Something old, something new

Tommy Barker finds coincidence and variations in two identically-priced homes.

OLD or new? An auctioneer has two entirely different detached homes new to market for contrasting buyers, each for the same €365,000 price — that’s a handy €1,000 a day for a year and either could then be yours.

One house is just three years old, in a scheme of 11 homes and has some internal surprises: the other is about 150 years old, and might well have hidden surprises — good, bad but hardly indifferent — for a buyer.

Aged beauty first — step up to the mark, Spring Cottage, out in Mallow’s Quarterstown in the River Blackwater’s catchment in north Cork.

Described by auctioneer Conor Smith of Kevin Sullivan estates as “a Regency-style home,” the four-bed had, entirely appropriately, been owned by an antiques dealer for a number of years, who must have valued its antiquity and authenticity.

Special features include the period-era casement windows in the main front, villa-like facade, with ornate tracery around small oblong panes. It’s a taste of things to come, and inside there’s a measure of very faded elegance, with well-proportion rooms, graceful internal arches, good fireplaces, old floor boards, decorative ceiling cornicing and central roses and more.

It’s a two-storey house over lower ground or basement, with three mid-level reception rooms, lower level kitchen and range of lesser rooms including breakfast room and play room, and the top floor has four bedrooms, one with dressing room.

Each of the three levels has a bathroom, and Mr Smith (who is a joint selling agent along with ERA O’Connell of Mallow) calculates the floor area at about 3,000 sq ft thanks to several later extensions.

The overall condition is quite poor, so you’ll have to budget for renovations, and there’s some peace of mind in that the OPW is currently doing flood relief works locally along the Blackwater.

Spring Cottage is on 1.5 acres of grounds alongside the road, with garage, and has in the sales business jargon, ‘huge potential’.

And, that’s in complete contrast to the state of 4 Cois Muileann, further east in Cork county near Midleton and Leamlara at Ballincurrig.

This detached dormer home of 2,100 sq ft has four bedrooms as it stands, and is in perfect decorative nick as it was only built a few years ago. It has a further 800 sq ft of convertible space in its attic.

The internal surprise here is in the kitchen/dining room, a big, quality space at 24’ by 18’ that also has cubic capacity, thanks to ceilings going 17’ up into the roof apex, with a small porthole window over the rear-garden facing French doors to the patio.

U-shaped No 4 is for sale with Mr Smith of Kevin Sullivan Estates, and is on a site of three-quarters of an acre. Two of its four bedrooms have en suites, there are two reception rooms, main bathroom, and oil heating with pvc double glazing for creature comforts. There’s nice countryside views, a national school is a walk away, and Glanmire and Midleton are alternative approach routes, each about 10 or 15 minutes away.

VERDICT: Though each identically-priced house has a selling agent in common, the same buyers won’t be turning up at both to make up their minds, they’re chalk and cheese.