte fit-out trailing in its wake, and the construction levels and finishes are ‘seeing is believing’ exceptional, with steel frame construction, high insulation standards and quality wood floors, wallpapers and carpets.

The better houses have features like wine fridges, built in coffee and cappuccino makers, and the bigger ones also have drying rooms for wet golf gear. There are shelters and re-charge points for golf buggies, which come with each lodge letting, and special paths have been laid out around the estate to cut down on car usage by occupants tripping between house, hotel, spa, golf courses and golf academy.

It is likely that accommodation booked via the hotel will range from €1,500 week for a Courtyard lodge to €2,500 per week for a Courseside lodge, allowing for seasonal variations.

While there’s a good income stream likely to flow, especially in a few years’ time when the Fota Island resort is well-established, there are also on-going costs such as management fees for maintenance, of €2,200 per annum up to €9,000 pa for the biggest detached houses.

And, if as thought likely you want to golf on the side with your investment, membership sign-up for Fota is €25,000 as a once-off, with on-going membership fees then of €1,310 per annum.