Orchard sites allow for fruitful growth
Set to be the first house on Orchard Road, entering from College Road, the site is the mature, tended and landscaped side garden of a large detached home on College Road, just west of UCC’s medical campus, main campus, Bon Secours hospital and Brookfield student accommodation, hotel and leisure centre.
It has full planning permission secured by the vendor (who owns the main dwelling and gardens) for a 1,630 sq ft, four-bed, two storey home.
The site is deeper than it is wide, about 90’ deep and 56’ wide, and so runs to about one eight of an acre, and the house (also deeper than it’s wide), designed by architect Bertie Pope, is to sit square in the middle of what’s currently lawn.
The superbly-located site carries an AMV of € 295,000 with agent Dennis Guerin, of Frank V Murphy & Co, and is under offer, with a bid already over €250,000.
Ready to build on, it might best suit a trader-down from a larger home, who’d prize the settled, inner suburban setting. If this is the buying demographic, buyers might look at reordering the house’s internal layout, as currently sketched it is for four, first-floor bedrooms (three en-suite): some buyers might rather a larger, ground-floor master bedroom for ease of access.
With a careful builder, a house could be placed here fairly handily, without too much damage to the natural tree boundaries and, apart from opening a splayed main entrance to Orchard Road, the buyer will have to build an eight-foot-high wall between the site and existing two-storey house towards the south east.
Build costs for a finished, circa 1,600 sq ft house could weigh in around €200,000, on top of site acquisition, so buyers could be looking at a circa €500,000 investment. (Also a few doors away on Orchard Road, agents Casey and Kingston have a mid 1900s, five-bed, older-style detached on large gardens for €600,000.)
Meanwhile, across Cork city, side-by side sites on Crab Lane, between the Blackrock Road and Boreenmanna Road, also hold promise for those keen to build anew.
After an agreed sale fell through, Sherry FitzGerald bring the bungalow site at Greengates back to maker, now seeking €295,000 for a site with full planning permission for a 2,200 sq ft detached house.
Greengates is a dated, semi-detached bungalow on a site of close to one fifth of an acre, and the owners of these two adjoining houses here came together to get the planning on their respective sites.
The adjoining 0.17 acre site, home to a bungalow called Atina, went to market with Timothy Sullivan Auctioneers last year, guiding €350,000, and is currently being considered by two parties.
A substantial new home was built nearby in the last several years, on a larger c quarter acre site, with the site having sold for close to €800,000.
Might someone make a play for Atina and Greengates together, prepared to spend over €600k for a mature and well-set site of more than one third of an acre on which to build a dream home?
