Hop on and buy an apartment or house in final Elderwood scheme

SALES at the Elderwood scheme on Cork city’s prime Boreenmanna Road move into the final phase this month, just as a new bus service places a bus stop right outside its door.

Despite the fact the slick, streamlined and hard-edged/brick-faced houses and apartment are just over a mile(ish) from the city centre or City Hall, the place hit the headlines a few months ago when some applicants for social housing there rejected them for, among other reasons, the fact it wasn’t on a bus route.

Well, whatever about the real reasons for refusals, the bus route issue has just this month been addressed with a new service from South Mall...and other Bus Éireann services run along the parallel Blackrock Road and on the Ballinlough Road, too.

Elderwood, on a primely located southside suburban seven acre site cleared through planning by an uncommon Section 8 by City Hall, is now a fully finished entity, with its 33% social and affordable element now fully taken up, and with just 22 high quality private sales (out of c 100, split between investors and owner-occupiers) now remaining via agents Cahalane Skuse.

Elderwood prices start at €310,000 for a two-bedroom apartment of 750 sq ft, and three-bed duplexes of 980 sq ft are from €345,000.

Developers are Paul Montgomery, with John F Supple, to a contemporary design by Dublin-based Derek Tynan Associates. Tynan also designed the controversial student apartments at Victoria Cross for developer Paul Montgomery, and while Elderwood’s sharp-edged and pared back street facade too has attracted its critics, the living environment for residents and buyers is highly regarded. They just don’t fit the traditional stereotype. Work on the brick coursing, by the way, is exemplary.

By way of contrast, O’Flynn Construction is well advanced in sales of the nearby Bellfield Abbey scheme, done to a very traditional template: prices range from €385,000 for a three-bed mid-terraced townhouse of 950 sq ft, two-bed dormer bungalows of 990 sq ft were priced at launch of €450,000 and houses went up to and over€1.15 million for larger detacheds of 2,300 sq ft.

Features of the duplex houses and apartments on offer at Elderwood include gas heating, parking spaces, wiring for alarm, and depending on setting, either balconies and terraces/patios or back gardens.