Quality at the right price in choice place

IT’S all about sensible pricing — and location clearly helps get a sale over the line, too.

With four recent Cork city house sales agreed and signed, and almost exclusively to cash buyers who’d been renting for a year or more, the selling agent of Caragh reckons the same buyer profile will emerge for this cut-price, Well Road offering “in the heart of Douglas.”

Carrying a €625,000 asking price this four-bed 1,450 sq ft detached house with south-facing back garden overlooking the Douglas estuary and Mahon Golf Course, looks like a strong seller.

Caragh last changed hands about four years ago, around its then €1.1 million AMV, and while its buyer got planning permission for a 3,000 sq ft replacement, it has remained relatively unchanged, but very well-minded, and is currently rented out.

It can be moved into straight away and mildly upgraded or extended to the side now or later on across a covered side passage linking it to utility/store rooms/WC and a detached garage. The certainty is that whoever buys here will be buying for the long term.

“There are buyers out there who have been waiting in the wings, looking for good homes in great locations. I’ve sold four such houses in the last few months to people who have been renting for the last couple of years, and they’re ready to move on. They’ve waited long enough, have seen values drop way

down, and even if they go up or down 10% in the next few years, it really doesn’t matter, they are buying family homes now for the long-term,” said Mr Guerin of Frank V Murphy & Co who’s doing open viewings today 1-2pm.

Caragh is two doors away from the late musician Rory Gallagher’s family home, Greenbanks, bought for a niche upmarket nine-unit house development at a cost of over €3.3 million (now the subject of a bank’s court order against the site’s speculative purchasers.)

This 1950s four-bed house, Caragh, was previously occupied by a private family for 21 years: it has dropped about 40% in value from its 2006/07 down-sizing sale peak.

As it stands, it has two good reception rooms facing south over back gardens with a sun-trap patio with water and golf course views, and the two larger of the four overhead bedrooms share similar views.

On a private, quarter-acre site with 65’ frontage to the Well Road and 190’ depth, it’s half a mile from Douglas village.