Trading Up
There’s a very different choice on offer for buyers keen on a Laburnum Park location in Cork City’s western suburbs, at the back/Model Farm Road access point to the CUH.
For those keen on an easier life, and with a more modest budget, the four-bed semi St Anne’s with Johnny O’Flynn of Sherry FitzGerald is the job, guided at €290,000, and under offer at €270,000.
It’s in good order, has a garage and extension potential, and while it could do with some modernising and changes, it’s all on a fairly modest, do-able scale.
Meanwhile nearby, John Barry of Keane Mahony Smith seeks offers close to €280,000 for a three-bed detached 1930s bungalow on a site of a sixth of an acre.
After a few weeks on the market, and after visits from bidders and prospective buyers with builders and architects in tow, it’s looking like a knock-down job in most viewers’ eyes.
The feedback is that the best use of the southfacing site is to replace the 1,150 sq ft bungalow with a 2,000 — 3,000 sq ft new home, suggests Mr Barry.
He’s got a current offer of €230,000 on the bungalow which “is surrounded by two storey houses, so it is ripe for redevelopment.”
VERDICT: Great location.
What’s the gap between dreams, and reality? Oh, about €200,000.
Visit No 4 Cleve Hill, a mid-1900s four-bed up for sale off Cork City’s Blackrock Road, and you see a slice of suburbia priced at €340,000 — a perfectly good 1,200 sq ft home just needing a personal touch and some TLC.
Look next door to the all done-up and extended No 3 Cleve Hill which graced our pages last week and you see what a dream can be — for €540,000, a walk-in five-bed job with 2,660 sq ft to a T.
Nos 3 and 4 hit the market last weekend with Malcolm Tyrrell of Cohalan Downing, who says reaction is excellent. No 4’s got only a modest overhaul, with a new kitchen, double glazing and gas heating, it has a main 26’ by 11’ reception room and a small study, plus kitchen/breakfast room and pantry. Overhead are four bedrooms, and main bathroom and separate WC. A garage linked by a yard holds significant extension potential.
Nearby, a 1,500 sq ft Cleve Hill house, No 1, aka Fenway, is priced at €405,000 by joint agents Savills and Timothy Sullivan, while No 18 Cleve Hill is priced at €350,000 by Mr Sullivan.
VERDICT: Lots of choice.
This three-bed bungalow, Seascapes, has ‘scope’ for a much larger house on the site.
Seascapes is a tidy-sized home positioned for great, engrossing harbour views, at Aghada in East Cork, and has a feature sloped front window in the living/dining space with perfectly positioned telescope for boat and bird watching.
The selling agents, Sherry FitzGerald, in Cork City, price it at €270,000 and say that buyers opt to build upwards.
The house measures 1,260 sq ft, but full planning has been granted to go up another floor, for a two-storey update, with closer to 2,000 sq ft, and the ideal would be to move the living/dining/kitchen upstairs for even better seascapes.
Seascapes is on a site of one third of an acre, quietly set above Aghada and with views towards Cobh and East Ferry, about six miles around the harbour rim from Midleton.
Right now, Seascapes has one en-suite bedroom, main bathroom, kitchen, utility and 24’ by 13’ living/dining room with a gas fireplace.
VERDICT: Great lifestyle on offer in the hinterland.
Six months ago, if you were told there was a house for sale by the roundabout on Cork’s Well Road, you’d have to ask “which roundabout?” But, now that the one linking the Well Road with Skehard Road has been obliterated by what seems like a Famine relief scheme, to provide work galore for ground crews, The Well Road has just the one, wee roundabout left — and that’s where you’ll find St Mary’s.
This well-kept, upgraded dormer bungalow on private grounds with an attached garage, is a couple of doors away on the Douglas village side, 50 yards from the coffee’n’cake shop Gogos — so you’ll never starve if you live near here.
Auctioneer Timothy Sullivan guides this three-four-bed dormer home at €345,000, and should be busy with viewings at that sort of price level, both from traders down and traders up, in roundabout sort of way.
It’s detached, on a site with private east-facing back garden with big deck raised above the lawns, and is a good enough size at 1,355 sq ft.
St Mary’s has two upper level bedrooms plus bathroom with separate shower and bath, a ground floor bedroom, study/bed four, lounge with solid fuel stove, and a rear 15’ by 12’sitting room with French doors to the deck and garden.
The kitchen’s bright and modern, with white units, black granite tops and has a range cooker, plus there’s a breakfast room, with a guest WC off a back hall.
VERDICT: Modernised with retained character, it’s a cracking setting with garden views maximised by that decking.
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