L-shaped property with plenty of space

SHEARE smart. A new L-shaped house, tacked on to the side of an older one and built on its overgrown gardens, is a suburban property market offering with a twist.

Larger than most of its neighbours in Cork’s Sheares Park (off the Glasheen Road, opposite St Finbarr’s cemetery) this 2004-built home 17A is a 1,650 sq ft four/five bed house, with plenty of gardens left over.

In the western suburbs, and with 15 acres of school rugby playing pitches to its rear, it is near a host of amenities and employers, such as the CUH, Wilton Shopping Centre, UCC, Bon Secours and the ESB.

It was all brought together back in 2002 by an engineer with house design service called Site Solutions (check its own website www.sitesolutions.ie).

He bought the original end house (yep, No 17) here six years ago, on a big but massively overgrown site. He did up the original ( sold, back in 2004 for around €290,000) and got planning for this add-on at the end, bigger and better specced than the rest of the park’s older houses.

It was finished in 2004, and is now being sold, new to the market with auctioneer Dan Howard of Dooley and Howard, who guides it at €450,000 (and who has just sold a seven-bed investment property nearby for €440,000.)

Insulated, he says, to within an inch of its life, it is very well kept and finished, with a ground floor that includes porch entrance, hall, guest WC with shower, living room opposites which could be used as a fifth bedrooms, and behind are a big sitting room and a kitchen/dining room, with patio door to a flagged and brick-edged patio and lawns.

Overhead are four bedrooms, one with en suite with power shower and a main bathroom, with shower in the bath. Its private site is about one eighth of an acre.