Proximity of five-star hotel should boost Dysert sale

THE new boutique, five-star Cliff House Hotel, coming on stream in west Waterford’s Ardmore, “is going to lift all boats in the village,” says locally-based estate agent Brian Gleeson.

The boats he has in mind are local properties, with Ardmore set to move from being more or less a summer-only resort to a year-round destination — “like Kelly’s of Rosslare.”

Its entrepreneur developer, Barry O’Callaghan, is behind the Cliff House Hotel, with a reported €20m to €30m flowing into the investment, on the spectacular site of an older hotel on the Cliff Road.

One of the properties likely to get an up-lift from the expected profile boost is Dysert, billed as an executive home a few minutes’ walk from the hotel, which is set to open in the first half of 2008.

Built eight years ago, Dysert has 2,400 sq ft of space on a 2/3-acre elevated site, with views of Ardmore Bay, Mine Head and the Wexford coastline. There’s a private south-facing back garden, a detached, 1,100 sq ft garage, a hall, large kitchen, separate dining room/sun room with patio, family room, sitting room with bay window, main bathroom, as well as six bedrooms. The ground-floor guest bedroom and the first-floor master room are both en suite.

The specification is high, as are comfort levels, and with both Waterford and Cork cities an hour’s drive in opposite directions, and with blue flag beaches in both counties, Dysert is a home that will suit a family for year-round occupation, says Brian Gleeson.

Having recently had contracts signed on the €4m-plus beachside hide-away, Pebble Beach, which featured here in early summer, the Ardmore auctioneer is also near the halfway mark in the sale of five, up-market three-storey houses on the beach’s edge, in the Gealach Cuan scheme. Two have sold for €550,000 and €750,000, and three remain at those two price levels. PC sums for final finishes are high, at €45,000 per house. Dysert is priced at €850,000.