At home in property biz

OONAGH O’Driscoll was lucky — if she had sold the entire block of Balmace Crescent, Fermoy, during the boom, she would have borrowed more millions to develop further.

She had only built two of eight planned houses in the low-density, Balmace scheme before the recession. It’s unusual for a woman to be a developer and O’Driscoll happened upon the business by accident.

With a background in marketing, she and her husband worked in the UK and intended staying there. They had found the ideal house, had made an offer, and were in the process of selling their own.

The couple about to purchase their house asked why they were leaving, and O’Driscoll gushed about the new property. That couple made a higher offer on their proposed house, and it was accepted — classic gazumping.

Following that, the O’Driscolls made the decision to return home to Cork and started looking for a place to live.

Oonagh’s sister was based in Fermoy and she found the town appealing: when a site came up for sale, she bought it and the question of what to build arose. There, in her handbag, was the brochure for the house they originally wanted and so, says O’Driscoll, smartly, they built that. She oversaw the project, with support from her builder, and enjoyed the process so much that when the site next door came up for sale, she bought that, too.

This was her first foray into proper development and it worked, she said, and gave her another career, apart from raising four children.

She then followed with a two-house scheme in Co Clare and then came Balmace, a large, detached house on the Cork side of the bypass route on three acres of landscaped grounds.

O’Driscoll had architect, Edel Regan, draw up plans for detached houses on-site and came away with planning for eight units styled in the popular, buttery, Edwardian look beloved of the noughties.

These are big houses, ranging from 2,000 square feet to 3,300, and the middle type, the Cedar, offers 2,885 square feet over three floors.

It’s now on the market with a builder’s finish at a slashed value of €395,000, almost half of the original asking price.

This particular property is one of only two developed on-site, and there is also an option for buyers to buy any of the sites remaining and to build what’s there, or reapply for planning for a different house style, she says.

The selling agent is Michael O’Donovan, of Sherry FitzGerald O’Donovan.

Balmace Crescent is less than half a mile from the centre of Fermoy and a 20-minute commute to Cork city.