The last house in coastal enclave

WEATHERING the downturn is a coastal scheme with a name like a familiar, old-school Irish essay — Cois Farraige, beside the sea.

This seaside scheme of just 15 houses, at Owenahincha west Cork, is now down to the last remaining house to sell. Finally.

Three sales earlier this year saw the development, 200 yards from the sea, between Clonakilty and Rosscarbery, find a handful of appreciative new owners and occupants. Number 11 featured in these pages in February, guiding at €245,000, showing some price resilience: the conventional wisdom is that the property market is now dipping back to 2002 levels, but the first house sales in Cois Farraige were back in 2004, for around €230,000, and the most recent sales have held to this sort of threshold.

Estate agents Carmel O’Regan and John O’Neill of Celtic Properties, now have number eight, Cois Farraige to sell, positioned towards the front of the scheme on its site, which slopes down to the public road and has views over all of Owenhincha, its beaches and back eastwards to the Galley Head lighthouse.

Not overly large, at just about 850 sq ft, this semi-detached cottage has an open-plan kitchen/living/dining room, and three compact bedrooms, one of them en-suite, and a main bathroom, plus patio, lawn and parking.